‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Just – you know.’ He put his nose in my hair. ‘I don’t want it to seem like, I don’t know, like I’ve foxed you into coming up here.’

‘Foxed me?’ Old-school.

‘I don’t know.’ He almost blushed.

‘What, like you’ve kidnapped me?’

‘No, it’s just, I’m too – you’re just …’ the way he cleared his throat made it sound as if there were a bumble bee trapped in there. ‘It’s probably not very good for you to be here.’

I tried to assume a very pensive, professorial demeanour, then shrugged. ‘Never mind.’ I put my finger in his mouth.

‘Aye,’ he said, trying to speak around it. ‘Right.’ And he slid his hand under the blanket.

We walked. We walked in the empty hills through leached colours. Jim lent me his hat and I pulled it down to the bottom of my ears. We drank coffee and whisky and drove to the coast to look at the islands, far off. I told him how I had rung the police in London, told them I had information on the Spanish coma victim. I’d searched on a baby names site – Bartho, I thought it must have been. I had gone to the red-brick station on the high street near where we’d left him, been interviewed, shitting myself the entire time. The police had seemed bored, taken notes, said that they’d be in touch, and I’d never heard back from them. They didn’t tell me whether he was alive or not. There hadn’t been any more reports of anything online and I’d began to wonder if he’d just been moved when I’d phoned the hospital. My dead-not-dead boy.

When I finished speaking Jim stared at the islands for a long time before turning to me. ‘Even if it was the worst that you think – it wasn’t your fault.’

I hugged my arms around myself. ‘It wasn’t yours, either.’

He looked out to sea again. An almost imperceptible nod.

I never mentioned Stef to the police. He sent me messages once I was back but I couldn’t face replying. The longer I left it, the easier it was to not see him. To make new friends.

Flora and I went on marches and got kettled like bosses, sat in cafes working and making our mochas last all day, did dodgy faux-burlesque on the little stage in the main student club, became a team. She got fed up with me talking endlessly about promoting bands and made me put a night on, booking a pub. I was terrified, but I did it. It was cool.

I eventually told her about Bartho, too. We made a little shrine – a crap drawing of him, Spanish beer bottle labels, candles and beads.

Fuck Stef.

The next night I woke up and found Jim looking right at me, very close. I could just make out the glisten of his pupils, like the curve of the dew on the morning I found him here.