It was like a tiny, lost raincloud. Some peculiar Scottish micro-climate thing. I took a couple of steps forward, thinking I might put my fingers in it, and –

It moved. The cloud shifted away from me, as if trying to stay out of my reach.

My hands went cold. Every single one of the hairs on my arms rose up.

I turned very carefully, went inside and locked the door.

3

My bedside light was still on in the morning. I rolled towards the switch and something crumpled under my head, a loud, crisp sound. There was an orchid flower on the pillow. The petals were as dry as paper – the fine, textured stuff you get in art shops – and pinched and caramel-coloured in a few places.

I lay on my back and held it in front of my face, twirling it from the stem between forefinger and thumb. Underneath the petals, three more small ones were pressed close together and, as I prised them open, the whole flower came apart in my hands.

My mouth seemed to be full of mushrooms. Ugh.

I messaged Stef. Semi-cute boy alert

Yeah, Fraser was nice. I wanted to attack his face with a kebab skewer and do those spots in, but we’ve all been there. He seemed to veer between having a bit of swagger and suddenly going eyelashy and bashful. It was sweet.

I raided the cupboards for biscuits and my phone went.

SHAG HIM

At least Stef was talking to me if I kept it non-murdersome.

Aye aye capn;)

Two missions.

Mission Number One: five thousand motherfucking words. Using my actual brain. How hard could that be? Prof Handley had given me two weeks to get my essays in. After that, she’d said, giving me a frowny hamster look, she wouldn’t grant me the luxury of marking them. Fair enough. Liza was all right. She seemed to see beyond my sullenness even though I had mostly proffered her turgid, sub-A level crap and nicked ideas from Lewalski without crediting them. I’d written the first attempt on the night before the deadline, chasing a skinny line of speed and some ProPlus with energy drinks so sugary I couldn’t chew anything the next day.

I touched the burnt orange tip of my dead bird feather – grouse, I’d looked it up – to my nose. It was beautiful. And weird that it was from something so extremely dead. I imagined an ancient Japanese man dipping his brush in glossy black ink and painting these undulating lines on it, swirls unique to this feather alone, and when the ink had dried, carefully inserting it back into the bird, which was whole again. The elastic squeak of the shaft penetrating taut skin. The calligrapher sitting back, satisfied. Until the benign-guru face was replaced with the dark one of the guy I’d seen on the road that first evening and the shock on it that had almost matched my own. Birdkiller.

Mission Number One aborted in favour of Mission Number Two: to rescue my book without ending up part of a low-budget fashion shoot entitled ‘Decomposing Forest Waif’.