He hadn’t made a sound, just held my hip, his hand over my tattoo. His breath had been dense. Chalky.

There was golden, silvering, white light on the loch instead of the sky. Stripes of it and bigger patches expanding, taking over, and it was everywhere, it was the whole loch and I staggered back until I reached the house.

Lottie found me with my cheek pressed against wicker in the conservatory, my arm drooping. ‘Come for a drink. A soft one. To settle your stomach.’

Tyger tried to wriggle free. I grabbed him tighter and hummed a no.

She sighed, disappearing, and I fished out the port bottle from underneath the chair.

Port. A quarter of a bottle of white wine left in the fridge. Kahlúa. Something that tasted of mint and furniture polish. I had it all and more, soaked up with biscuits. Tyger was lumped on the floor, his head on his paws, looking up at me.

Fuck it. Maybe I would go out.

Fraser wasn’t behind the bar, thank God. But he was there.

Jim. And Lottie.

‘You should come,’ Lottie was saying to him, running her hand through her hair.

Jim had his forearms on the bar and his face turned towards her, shoulders relaxed. ‘Aye, all right, we’ll see.’

Lottie saw me standing there. Her face was bright, everything pulled wide and high. ‘Hello, darling. You came.’

I couldn’t say anything. Jim glanced over his shoulder and when he saw me his smile caught, just for a second, before he made it casual again, swivelling round in his seat towards me.

Lottie was trying to sound offhand, her best champagne voice. ‘Polly, this is Jim.’ She looked at him meaningfully, as if they’d just been talking about me. ‘This is my daughter.’

Jim clasped his fingers together, his eyes on me, little flints sparking in them. ‘We’ve met, actually.’ He saw my eyes widen and scratched his beard, easy as anything. ‘I found your dog.’

‘That was you?’ Lottie put a hand on his arm. ‘Oh my God, you sweetheart, thank you. He’s a nightmare sometimes, he just follows his nose, to the nearest ditch, or drain, or bog, or – lucky we had you to rescue him, aren’t we, Polly?’

I still didn’t move. Or speak. The rainbow of spirits sloshed around my brain. Lottie gave me the subtlest of glares. I ignored her and kept staring at Jim, who was looking at me with a mixture of lazy smile and faint puzzlement. The way he always looked at me.

Lottie stretched over-dramatically. ‘I am going to powder my nose.’ She slid off her stool, faced Jim and gave him a sort of bow-curtsey combo. ‘Excuse me.’ As she passed, she squeezed my arm, whispered ‘Be. Nice.’ and floated off to the far corner.

I was left flat-footed in front of Jim. The room was beginning to curl at the edges.

‘She’s nice, your ma,’ he said. When I didn’t say anything, he furrowed his eyebrows, still smiling. ‘You all right?’