It was only in the morning, remembering, that I saw that my curtains were shut.

Water and glass and moonlight.

I sang old songs and new ones, and you said my voice was like water and didn’t laugh like those girls always did at school. They called me lame-brain, and though I know I looked it sometimes, I wasn’t. The letters just swapped round sometimes when I wrote them, the words turning differently in the light.

Other things sing now. The loch, when twilight comes in. Tree bark, as it grows. My bones.

You brought books and read to me, and didn’t mind when I fell asleep after a page. Showed me herbs – cloudberry and vetch and bogbean, which we smoked once, making us wide-eyed and sick. You would carry me around on your back, saying I weighed less than your rifle, less than a bara brith cake, less than feathers.

Feathers.

Everyone knew that my family never had any money. But you made me feel like the shine on a mineral, the dew-gleam on a petal.

They’re just jealous, you’d say. Knowing good words is more important than knowing how to spell them. Your words are beautiful. You’re beautiful. And you’d pull me on top of you so that my hair would fall into your eyes and your mouth and you’d laugh and say I was snow piling off a mountain, an avalanche in summer.

Snow, falling like feathers. Feathers, falling like snow.

The weekend. I’d bought some more baccy from the garage store. Not really my thing, regular fags, but I needed something to suck on, to sear my insides. Bet Rocky had chomped all that weed by now. I should probably replace it, but the only person who could help was the last person I wanted to talk to. I stoppered my boots into the mud underneath the swings, wondering if that funny little girl might come by again. Though if she did, maybe Jeannie would too, and I would have to karate chop her face off like I should have done last time.

A sound like a baby bear growling. Finn’s moped ambled by, and I watched as he did a circuit around the car park by the shop and came back, pulling up in front of me.

‘All right, Polls?’

‘Hey, Finn.’

He nodded at my hand. ‘Give us a go on that.’

He joined me on the swings, kicking his legs out. ‘You mad at Fraser?’

‘Aren’t you?’

He shrugged and took another amateur drag, the roll-up held awkwardly between his third and fourth fingers. I wondered what had happened at the bothy after I’d taken off. Had they snuggled up together all night, a post-showdown slumber party, nice and cosy? Had Becca wailed like a cityful of sirens?

‘Good story though, eh?’ His face was bright.

‘Is that all it is?’

‘Not much happens round here. Good to have a tale to tell, you know? Not that they believe me, at school, like.’ He looked at me puckishly. ‘But then I did say that I broke his kneecaps with one of them drying poles.’