There was a cry. Grainy, small and furious. Shrinking as the shape disappeared.

That midsummer night there was a crackle in the air. As if the pylons were buzzing too loudly. The sky had been so strange, rain and sun mixed up together. A sky like a wound.

The bonfire was early with the forecast rain, and everyone came out, drunk on beer and wine and whisky. The girls from the village. My uncle.

I made my way to our special place as the light started to fall away, but the rain was so heavy. I sat under hazel and holly bushes, listening to it, thinking over and over of you and of what we’d do together.

Married.

You had gone to tell her. Your mother. To tell her you’d asked me. Saying you didn’t care what she said, but I knew you did, a little. Anger in your voice on the phone afterwards, a fissure vein.

I was made strong on that midsummer night. I feel it now, tightening in me like a hunger. And I know it’s my one chance to make this girl see. Her story draws nearer to mine as the changeling light comes in with the rain.

How can you explain, when you don’t have words? How can you explain that there had been dreams and tumblings and—

And he shot me and killed me by the setting of the sun.

The next day passed in a fog. Thick cloud and falling snow.

I looked at my phone. Looked at it again.

Afterwards, his come had welled into a jellyfish on my stomach, like one I’d seen on Finn’s beach.

I kept my laptop shut for most of the day. A briefcase containing all the world’s secrets. All the world’s secrets and only one that mattered.

He’d put his thumb on my lip like I had something hidden in there.

And he’d said I was like her.

After a while I made myself lift the screen up. I found an older photo on another news report, one from twenty years ago. Jim, smooth-faced, his hair down past his ears.

And his girlfriend. The girl he’d killed. There was a picture of her, the same one used in the three articles I found. It was taken side-on but her face was turned to the camera, shiny-cheeked family members behind her and a slight misting on the lens. Reddish shoulders and pale blonde hair down her back. A silver bar pierced through the top of her ear. Her grin was slightly uncomfortable, like she’d just had her name called by the photographer.

He’d shot her, with a rifle, further up the loch.

I went down to the loch again to look for the bird from last night, but found only hell-clouds of midges and the wasting sun.

I sat for ages.

He’d chopped up the deer thigh for me, leant over to get the knife. The sure, tearing sound of red flesh.

There was a putrid smell coming from the water.