Jim hadn’t said another word on the way back, just nodded, his knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, when I said bye at the end of his road. He was like the weather, a thin skin of pale sunshine then three days of bastard rain. Whenever I felt I was getting somewhere he’d retreat back into his stupid Neanderthal self.

I went outside with a cup of tea in my hands. The pile of bark I’d peeled off the other day looked like the remains of a bird that had smashed into the tree. The evening sun was so intense, splaying out from over on the opposite hill. It coated the left-hand side of the plants and the fence posts in silver-white, and everything seemed astonished into silence.

The back of my leg itched like a motherfucker. I’d smothered every inch of myself in that cream again – the midges couldn’t be biting me, unless they were some super-mutant strain. I pictured myself in a pair of protective visors, wielding a blowtorch like an Uzi, fag hanging louchely from my mouth. A deep American film trailer-voice introducing me, my name in splashy letters. There was a prickling sensation on my neck, at the bottom of my hairline.

This time I stayed still.

It wasn’t a bite at all. It was as if someone were exploring me with very soft nails, a child who’s just been in the bath. I went to stone. The tickling trailed up the side of my neck, behind my earlobe. I was welded to the grass, couldn’t move even if I’d wanted to.

‘Polly?’

I turned around, slowly, in my silver-white skin.

‘I’ve been calling you,’ said Lottie, looking at me curiously. ‘Didn’t you hear?’

I stared at her blankly.

She wrapped her cardigan round herself, her eyebrows coming up in exasperation. The oven fan grumbled behind her. ‘Dinner.’

On the way to the hotel for a drink, Lottie and I passed Johnny sitting on a bench facing the loch. The hills on the other side of the water were going buttery yellow. I shouted a hello and he lifted his beret up as if it were a top hat.

‘Who’s that?’ said Lottie.

By the time we got inside I’d filled her in on his whole life story. Fraser had his elbows on the bar, chatting to Becca and a guy with a leather jacket from the wrong decade, and he straightened up when I came over. Pastel colours still daubed round his eye. He’d probably told his mum that I’d whacked him. Wished I had.

‘Double vodka and Diet Coke. And a tomato juice. Please.’

He looked at me as if I hadn’t finished my sentence.

‘What?’ I said, keeping the word flat.

His eyes bruised. I gave him dead ones back and he did a small, curt shrug and shake of his head at the same time. Becca looked like she was trying to decide which bit of me to cut off first. I handed the money over in silence.