The clouds were hot pink by the time we stopped in a lay-by under some fir trees. I couldn’t see anything resembling a rave venue. Maybe we were having a campfire party, like scouts. Really, really drunk, stoned scouts.

Fraser pulled out a couple of rucksacks from the boot and handed one to me. It clinked.

‘You’d better not be taking me somewhere to kill me.’

He turned round to face me and walked backwards down a track, his bag slung over one shoulder. ‘Best place to do it if I was. No one’d ever find you.’

We walked a couple of miles along a path that got narrower and muddier, the light just beginning to dissolve. Finn stormed along in front, shouting that he should have brought his moped, he’d have got there in no time, and Becca trailed behind us, probably muttering crow-spells under her breath at me.

Fraser led us up to a small stone building that looked like it had just fallen from the sky. Why else would it be there, in the middle of all these blank hills? Bothies were apparently there for people passing by, shelter for the night. Walkers and campers. And us, he said, giving me a bit of a grin as he kneed open one of two wooden doors.

It wasn’t exactly a festival tent, but it was quite cool, I guess. The stone walls were partly plastered in gunky cement and the roof sloped down to a flimsy wooden table along one side. A couple of candles were jammed into wine bottles next to the sort of salt and pepper shakers you get in greasy caffs. Makeshift bunk beds at one end and a fireplace at the other. It was freezing, colder than outdoors.

Fraser bent down by the fireplace and started piling some of the short logs in. ‘People always leave stuff here for the next lot.’

Finn jumped up to grab the wooden poles that hung horizontally over the fire and one of them came away in his hand. I tried to imagine what this room would smell like if you had the clothes of damp, sweaty walkers drying on them, too. There was already something stale and off-green in the air – maybe the ghosts of stinky dead ramblers who’d done one mountain too many. I bashed open the top of a beer and sat on the side of an armchair upholstered with an unconvincing leaf design.

The fire took the edge off the skin-chill, licking around the firelighters that Fraser had brought with him. He turned to me, looking quite proud.

‘Yep yep, man make fire, very hunter-gatherer, very masculine,’ I said.

‘Be nice or you’re not sharing my sleeping bag,’ he said.

Finn had set up his mini-speakers and started playing some terrible, snivelly emo shit.

‘That is not how this is going to be,’ I said to him.

He turned it up. ‘Screw you, darlin’.’ He began bouncing up and down.

Beer turned into vodka turned into ancient ginger wine turned into Fraser opening his hand to reveal four little chalky pills the colour of a ten-year-old girl’s first eyeshadow set.