‘He said he’d only come if I brought vodka,’ I said, kicking my bag so that it gave a low gulp. The cupboard in the study had yielded a pretty good bounty. Brooding behind the more usual selection of spirits had been dusty bottles of Kahlúa, fruit liqueurs and a ginger wine from before I was born.

‘In that case’ – he put his fingers behind Tyger’s ears – ‘all right, fella.’

Tyger practically leapt out of my arms to give Fraser his feather-duster-in-the-face greeting.

‘Tyger, you’re supposed to be my bodyguard,’ I said in a stage whisper as I pulled him back, my face in his fur. ‘You’re not supposed to give him tongue.’

Fraser made a slight snort at the back of his throat as he put the car into gear.

‘That’s what I’m supposed to do,’ I whispered even louder, sneaking him a look.

His dimple defeated a couple of spots.

I’d requested Fraser take me somewhere cool, resigning myself to the fact that the word would probably be taken in its more traditional sense and I wouldn’t be going to a gallery opening with a free oyster bar. We drove up into the hills, the road getting skinnier, me blasting a brief but very rocking Polly-mix through his speakers. You could probably hear the thumping three mountains away.

The car crunched to a stop on the gravel. There were no trees. Up ahead the road curved lazily into the hillside, which had sections cut out of it, the shapes too perfect to be natural. Smaller paths spun off and round, like a Scalextric track. I could imagine Fraser and his mates snarling about on their bikes, high on cheap whizz. Thistles and yellow gorse were sprinkled among the dull, bleached colours.

We walked. Mines made me think of riots and Margaret Thatcher and David Peace novels, but Fraser said it was all minerals up here, not coal, and that these days you just got groups of collectors coming up occasionally. Little troops of rock nerds armed with tiny hammers and hard-ons.

Fraser was in his foundation year as an engineering student, a proper degree – when the real zombie apocalypse hits and everyone goes all survivalist, my knowledge of Keats’s contribution to modernism isn’t going to really cut it. He started talking about tunnels and bridges and the Harry Potter viaduct not far from here, his hands curving.

‘But yeah, a lot of them are connected. There’s mines up there and over there’ – he pointed in the direction of the mountain and to the pale hills further west. ‘And you’ve got engine shafts this way and then levels going along.’ He sliced his palm down and across. ‘Me and my brother used to go down some of the tunnels, try to find how it all linked up.’

I balanced on one leg on a giant, dark-red wheel, broken in two and laid flat on the grass. ‘We’re not allowed to be here, are we?’

‘No.’