I made a little joint, heavy on the weed, lit it and picked up my phone. If I messaged Stef and tried to sound normal maybe he would actually reply.

Wanna come up?

There was a weird band of mist in front of the hills on the other side of the loch. I picked up my book and whacked a few midges about. ‘Right, motherfucker.’

My phone buzzed.

UP 2 SCOTCHLAND babyp?

He was talking to me, then. And had read my other message telling him where I was going. I typed back Come uuuppppp and ran my hand over my book cover. Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries. I wondered which one I was. None of the above.

NOOOO TAR

Stef, on the other hand, would have bloody loved hanging out with the three Rs, swearing copiously in various European languages, acting out fairy tales in various states of undress, and merrily mixing laudanum with belladonna and cayenne pepper and brandy while making violent proposals of marriage to inappropriate ladies. Well, maybe not the last bit.

Its very … spacious … & … ummmm …

MAN COUNT

Small. SCOTTISH

Small & scottish = NONO

Yup some are small. All are Scottish. And white

Stef would roll his eyes very slowly over this place as if it were an extremely unsexy guy he had to talk to. He’d squeal a bit at the mud and run his fingers along every surface in the cottage. Charm Lottie into buying us rounds of drinks in the pub and flirt with anything he could find. Oh, what did I know – he’d probably love it and become a fucking deerstalker or something.

ANY FOR MOI

Plenty BEARDS

On me way;) lolllzzzzz

But I knew he wouldn’t be. Who were we fucking kidding. I wasn’t sure if it would ever be quite the same between me and him.

Stef had spent a year and a half at uni in Derby trying – mostly unsuccessfully – to turn troglodyte football players. I had missed the hell out of him, stuck on my own nondescript, IKEA-lite campus. Dis place is dead anyways, he’d messaged, before stalking off to East London where he’d proceeded to become the centre of everything. The centre of his flat, which had a red handprint on the wall in the kitchen that I always hoped was paint, and mysterious draughts coming from everywhere. The centre of the bar in Dalston where he worked, dressed in one of the oversized vests that showed off his old heart-operation scar, shouting at everyone as though he were their husband and their lover and their doctor and their mayor. And the centre of Kingsland Road, which felt like the centre of London, which felt like the centre of the world. Everything seemed to cram in around his heat.

I’d stayed with him for two days, got my nails done – leopard-skin – had the ends of my hair bleached pink, hung out by the canal and played pool with some skanky guys who seemed to think the world of Stef. I slept on the sofa and his housemates would wake me up with kisses and coffee in filthy cracked cups. I never wanted to leave. Until the Spanish boy. I couldn’t understand why Stef was ignoring me – it. He didn’t know what I knew, about the guy fighting for his life, but still – I’d always thought his shrugged-shoulders, que-sera-bitches blitheness about everything was a bit of an act. Maybe not.