On the track back down, Jim stopped suddenly. He was staring at the tiny, almost-empty car park at the bottom of the hill, shrouded by pines.

There was a man by his jeep.

I recognised him, even from this distance. The long mac, the antler stick. ‘Oh, it’s Johnny.’

We watched him. He was standing strangely at an angle to the front window of the jeep, as if he might be hanging around for a bus, but kept craning his head back to peer inside.

‘You know him?’ Jim’s voice was opaque.

‘Yeah, I talked to him the other day.’

His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on Johnny, who was now ambling along the side of the vehicle, his walking stick trailing, making a great show of sauntering by even though there was no one around.

‘I don’t think he’s trying to break into your jeep,’ I said.

Jim didn’t seem convinced, in which case I wondered why he wasn’t steaming down there, batting him away. He was almost rigid and I could sense something simmering in him.

Johnny had done a full circle of the jeep, his body language a mixture of watchful and insouciant. Finally he walked off down the path towards the village, lifting the point of his stick as I’d seen him do before, stately, his other hand in his pocket.

Jim didn’t move until Johnny had turned the corner and was masked by trees. Then he put a hand to the back of his head, digging a finger in with a slow, deep scratch, looking pensive and faintly angry.

‘Shall we?’ I said.

He lowered his arm, still caught up in a thought I couldn’t quite read, nodded, and walked ahead of me.

10

Lottie persuaded me to have another fun-time trip to Fort William, winner of Crap Town of the Year three years running. A half-arsed high street and dour buildings and signs in florid italics and nowhere selling anything worth buying. Lottie dawdled at windows while I stuffed a pasty into my face and stared at the mountains, wondering if I was fit enough to climb them yet. Yeah, right. I’d probably have a panic-attack-slash-cardiac-arrest a quarter of the way up and have to be stretchered into a helicopter by mountain rescue.

I managed to lose Lottie for a bit to have a fag and steal into a bank to ask about loans. No one was free to see me, though, so I came away with a handful of useless leaflets and tried not to think about how fucking broke I was.

We missed the second bus, and – the next one being in about two years’ time – Lottie expertly extinguished the prospect of a twelve-mile walk by using her best pleading voice on the phone to Bev.

We sat on a bench and watched the cars trundle onto the ferry, the metal ramp clunking.

She put her hand on mine. ‘It’s nice to have you up here. Even if I never see you.’ She looked at me. ‘Where do you go?’