The sun glints on the edge of a cloud and the air chills. She reaches out to take his hand. At first he lets her. It’s rough. It feels like the hand of someone twice his age. There is no softness anywhere, not even when her fingers reach round into the palm.

She can hear his breathing slow. The weed spreads inside her. She feels him, hardened into wood, a root grown tight in knots, coiled over itself, swirling loops of frozen grain clenched around some deep-buried sin. His black eyes squint into the sun. They glisten in the light. Briefly his hand closes over hers.

Then he flinches and draws it away. Before she can speak, he’s pushed himself forward again, back onto his haunches, his body tense with movement.

‘I heard your mum’s on special offer.’

His lip has pulled back from his mouth. His teeth are yellow.

‘Two holes for the price of one.’

He grins fully now, his mouth wide and delighted. He stands up. He moves with barely suppressed energy. He kicks his feet out one by one, like he’s limbering up.

His eyes flick towards Aaron, leaning slack against the rock. Jack’s head bobs and sways, but his eyes stay fixed on Aaron.

‘Show us your tits,’ he says to Rose. His damp T-shirt drifts in the wind, pulling at the hard lines of his chest. ‘I haven’t seen them for years.’

‘Piss off,’ says Rose. She stands too.

He carries on staring at Aaron while he talks. His voice has harrowed to a vicious point. ‘I reckon little brother wants to see them too.’

Aaron sits, staring up. His eyes are big. His face has that twist to it, like someone’s pulling at the skin from inside. She knows he will never be OK. Even if he lives with her in a cottage with roses and smoke coming out of the chimney, he will never be OK.

Nor will Jack, and nor will she.

She turns to walk off. She raises her legs high to step over the heather. The dust of the dying year rises from it.

‘Fucking pricktease.’

She hears a noise behind her. Jack is there, eyes tight, mouth clenched in a thin dark slit. He reaches as she turns and grabs her hair and pulls. Her head jerks back, and she stumbles, and then he is on her and his knee strikes between her legs and his weight is on her and his face is inches from hers, narrow, bullet hard, rage filled.

And then with a thud his head snaps to one side and he falls away from her.

She scrambles back. Her legs are still entangled with his. They are heavy, immobile. The heather scrapes against her neck, and where her T-shirt has ridden up her back. Aaron is standing, still, looking down at the two of them. He has a rock about the size of a brick in one hand.