I wanted to run at him and shake him till his teeth rattled out of his head. But I was just getting somewhere. ‘Tell me where everything is. I’ll make it.’

Johnny had proper teacups and saucers, little silver spoons with flying ducks on them. He insisted that I put chocolate bourbons out on a plate. Whole milk in a jug.

He bit a corner, the crumbs dusting the air in front of him. ‘I went out last thing, after the bonfire. The light was just starting to go. A sunset too, even with the terrible weather, which was unusual. It was when I was still drinking a lot. Too much. And being outside’d always see me right, rain or no. Right enough, anyway.’

Get on with it, you hoary old bastard, I thought, but nodded and sipped my tea.

‘I remember seeing Jimmie up on the ridge and thinking, it’s a bit late in the day for him. And I knew his shotgun too, twelve-gauge, yoked over his shoulders.’

Fucking come on.

‘After a time, I’d come down to the loch. I remember I was sitting having a wee fag and there was a crack and then a flash of white to my right. This whooper swan was coming over, higher than usual – they normally keep quite close to the water.’ He balanced the saucer on his knee and moved his hand flat through the air as if stroking it. The large, dull gold ring on his middle finger caught in the light. ‘Bright yellow beak, black tip. Have you seen those seaplanes?’

I shook my head.

‘Oh, but you know what I mean. That’s what it looked like. Like a seaplane with a cranky engine, veering all over the place. And it was calling out.’

He made a yelping cry like a trumpeter being strangled.

‘And as it came back overland to my left … I don’t know. It all happened very fast. And I thought, good Christ, Jimmie, what the hell are you doing, shooting a swan? They can put you away for that. Swan meat doesn’t even taste any good, they say. Like pond water, and chewy as anything. But, here’s the thing. The echo from the gunshot fell away, and the bird pitched, and it’ – he stopped, frozen for a moment in the memory – ‘it grew. Expanded outwards.’ He gave a slow sniff. ‘It was like a coat, a pile of laundry – no, there was a skirt in the air.’

My heart gave one, swelling throb.

‘Legs – flailing – blonde hair, tumbling fast and down, down, and then it was in the grass. She was in the grass. Not a bird at all, not any more.’

The teacup was burning my thigh.

‘And there was an odd sound.’ He looked into the middle distance. ‘I swear to God I can still hear it.’ He focused again. ‘Like a snared badger, and Jimmie was running, running down the hill, and holding her up, and I knew. I knew it was Molly. My firecracker. I was shown a police photo of her afterwards and she’d looked, oh just as she always did, pale as winter, but her eyes – I’ll never forget them. And’ – he put two closed fingers onto his chest – ‘a bloom of blood below her neck. Like a flower.’