‘Naw. They’re for diddies.’ He wasn’t wearing one either, his black hair tucked behind his ears.

‘Christ.’ I got on behind him – there was just about enough room, though I had to bring my legs right round his.

‘Tuck in, gorgeous,’ he said, and put his foot down.

Finn had asked where he could take me in the pub the night before. I’d told him I would accept nothing less than a hot beach and cocktails, preferably served by a highly attractive man wearing nothing but very short shorts. Finn stroked his chin with his stronger hand and said he’d see what he could do.

Now I was just worried that he was going to attempt to seduce me with a bag of groceries down his trousers. We cruised through two villages and onto an even smaller single-track road with flat, boggy land stretching away on either side, and tons and tons of sky, the clouds all whipped up into a TV chef’s best egg whites and moving fast. If we reached thirty miles an hour, the moped started to sound as if it might fall apart underneath us, but even when we were going slower the wind rashed my legs and my hair went to strips of leather. Finn let me have a go, too, on the dead straight bit, my sleepy brain trying to cope with the hand-and-foot thing. He had a little portable speaker attached to the front, so we wound along the road to skinny-sounding guitars and bursts of screamo mixed in with the jagged engine hum. Rock and roll.

The road got smaller and bouncier – I’m sure Finn was aiming for the potholes just so I’d have to grab onto him a bit tighter. We parked in a deserted yard with a sign saying CARPARK 50P and a tiny shed with blackened windows. He strolled off round a corner past a couple of squat houses. One was made of corrugated iron and painted green, babygrows on the washing line. There was a metal barn at the end and a massive, dark chocolate-coloured bull looking at us from behind a gate, its lower jaw working.

Finn turned round at the crest of the road, putting his arm out as if showing something off. I caught up with him. The tarmac shelved right down into the sand, which was pale grey and clogged with mounds of seaweed. Chunky rocks were darker at the bottom where the sea had been, and a low hill rose up to the north. A painted wooden rowboat lay on its side, partly filled with yellow water, and a much larger sailboat was perched on its stand in the sand.

‘Yeah. This is not a beach,’ I said.

‘Course it is, darlin’. Best one there is.’ Finn prodded the ground with the toe of his cheap biker boot. ‘Sand.’ He nodded ahead of him. ‘Sea.’

Also pale grey. Scottish Seaside Bleak As Fuck Grey.

‘And, hang on.’ He rummaged in his bag, which had inky markings all over it just like the biro tattoos of band names and reptiles he’d drawn on his weaker forearm. ‘Cocktails.’