The bottom of his earlobe had a tiny hole in it. A piercing, long since closed.

A root dug into the small of my back. He looked so comfortable and still. If you cut him open, maybe he’d be ringed inside and he’d give off that sharp, lacquered smell that was everywhere round here. Above us, the sky was a pale, silvery blue, the fright wigs of the trees against it.

I put my hand in the dank leaves and pine needles. It came away sticky, the PVA glue we used to coat our skin with in primary school, just to peel it off again. And moss was everywhere, dense and lacy and spearmint-coloured, or as darkly curled as kale. Probably with names like Wondrous Bathmat Moss and Wet-look Sex Leaf.

Jim gently nudged my elbow. He was looking straight ahead. A little bird with a peachy breast and a slate-blue helmet was perched on a branch, its neck angled, beak pointed at the sculpture. It flew forward, twisted and zipped back to the tree. Then it did the same thing again, before finally gripping onto the green wire with its talons. Tiny, furious jabbings, like I used to do with a compass around my fingers, trying to impress the boys. Of course, what a freaking idiot – it wasn’t a sculpture. It was a bird feeder.

‘Chaffinch.’ Jim hardly moved his lips.

After a minute, another bird came down, smaller, puffed-up, with two Winehouse slicks of black on its head.

‘Coal tit.’

The chaffinch again, and a brown bird, tail cocked.

‘Wren.’

Two more chaffinches and a super-cute blue and lemon and lime one – a blue tit, even I knew that – joined in. Their wings purred as they bounced on the air, stopping at the feeder for a mad guzzle and whizzing off again.

My foot was tilted towards his knee, just touching. We watched them for ages, neither of us moving an inch, and it never got boring. Two got into a little bitch fight, a blur of feathers and high chirping that probably meant they were enraged but sounded insanely sweet. One landed on the tip of Jim’s boot just for a second, its movements like a finely made toy’s, before taking off again.

It was like he was bloody Snow White or something.

‘Did you make that?’ I asked under my breath.

He nodded, still watching them.

‘How often do you come up here?’

‘On and off.’

‘Have you brought anyone else here before?’

Jim’s eyes were the colour of the kelp on my edge of the loch, when the sun was on it. He shook his head.

We walked back to the jeep. There was the mushroomy smell of rain coming.

‘I thought maybe you didn’t like birds,’ I said.

Jim stopped short, his hands in his pockets. ‘Why did you think that?’

‘I don’t know. When I first saw you …’

He flushed and kicked at a root, started walking again.

In the conservatory, book redundant on my lap, I crunched a biscuit and startled myself with its loudness. Dust motes turned in the air around me, and outside midges and bits of leaves spun like snow.