‘That’s supposed to make you warm,’ he said, next to me.

I took the whisky from him, remembering the sugary tea he’d brought out in front of his house that time. His own glass hung from his fingers. Large lines were appearing in the logs, like a pavement splitting during an earthquake. The darkness seemed to be falling in around them.

Jim squatted down and put two more blocks of wood on top. The fire considered them for a second, having a good sniff, before it pounced and up came the feathers again. He sat down to face it, his bones softly clicking, and put his elbows on his knees, not quite touching me. The heat was starting to press down on my forehead.

‘Do you ever’ – I spoke slowly and quietly to the fire – ‘see things?’

The logs made a sound like someone grinding their teeth. The feathers flailed. Fire White.

‘What do you mean?’

I put my nose to my glass and got a hit of sweet leather. ‘I don’t know. Out here. Do you see anything?’ The wind chucked a few fistfuls of rain at the window. ‘Anything strange?’

He drew his eyebrows in. ‘Plenty.’ I couldn’t tell where the rain stopped and the crackling of the fire started. ‘A sea eagle with an otter in its claws, for one. A dead stag drowned in a hill loch, just its antlers sticking out.’ His voice was low and thick. ‘I once saw a man burying something. Something quite big. He dug out chunks of mud and put a bin bag in there, patted it all down with a spade and crossed himself.’ He sounded like he was reading the last pages of a children’s story to a nearly asleep toddler. ‘The northern lights, just over the hill. And once—’

I took my face out of my glass. The fire had turned his eyes into little video screens. It was the longest he’d ever spoken without me interrupting.

Jim took a big breath in. ‘I’d been out early, just clearing my head. Too much of this.’ He tilted his glass at me. The whisky slanted, a shallow triangle of molten gold. ‘I was walking back and I saw something up on the hill.’ A chill spread through me. ‘Coming down towards the house. Sort of staggering, lurching around. And it – I don’t know, I didn’t like it. It floated round the side of the house and was looking in the window, and I thought it was some crazy sprite come to eat me, and it had pink bits—’

I shoved him, hard. ‘Fuck off.’

He rocked back towards me, clutching at his arm and grinning. ‘You’re vicious.’

‘You’re a bastard.’

‘So you keep telling me.’ Jim put his chin on his arm and looked across at my legs, and at me. His eyelashes were little spiky shadows on his cheek. I thought about leaning over. He didn’t move, his gaze whittling me down. God. He was – he made my skin hot. Not the fire.