He joined me, hands in his pockets. ‘What do you do when you’re home?’

‘Go out. Go shopping. Eating. Go to gigs. Galleries. Look at stuff. I mean – there’s just so much more stuff.’ I tucked my phone away and passed him my beer. ‘What do you do for fun?’

He took a swig. ‘I don’t know. Same as you. Just with less stuff. Used to ride dragbikes at the quarry but my mate’s brother lost a leg so I decided I’d best stop. I run. Shoot a bit. And,’ he looked over at me, ‘get fucked.’

I gave him my best smile, fished out the mint tin from my pocket and opened it.

Fraser leant over. He smelled faintly of tobacco and deodorant. ‘Magic.’

The door slammed behind us and the old tufty-haired guy lurched out. He mumbled something to Fraser, before peering at me and crooning something. It sounded like the sort of song that minstrels off their heads on mead would have sung about a thousand years ago while everyone threw cabbages at them.

I held my bottle up at him and he turned and walked along the lochside, still singing. ‘People are bloody weird up here,’ I said.

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘I can almost entirely guarantee that people do not take birds apart on the side of the road in Surrey.’

A knot in his forehead. I told him what I’d seen last night, a rough artist’s impression of the guy. Jeans. Beard. Late thirties, maybe older. Eyes like hurled knives.

‘Dunno. Could be – there’s a guy who lives a few miles away. Off-grid a bit. Proper fuck-up. You shouldn’t get too close.’

‘Yeah, well, I kung fu-ed him to death already, obviously.’

He grinned. ‘I’ve got to get back.’ He pushed himself off the wall with a foot and looked at me, suddenly a bit shy. ‘Do you want to come to the hotel up the road tomorrow night? I’m playing there.’

‘Playing what?’

He scratched behind his ear and looked at the ground. ‘Fiddle.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s probably not the kind of gig you were hoping for but …’ He gave the slightest shrug and squinted towards the loch, another little slap of red behind his ear.

Cute.

Adam was a certified fucking A-grade perv. He hadn’t stopped looking at me in the rear-view mirror on the drive over yesterday and now, at ours for dinner, he was performing the not-unadmirable trick of simultaneously leching at my thighs and smiling genially at an oblivious Lottie. Bev needed nothing more than two sips of wine and a forkful of the fish pie she’d brought over to start gossiping about everyone they’d ever known between them. It all made me want to jam my eyes down violently on my upended fork.

Lottie had known them both since I was small. She used to work for Adam’s architectural firm in London, before he and Bev decided to up sticks and move to the edge of the known world. Then, after she’d split up with Dad, she’d started doing interior design for friends and gradually built up enough clients to have her own business. It meant that we had a bit of a scrapbook of a house, covered in samples of wallpaper and fabrics, and the bathroom was a patchwork of paint smudges in Leafy Cottage and Summer Coulis and, I don’t know, fucking Field Mouse. But I liked it, and liked how the house would transform from year to year, turning its colours slowly. It had its own seasons. Unlike this place, which seemed to just have one.