I gave him a look that I hoped said Go on then, put your hand on my arse. Dare you. He kept flitting his eyes down to my neck, or over the top of my head, his smile a thin line, looking fantastically self-conscious.

Lottie and Bev flopped back onto the sofa, Siamese twins joined at the head, eyes half closed, blissed out on nostalgia and a lot of dessert wine. They smiled up at us both as if we were a couple of puppies getting stuck in on YouTube.

The tune stopped and Adam stepped back. I could practically smell his relief. ‘Time for coffee,’ he said.

Their bookshelves showed off a pretty good mix of everything – classic and contemporary fiction, colour-coded spines, lots of reference books on architecture and art. There was some card-bound local history stuff and a book on Scottish myths and traditions. I pulled it out. Maybe my thing, whatever the hell it was, would be in here. On the inside cover was a dodgy engraving of women in bonnets pushing at some material with their bare feet. I opened it at a page about people with second sight foretelling events by looking at a sheep bone.

Adam came to my shoulder with a little handleless cup covered in navy-blue flowers.

‘Can I borrow this?’ I said.

‘Wouldn’t have thought you went in for that sort of thing, Polly.’

‘Why not?’

He put his lips together and gave a half-amused shake of his head.

‘Is it any good?’

‘I’ve just dipped in and out. Think we were given it.’ He seemed slightly chastened by the enforced dance number.

I looked at the back cover again. ‘Is there anything from round here in it?’

Adam angled his head over to read the jacket blurb. ‘Not as far as I know. But the stories are pretty universal I should think.’

‘What do you mean?’

He sipped his coffee. ‘Oh, you know, they’re all the same aren’t they, really? Doesn’t matter what part of the world they come from. Fear. Loss. Love. Lust.’ A faintly traced smile. ‘The usual.’ His face smoothed itself out. ‘They might have the bonfire in there, though.’

I looked at him.

‘A tradition. Bonfires on Midsummer’s Eve. They do it up here.’ He put a little extra breath in his voice, eyebrows raised. ‘To keep the ghosties away.’

‘I think someone’s staying the night tonight,’ Bev said dreamily from behind us.

Lottie was out cold, her neck bent awkwardly, her cheek on the arm of the sofa, mouth just wide enough to slot coins into.

Bev looked at Adam. ‘We’ve had too much to drive. You’ll stay, Polly?’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, tucking the book into the back of my shorts.

‘There’s plenty of space,’ she said. ‘You can have a room each.’

The thought of Adam creeping over the landing with an erection nosing through his boxer shorts was not appealing. ‘Yeah, it’s OK, I’ll head back.’

‘I’ll walk you,’ said Adam.