A bundle of limbs crashed into the bar next to me. ‘All right, Pollth, fanthy getting thkinned alive?’ Finn was giving me a braces-filled beam.

‘Jesus. What happened to you?’

‘I’m now offithially part robot. Come on, you know you want to. I’ll play nithe.’

Lottie had her chin on her fist, gazing at me in wonder. ‘How do you know everyone?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s just my way. I’m like a magnet. Two minutes. I’ll be back.’

Three demolitions at the pool table and five double vodkas later I stepped out into the dusk. Lottie had gone ahead, pleading tiredness, and I’d fought the urge to tug on her hand and make her stay so I didn’t have to walk home on my own. Drunken oblivion would make it better. It was ridiculous. It was nothing. Nothing but clouds and wind and twilight and my imagination.

The jeep was parked over the road. I stood still for a moment, watching it, then walked over, trying my best to stay in a straight line.

Jim opened the door, the light coming on.

I wasn’t sure what to say or whether to smile.

He swivelled in the driver’s seat, his feet on the frame, woolly hat jammed down to his eyebrows. ‘I’m’ – a small cough – ‘sorry about …’ He clamped his hands between his knees. ‘I’m just not very good at …’

He’d been waiting here for me. Waiting to apologise.

‘It’s cool,’ I said, quickly. ‘Wanna come in for a drink?’ He glanced past me to the hotel. ‘I’ve got three pounds to my name. That’s enough for one and a half beers. Or a double vodka, no mixer.’ I nodded very expertly.

Jim’s shoulders relaxed. ‘No, you’re fine. But’ – he scratched the bridge of his nose – ‘do you want to come by tomorrow?’ He seemed to want to say something else, but if he did, he chewed down on it.

‘Sure,’ I said, with vodka-loudness.

I ran myself another pond-water bath, having managed to successfully make it home unmolested and fright-free. The air had been as cool and clean as all the vodka I’d drunk, no cobwebby, feathery distractions. I imagined giving birth to one now, a pale tangle trailing out from between my legs, curdling in the water.

When Jim had said to come over, I’d had to blink away an image of him taking off his clothes, and mine, and bending me over his home-made table. He’d showed me those birds, trying to cheer me up – before he cavemanned. I liked being with him, a lot, except it was hard to know what he was thinking, and hard to know when he was going to disappear into himself again.

Fraser had looked hopeful for a second at the bar, though less so with every drink I’d bought. How he couldn’t see that Becca would sit on top of him in a flash, all her bones rattling like loose change, if he blinked nicely at her I had no idea. That look she’d given me tonight. Maybe she’d nicked my keys. The last place I’d definitely had them was at the bothy when I’d been fighting with my jacket on the bottom bunk, trying to get my kit off. She’d been making like a wolf outside, plotting my demise. No – if Becca had come into the house I’d probably be dead already. Fraser, then. I thought of him creeping round my bedroom, leaving me feathers. Jesus.