There was a weird little charge in the room. My feet were jammed next to his thigh, which was dead warm. After a minute, I glanced at him. He was looking sidelong at me. I raised my eyebrows as a prompt and he just raised his back, his forehead wrinkling. I screwed up my face and did some deranged, chair-based head-banging. He watched me with another one of his lazy half-smiles and didn’t move a muscle.

The song was over in two and a bit minutes. He gave me back my headphones.

‘So?’ I said.

Jim gave me a shrug which might have meant that he quite liked it, or that he thought it was quite rubbish. ‘It’s all right.’

‘You can’t say it’s all right. You have to say you love it. Or you hate it.’

He just chewed his bottom lip at me again.

‘Fine,’ I said, and shoved my headphones on my ears, getting off the chair. I played it again, grabbing my whisky and head-banging, not caring what I looked like, starting to jump around, singing along.

When I opened my eyes he was saying something to me, with the same dark, careful smile. I took a headphone off.

‘What’s your tattoo of?’

I stopped dancing. It sat just below my pelvis bone. And had been covered up since we’d swum.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘A bird.’

‘What sort of bird?’

I lifted my shoulders and hid one of my ankles behind the other. ‘Just a bird.’

That made me feel so stupid. It wasn’t really any sort, just an anonymous, winged – bird. Probably should have thought about that when I’d had it done. Me and Lena had got them together in town – she had got stars on the inside of her wrist. Someone else would have made fun of me then, not knowing whether it was a sparrow or a – I don’t know, a fucking thrush or something, but he didn’t.

He folded his arms and the lines appeared between his eyebrows again. ‘Don’t mind me.’

I suddenly felt extremely self-conscious. ‘Not if you’re just going to sit there.’ I put my hand out. He looked at it and breathed a laugh through his nose and shook his head. ‘Are you going to dance with me?’ I said, like I was his primary school teacher.

‘No.’ The word had a little upward scoop to it.

‘Go on.’

‘Your music’s on headphones,’ he said, looking at me like I was slightly mad.

‘I’ll play it from my phone.’ I pulled the lead out.

Jim laughed silently again and stretched, putting his thumb and fingers on his forehead and gathering the skin together as if he had a headache. ‘Do you want another drink?’ He didn’t wait for my answer, getting up and moving to the sink.

I crashed down in front of the fire. It worked grabby fingers under the slowly blackening logs. Splinters of flame streamed off and up with hissing bursts every time the wood snapped. They drew me in. Right into the lungs of them. The more I looked, the more the flames became white and separated into feathers. I shivered.