Sometimes we’d agree – pink jeans and a big afro, say – and Stef would graciously announce that I could have him first. At one of the townie pubs back home it happened for real – a quiet boy with a scar above one eyebrow and tattoo sleeve of Japanese fish. We all did some MDMA in the loos and somehow I was sitting on the toilet cistern and he was kneeling on the seat, the sleaziest thing I’d ever done. After getting some air outside I had come back to see him and Stef sloping off together, Stef with a big grin on his face, rubbing his thumb at the corner of his mouth. I don’t know who was more surprised, me or the boy.

From then on Stef had joked that we were Sartre and de Beauvoir, Fred and Rose West. Shouted it to me as we hung on to the shoulders of the Spanish guy in the scratchy little club that night. Two cats and a mouse.

Dead. Not dead.

My skin prickled and I shivered enough to prompt Lottie to glance at me. I wasn’t allowed to think about it. Scotland. It would be OK because I was in Scotland. Green and pheasanty land.

Slim pickings here on the Sex Order front. Last had to be an oldish dude nursing a dark pint of something and looking at an ancient brick of a phone with a magnifying glass. Tufts of hair spiralled out around his ears, like he was trying to keep a load of wind-blown clouds under his cap. Then maybe the guy in the corner with the handful of grubby ginger beard, poring over leaflets with his wife or whoever. I imagined him carefully discarding his waxed jacket, unhooking the thin frames of his circular glasses from his ears and shoving that beard into my crotch. Yuk. A guy in his thirties at the bar wasn’t too bad – Jesus, who was I kidding? His hair was too long, swept back in gross City-banker style, a bit paunchy and hairy. He’d probably have been Stef’s numero uno. I touched the tip of the feather in my pocket. The weirdo I’d almost fallen on yesterday wasn’t here, thank God.

The barman came out from the kitchen with pies and chips for Wire-rims and wife. He was my age or near enough, quite skinny, in a T-shirt made to look like it was spattered with black and blue paint. I went to the bar.

‘What can I get you?’

Good hair. Somewhere between grey and blonde, densely curly on top and really short on the sides. A healthy amount of spots, but he was still cute enough.

‘A glass of red and—’ I held on to the rail and stood on the step, peering at the bottles behind him. ‘What vodkas have you got?’

‘Um, nothing fancy.’ He showed me the selection. Of two.

I pulled an exaggeratedly disappointed look.

He tipped his head up at me as he poured Lottie’s wine. ‘You on holiday?’ His accent had a lazy little loll to it.