I thought about the lines around her chin and on her cheeks as we chugged homewards, seeing them in every burn that cut through the bogs.

‘Darling, is this yours?’ Lottie was holding a small, flat wooden box.

I’d practically been asleep against Finn’s bony shoulders by the time he dropped me off. It wasn’t just the weed. And the drink. There was something in the air up here, like it was infused with Temazepam. My limbs moved more slowly. My brain, too. ‘Don’t think so. What is it?’

‘Well, I really thought it must be. I mean, you’re doing the Romantics, aren’t you? It was down by the loch.’

She put it in my hands. Pale wood, slightly pockmarked. There was a tiny cut-out triangle at the edge. I put my finger into it.

Inside, the box was lined with dark green plastic, the type you might use for a ground-sheet. And there it was.

My book, the one I’d left on the rocks.

5

‘Yeah, so my da was having a right hissy over it and ma was like, no way you big bastard are you coming back in here looking like that and my da said like what? and she said you’ve got your trousers round your ankles man, you’ve pissed yourself and you’ve got pie on your face and he sort of like, crashed to his knees and started crying and going but you’re my WIFE and ma was like, not tonight I’m not and slammed the door and I said to her you’re his Wife of Pie and she tried to belt me round the—’

I looked over at Fraser. ‘Tell me we’ll be there soon.’

He smiled, chewing gum, his eyes on the road. ‘Not so far now.’ He turned up the music.

We’d been driving for twenty minutes and already Finn had packed every square inch of the car’s air with words, shouting in my ear behind me as the music got louder. At least on the moped he’d been in front most of the time. Becca sat opposite him, scrunched in the corner, her forehead against the window.

She had scowled at me at the top of the driveway as she got out of the front passenger seat, by which point Finn was already halfway through a story about cat torture. With my book back, I’d arse-whipped myself into action for an afternoon and actually written some real-life words of my own before Fraser had picked me up. We’d taken a single-track road on the other side of the loch, going higher and higher into hills that had taken too many steroids. The sky was blissing out. I didn’t know where we were headed – Fraser had said it was a surprise.

His small upper arm muscles curved out of his T-shirt – blue, white and red, like a French flag – his wrists resting on top of the steering wheel. It was nice to see him again. He said his exams had gone all right. I didn’t ask after his mum.