‘The present. On my pillow.’ Her piece of marmalade-laden toast hovered in the air. ‘The feather,’ I said.

She gave me an odd look. ‘I didn’t …’

‘Oh. My bad.’

‘Do you want some—’

I was already out of the room.

I sat Tyger down on the sofa and tapped his nose with the end of the feather. It was as delicate as a pair of fifteen-denier tights.

‘So, this is your doing, is it?’

Tyger blinked and coughed.

I grabbed the lamp from the table and held it above his head, narrowing my eyes at him. ‘Can you catch birds? Have you been pretending to be a cushion all this time when in fact you’re a cunning huntsman? A hunning cuntsman?’ Tyger did a quick-fire lick of his nose with the tip of his tongue, a little thhp. I leant back on my elbows with a sigh. ‘That’s a no, then.’

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Maybe it was Jim.

Heyo

Stef. It was the first time he’d started a conversation since I’d left London.

Hey you ok? x

Nope

Of course. He’d only get in touch with me when he was feeling sorry for him-fucking-self. He was probably in love with some boy he’d met three minutes ago who had already dumped him.

Whats up?

I stared at my phone, watching the dots as he typed.

A link came through. Facebook. The Metropolitan Police page. A post asking for help identifying a young man in hospital. And a photo.

In the forest on Jim’s side of the loch I kicked at a tree stump and it crumbled, spilling everywhere. At one edge, there was a beetle stuck halfway out of a beetle-sized cavity. I crouched down to look.

‘What have you got?’ Jim asked.

‘I don’t know.’ I pointed. It was edging two spindled legs out of its hole.

He picked it up carefully and held his palm right up to me. The beetle was doing a graceful, unhurried dance that made me think of those dreamy kung fu action sequences in Chinese movies. Green wings shimmering in the afternoon light.

It had been the heart of that tree, the king of it. And I’d gone and bashed its home in. Maybe its slow movement was actually agonised grieving. It twitched and I saw the Spanish boy, fitting.

I walked to the edge of the loch and sat down, sick as a dog. That photo of him on the police page – he’d looked asleep, apart from the plaster over the side of his nose, the tube on the pillow. I’d typed the hospital number into my phone and then deleted it.

Jim sat down a couple of metres away, letting the beetle slide onto a leaf. ‘You all right?’

‘I shouldn’t have kicked that tree in.’ I put my head in my hands, before looking sidelong at him through my fingers.

He chewed on the corner of his thumbnail and looked at it. ‘OK.’

Rough semblances of trees, clouds, were sketched on the water. ‘Have you ever fucked up something you couldn’t undo?’