Lottie had told me to text Bev and ask for a lift to the pub. She kept calling it my date and looking very meaningfully at me.

‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

Lottie’s head turned sharply at my tone of voice.

Adam smiled. ‘Bev’s got tied up. I said I’d take you.’

I bet you fucking did, I thought, imagining Bev lashed to the radiator with a pillowcase stuffed in her mouth.

‘You are an extremely special and lovely person,’ Lottie said, picking a loose thread from the shoulder of his jumper.

He leant a bit further towards her. ‘I know.’

‘This music all right?’ Adam was battering his forefinger on the steering wheel along to some kind of stabby jazz with manic, dislocated beats.

If I really concentrated, the hills to my left blurred, as if someone was painting them with a roller, some bits lumpy and sticking, other bits glossily smooth. A garbled mix of brown and yellow and green. ‘It’s your car, you can play what you like.’

He continued tapping, irregularly. ‘So, what’s happening tonight, then?’

I put my arm next to the window. ‘Some music.’

‘Didn’t take you for a folkie.’ The drums started fizzling. ‘Ah,’ he said, after a bit. ‘Fraser.’ He took a considering breath in. ‘He’s a nice boy.’ There was the slightest emphasis on the last word.

Oh, just fuck off, I thought. The loch had a lavender tinge to it. ‘What animals do you get in there?’

Adam glanced towards the water. ‘Fish – skate, mackerel, that sort of thing – birds, obviously, though not so much in it as on it. Apart from cormorants, and shags.’

For God’s sake. ‘What?’

‘Shags,’ he said, more definitely, and cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘Diving birds.’

Oh. Twat. ‘What about anything bigger? Like seals or something?’

‘Sure, you get seals coming up, the odd porpoise. Not normally right up this end, though.’

I trawled my brain for nature documentary scenes, when I’d try and see past Benji who would sit a foot away from the screen, trying to click his tongue like a dolphin. ‘Nothing like – I don’t know, a manta ray or something.’

‘Mmm.’ The sound was low and drawn out, as if he was taking it very seriously. ‘Don’t think so. Why, what did you see?’

I was beginning to feel stupid. ‘Nothing. Just – probably nothing.’

He looked over at me for far too long. There was a heady smell of something, cinnamon with alcohol mixed in. Jesus. He was wearing cologne. Maybe it had been him over on the loch, spying on me like the colossal reprobate he was, hoping I’d take my kit off and sunbathe. I gave him dead eyes until he turned to face the road again.

Fifteen minutes later we’d reached a little bay with a small hotel on a hill. It had a conservatory running all the way along the front and the picnic tables were dark with rain. I unclicked my seat belt.