‘You’re dead.’ Becca flung the words back, frail and barbed.

‘Oh aye,’ said Jim, low enough under his breath that she wouldn’t have heard. He was holding the gun in both hands as if midway through an oar stroke.

Between the trees, the loch glimmered, something secretive. The sky was an underwater blue. Thin shouts from the field like pathetic fireworks going off.

Jim suddenly seemed to come to and walked to the side of the road, placing the rifle on the verge. He stalked towards me, stopping a metre away. ‘How did you know?’

The shots were still ringing in my ears. ‘Know?’

He grabbed my arms. ‘Polly.’ His thumbs dug in.

I tried to focus. The trees had deranged, drunken poses. ‘You’re hurting me.’

‘How did you know about that?’ His eyes were black.

I’d never seen him look like that before. ‘About what?’ I twisted and tried to get the swan wings off my back.

Jim got there first. He turned me round and yanked at them. ‘This isn’t a game. I’m not your fucking—’

The twine cut into my shoulders. I was almost laughing. ‘What are you doing? I don’t know what—’

He pulled me round again. I stumbled and his hand was there, slapping me hard, just below my eye, as if trying to wake an unconscious person. I reeled back but he still had me by the other elbow.

‘What are you?’ he said.

I tried to wriggle free. ‘Please – please don’t hurt me.’ My voice had broken up.

He dropped my elbow. ‘Fuck,’ he said, very quietly, and turned and walked away.

There was a warm, dull pain smouldering across my cheekbone, white as fire.

White. Everything had been white. I waited for my own clouds, mists, shapes to appear, just to fuck with me some more. In the sky, in the loch, in front of my nose. But there was only the snipped-out moon on the dense, finally-dark sky.

The front door went. The sound of stamping the mud out on the mat. I could hear Lottie wait, compose herself in the hallway.

She walked to the sink. I didn’t turn round from my position on the back step, staring out into the night. The tap was turned on. Kettle. Mug. Sugar out. Milk out. She sat down next to me.

As she turned, she exhaled a sigh like she was getting ready to unleash hell on me. A pause. ‘What’s happened to you?’

My knee was patched with mud, a bit of blood. My face streaked. ‘Nothing.’

‘Did you get into a fight?’

‘No.’ I couldn’t stop shaking.

‘I saw you slap that girl.’

The rifle had been heavy, the metal tartly cold. I’d carried it back to the field and put it wordlessly into the hands of the man who I assumed was Fraser’s dad and stumbled away again. The wings were left splayed on the road, where Jim had pulled them off me.

Lottie put her hands in her hair. ‘Polly. This was supposed to be a holiday. For me as well as you. Half the time I’ve spent worrying about you, where you are, how much you’re drinking.’ Her hands came down and she looked at me, tired and furious. ‘You reek of drink, or cigarettes, or ganja’ – the last word said with a sort of incredulous reverence. ‘Now you tell me about your studies, and everything else, when all this time I’ve been under the impression that – I’ve been proud of you. And tonight …’ she shook her head and looked out at the garden. ‘I don’t know what to say.’