He elbowed me gently in the side. ‘Don’t be mean.’

I laughed. ‘I’m not.’ I watched her disappear, a black bird folded into the night. ‘She doesn’t like me.’

‘She doesn’t like anyone much. Or pretends not to, anyway.’

‘She blows nicely on a tin whistle though.’ I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Has she blown on your tin whistle?’

Fraser dug me in the ribs again, making me giggle. He scratched the back of his neck, shaking his head, and took my joint off me.

The two teenagers he’d been talking to earlier sloped past and said bye.

‘You’re popular,’ I said.

He just shrugged and grinned a bit.

‘So, that was nice.’ He looked over as if he was expecting me to make a joke. ‘It made me think of heather. And whisky. And shortbread. And putting my hand up a big man’s kilt.’

‘Yeah, go ahead, take the piss why don’t you.’

I did my best cute smile. ‘Why d’you like it?’

He passed the joint back to me, exhaling. The smoke came out in a feathery plume. ‘Dunno. Just always done it. Nice tunes. They stick in your brain. And …’ He put his hands behind his head, unclasped them and brought them forward again. ‘I don’t know, they’re old songs, from before you and me, or my ma, or my grandpa. They’ve lived.’

‘You’re sweet,’ I said.

He turned his head to me, pulling his eyebrows together, brooding-vampire style. ‘Sexy, you mean.’

Nice try. I nudged his calf with my boot. ‘Sweet.’

Clouds had collected behind the moon. A big, powdered wig.

‘Need a lift?’ he said.

I sat him down in the conservatory with a beer. Lottie was still up when we arrived, squinting through her specs at my laptop, her hand lolling in a box of chocolates. When she saw Fraser, she leapt off the sofa with a beam, pulled her dressing gown tighter around herself, grabbed Tyger and made a massively embarrassing, whirlwindy show of disappearing.

He stood up and went to the window. All you could see were the garden’s dull disco lights. I silently rated his arse against all other recently studied arses until he came and sat back down, then stretched my legs out right next to his, just touching, and sighed very loudly.

He looked at me. ‘That weed’s fucking strong.’

‘Just the way I like it.’

A sound in his throat, somewhere between a cough and laugh as he brought his beer bottle up. ‘What did you do to your tooth?’

My tongue was up there again, playing with the chipped edge. ‘I got into a fight. With a boy. Over a pogo stick. I hit him with it and he hit me with a scooter. In the mouth.’

Fraser scrunched up his face in slow-motion, as if watching it happen. ‘How old were you?’

‘Oh, you know, eighteen,’ I said.

He grinned.

I tangled my foot up between his legs. He rubbed the condensation on the neck of the bottle with his thumb. I was quite enjoying how coy he’d got.