‘Anywhere. You could go anywhere you liked.’ I didn’t know if that was true. When you had a murder conviction.

‘I’ve not been anywhere.’

‘That doesn’t mean that you can’t. You can just leave. Nothing’s stopping you.’ I didn’t know if that was true. Maybe it still was. Maybe it always would be. ‘She’s not here any more,’ I said.

It had been two months since I’d gone up there. I was in halls, lying on my bed, when my phone lit up. Jim. He never called me, ever. He would text me little climate reports and I had to pretend I didn’t have a shortcut to Lochaber’s weather on my phone. I wrote to him again, a few times – got quite into it actually, even though my handwriting was entirely amateur, like a seven-year-old’s. He made me a case out of maple for my smashed-up phone, sending it in a padded envelope with a tiny note.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hello.’ He sounded like he was calling from a cave. ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Have I woken you up?’

‘No, no.’ My voice had gone all wispy. I was a pathetic, useless, wilting girl. ‘Are you?’

‘Aye. Yeah. I …’ I could hear him take in one breath, then another. ‘I wanted to tell you. I’m going to go. Like you said.’

I lay back on my pillow. ‘No way. Where?’

‘Not so far. Further in. My boss put in a good word for me over on a conservation site. Trees still. Just south of Loch Ness.’

‘Monsters and shit,’ I said, like a complete idiot.

‘Aye, maybe. I’ll keep an eye out.’

‘I’m proud of you.’ It wasn’t moving to the other side of the world, but I knew it was a big deal for him. A first step.

He exhaled a little puff of air that sounded like a mini explosion very far away. Neither of us spoke for half a minute, at least. ‘Will you come and see me sometime?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I guess I could squeeze you in.’

I did. More than once. With his brother’s help, he managed to buy a dilapidated bungalow, and when he wasn’t chopping down old trees and planting baby ones for work, he was generally slicing them to bits for his own place. It wasn’t exactly in a metropolis, but it was at least at the edge of a village. He knew the names of his neighbours. Got a dog.

I found some time in between exams, when I definitely should have only been reading and revising my arse off in a corner, and snuck up north again for a weekend in early May. Jim made me study, bringing endless cups of tea and sitting behind me, playing with the ends of my hair, which had grown back down to the nape of my neck.

‘You’re not helping.’ I was sitting on a blanket on the half-built porch. The light had started to go and tea had been replaced with whisky.