Jim got back in and sat there, chewing a nail. ‘Don’t think that’ll get sorted till morning.’

‘Oh. OK.’

There was a silence.

He swiped a hand over his face. ‘I could walk you.’

It was miles. ‘What, in this? And then walk all the way back? I mean, you could stay …’ I realised how much I didn’t want to introduce him to Lottie. ‘Can I stay with you?’ I glanced over at him. ‘I’ll be no bother.’

Jim looked at his fingers. ‘Aye, you keep saying that.’

My stomach sagged a little. We sat there, the rain terrorising the roof. The windscreen was starting to fog up again. Leaning forward, he rubbed his sleeve on it, turned the ignition and put the jeep into reverse. The gears sounded like a house falling down.

‘I hope you like whisky,’ he said.

Too much good whisky is barely enough, my uncle would say.

He had got worse as I’d got older. I would sit on his lap and he’d crush me round the waist until I couldn’t breathe for laughing. He had a way of charming everyone, was always up to something, the police over more than once, always getting away with it.

He was all hands and I’d never minded, before. But his looks changed the taller I got, looks with a glaze on them. Once he pressed me against the sink when I was peeling potatoes, his whisky breath right on my neck. And one day I went over to return a screwdriver and he tucked my hair behind my ear and said something he shouldn’t ever say, not to me, and I felt sick and ran all the way home.

I shouldn’t have told you. Your knuckles rose almost through the skin, your jaw tightened. I don’t know what you said to him, but after that my uncle’s hands stayed by his sides.

It had been easy to say yes when you gave me the ring, to not even think about it. You protected me.

I thought on that as I sat under the holly and the hazel bush, as the rain came down, on the night when everything changed.

It felt very different bumping down the track to Jim’s place in the almost-dark, the headlights jerking, puddles everywhere. It also felt very different inside the house. The air was weighted down. I stood in the middle of the room, my clothes clinging to me, making a lot of unnecessary sighs to paper over the silence while Jim fiddled about with oil lamps and got the fire going.

He passed me a big towel with loose threads hanging off it. ‘You’re probably starving.’

‘I could definitely eat something.’ I took my head out of the towel. ‘I could make you something.’ Jim’s eyebrows drifted to the middle of his forehead. ‘Just because I’m a student doesn’t mean I’m a shit cook. I’m a ninja.’

He looked into a far corner of the house. ‘I don’t have much in.’