‘My hero.’ Finn bowed, his ciggie-hand looping in the air. ‘You like telling stories, don’t you?’ He shrugged again. ‘You’ve always got one up your sleeve.’ I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Like your many conquests, Mr Lothario.’

‘They’re all real.’ He screwed his nose up at me. ‘Some of them.’

‘Mmm-hmm.’

He used his legs to spin himself round, the chain choking itself. ‘Gran-gran always told good stories, still does. It’s probably in my veins or something, like being allergic to stuff, ’cept I’m allergic to dust and cats and that and my da’s allergic to eggs. But yeah, she’s got a story for every day of the week. She used to make ones up to explain everything too, ’cause I always had questions’ – I bet you did, I thought, imagining him trailing behind her on the beach, tugging on her finger until it practically came off – ‘I don’t know, like about how everything was made and that, and why submarines came so close, and why the barnacles like some rocks but not other rocks and stuff.’

‘What were her answers?’

He unwound the swing the other way. ‘That the subs weren’t here for the war, that was all a cover-up. They were actually looking for mermen, because the real war was down there, under the sea, between land-men and sea-men. And the barnacles are tons of little, like, fannies, and they’re all having sex with the sea.’

‘Your gran told you that?’

‘Yeah.’

I threw a woodchip at him. It pinged off his forearm, which was adorned with new biro-drawings of swords and insects with elaborate horns. ‘So now you’ve got a new story.’

‘Yeah.’ He looked at his phone. ‘Ah shit, gotta go.’ He held the cigarette towards me.

‘Keep it. It’s had your scabby mouth on it now.’

Finn straddled his moped, giving me the full cowboy-at-sunset grin, fag hanging from his lips. ‘Off to see a girl.’ He began walking it over the grass to the flowerbeds, looking like someone who really needed to pee.

I folded my arms. ‘Your sister?’

‘No, a real girl. Proper one. Gonna see if I can get some naked photos. Taking her up the lochan.’ He bent down and yanked out some tulips, bulbs and all.

‘Is that what the kids are calling it now?’

He looked puzzled, then shocked, then extremely pleased. He stuffed the stems down the front of his trousers. ‘Oh. Yeah. Totally. Later, gorgeous.’

The moped started to roll off and I felt the long day ahead of me. I stood up. ‘Finn.’

He looked back.

‘Which way are you going?’

I had to hand it to him for generosity. He went several miles in the opposite direction to drop me at the disco oak tree – it seemed wrong, somehow, to give away the birdman’s sneaky driveway – shouting at me about the lucky lady who was going to get both those flowers and his tongue shoved in her face, and asking me about the best way to unhook a bra. Cute.