‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ The words were all glued together. I’d told him. I’d told him about me. But that was nothing. Not compared to this.

Leaves shifted in the tree behind us.

‘When?’ Jim’s voice was a small, flat stone. ‘When I gave you your dog back?’ I could hear the breeze lifting the grass, and the sop of the water on the seaweed. ‘When you were off your head and falling asleep on my bed?’ He looked at me. ‘When you knocked on my door? When I was fucking coming on—’

He shut his mouth abruptly and closed his eyes, slamming the heel of his hand up to his forehead like he’d had a lightning flash of pain. ‘Sorry.’ I heard him inhale, a breath dredged up from the bottom of the loch, and he sat down, bringing his knees up and leaning both elbows on them. ‘Sit down.’

I shook my head.

He looked out to the water again. Whale shadows just under the surface. The moon was hiding half its face.

‘Why did you keep my keys for so long?’

‘What?’

‘My keys. You had them for two weeks before you gave them back.’ I corrected myself. ‘You didn’t even give them back. I found them.’

He spoke to the loch. ‘Found them the other day – a couple of days ago maybe. Down the side of the bed.’ He looked up at me with a mixture of alarm and anger. ‘For fuck’s—’ He almost moved towards me, but stopped when I flinched. ‘You think I’d – what – break into her house?’

‘Whose house?’

His shoulders slumped, violently. ‘Your house.’

There was gravel in my throat. I let my question out suddenly. ‘Who knows?’

He jerked his head up, almost annoyed. ‘Everyone knows,’ he said, as if it was obvious.

‘When did … Why did—’

‘Don’t. Just, don’t.’ He put a finger and thumb to his temples.

I had to ask. I had to. ‘Why did you …’ My voice shrank to almost nothing. ‘Kill her?’

He stayed very still. ‘I did my time, Polly. I did—’ It was as if his body was winding down. ‘I did my time, and then some.’

‘I just—’

‘Just fuck off, all right? Leave me be.’

I stood rooted for a few seconds, then carefully picked my way over the rocks. When I got to the grass, he was still sitting there, crouched over his knees, a shadow. From the road I could hardly see him. He’d been inked over. He had dissolved into the loch.

‘I come back and you’ve both vanished into thin air. I looked like a right Billy No-Mates.’ Lottie leant on the frame of the kitchen door, a glass of water in her hand, bafflement in her voice.

My blood was as heavy as mercury. ‘Felt dodgy. Came back here.’

‘Where did he go, then?’

‘Don’t know.’ I scraped at a spot of dried ketchup on the kitchen top.

She looked slightly wistfully at her glass. ‘He was nice.’