I looked at the plastic Coke bottle he’d thrust proudly in front of me. ‘What the hell’s in there?’

‘Try it. Concocted just for you.’

‘Better not be a smoke bomb.’ The lid hissed. It smelled of the stuff you’d buy in the Body Shop if you were twelve. I raised my eyebrows.

Finn screwed his mouth up. ‘Archer’s. And lemonade. And mango juice.’

‘Yum.’

‘I dunno, it’s what my mum drinks. A girl drink. All girls like that sort of thing.’

I snorted. ‘You definitely need to meet more girls.’ I tried it anyway. It was very sweet. The drink – and his chivalry, really, even if basically there was a ten-year-old inside him busting to get out.

‘So …’ He gave me a ridiculously lascivious look, up and down. ‘Got your bikini on under there?’

‘No.’

‘Oh well, just take a photo of yourself for me later, then. With or without.’

‘Fuck off, Finn.’

He grinned at me and wandered onto the beach, his swagger slightly awkward, his left arm swinging a little.

I drank my glorified perfume oil and had a look round. Finn said that the local beaches had been used for Second World War training and that you sometimes found unexploded bombs and chunks of metal sticking out of the sand. Yep, you didn’t get that in your Malaga resort. The seaweed was like used latex-wear from an S&M basement party. The sand was really grainy, still visibly shell-like. Milk teeth and bracelet charms.

Maybe you got white patches here, too – though the sea was much shallower than the loch, guttering out over the sand for ages. I was climbing onto a fat rock to get a better view when I heard a shout from Finn. He was jogging towards a short, elderly lady who was coming down the ramp, giving her a one-armed hug when he reached the edge of the beach. Snatches of their voices caught and twisted on the wind, swooping kites. They headed up the road away from me, the woman walking jerkily from side to side, Finn loping next to her.

I hung out on my own for a bit longer then retraced my steps, grinding my heels into the sand, letting it make that munching sound. Finn wasn’t anywhere. Maybe I was walking back on my own, then.

‘In here, darlin’.’ He was behind me, sticking his head out of the door of a long caravan that rested on piles of stones. Cocky little shit.

His grandmother was a potato-shaped woman dressed in thick green and red. Finn introduced me as his girlfriend, which made me glare at him until he said it was a joke. The caravan was incredibly warm and everything was furred and textured, itchy tapestry cushions on the benches and ragged towels hanging up to dry. Heat stains blackened the wall above the hob and there were photos on loops of string, including of Finn, and Becca with her tin whistle, looking slightly less mercenary than I remembered.