The sound is sharp and loud and fades across the flat moor.

Ahead of them, behind a rocky outcrop, a bony head pokes up.

Rose shouts in relief. ‘Aaron!’

Aaron gets up. Rose sees Dillon frozen with surprise, a desolate look of utter humiliation on his face.

Dillon’s cheeks are still tear streaked and his nose snotty. Aaron sits on a sill of rock. Looks at them both without comment.

‘Smoke?’ he says.

The rock forms a nook, facing the sun, sheltered from the wind. Aaron has made a little nest for himself. His coat spread out. Tobacco and papers scattered on it. He holds a joint in his hand, unlit. His face is sharp and almost old. He’s at home, here on the moors.

They pass the joint between them. Dillon’s face is drawn and strange. He sucks on the joint, coughs. His cough seems half a giggle, half a sob.

He sits, and then exhales, blowing out through pursed lips. He has passed the joint, but he still inhales carefully, and exhales again. He closes his eyes for a second, and when he opens them he looks at Rose, and then away again.

‘Why did the baker have brown hands?’ asks Aaron.

Rose is trying to be serious and pay attention to Dillon, but she knows this one and she’s laughing already, and the weed catches her, and she’s giggling and spluttering as Aaron says, ‘You’ve got to answer.’

She giggles. ‘Why?’

‘Because he kneaded a poo!’

The giggles rise up inside her in waves, helpless as Dillon looks more and more confused.

‘Kneaded,’ she says, making the motion with her hands.

Dillon’s face creases. The weed catches him now too and he giggles, sniffs, giggles. Aaron howls at how long it took him. Waves and waves of laughter sweep away all the weirdness and replace it with the pure delirium of a summer day.

When they come down, two hours later, picking their way through the forest, across the meadow, back to the bridge, Dillon simply looks tired. Young too, puffy faced and boyish.

They say goodbye at the bridge. If Aaron wasn’t there, she might have hugged him. She might have kissed him. Instead she only smiles at him, a lopsided smile that echoes Aaron’s. She will hug him next time.

When she’s gone, Dillon watches the slick flow of the river. Rocks don’t break the surface here, but the turbulence is visible in troughs and eddies as the water piles against the stone of the bridge. The light glitters on the water in nervous flicks and starts.