I got carried away. It was the first proper question he’d asked me. After he let me talk a bit about how pathetic I was, how behind I was in my work, how I couldn’t write for shit or string an original coherent sentence together, I trailed off. ‘Um, did you – sorry if this sounds stupid, but did you find my book? By the loch?’

Jim glanced at me sidelong. ‘It was yours, then?’

‘Yeah, I—’ Was legging it after seeing a freak water-cloud. ‘I forgot it.’ I eyed him carefully. ‘Did you make the cover for it?’

He shrugged. ‘Didn’t want it to get rained on.’

The book-whisperer. ‘Did you read it?’ A pair of half-moon specs on his nose, frowning and shaking his head at all my double underlinings and tiny stick-men poets fighting with giant fountain pens and boning each other.

He scratched between his eyebrows, as if trying to make the line there even deeper. ‘I had a look, aye. Went a bit over my head.’

‘You like to read, though.’

Jim looked at me as if I’d just announced his entire life story.

‘I mean, you have lots of books.’

There was a moment of embarrassed silence, in which we were both no doubt remembering that the only reason I knew this was because I had been in his house, totally wired, dribbling and leaving mud on his bedsheets. I quickly asked about the book he was reading, which had fallen off him when he’d sat up. He passed it to me. Some sort of epic journey through an impenetrable Peruvian jungle, all hardship and face-of-danger stuff. Seemed appropriate enough.

Clouds were making the tops of the hills look frothy.

‘What’s it like here in winter?’

Jim tipped his beer up and wiped his mouth inelegantly. ‘It can be hard I guess. You’re right in its fist.’

‘Do you get snowed in?’

‘Sometimes.’

I imagined the house up to its chin in snow. ‘What do you do?’

He shrugged. ‘Weather it out. Get plenty of wood in, and food.’ Another glug of beer. ‘I’m part-squirrel.’ A quick glance and a hint of a sly smile.

Wow. He’d made a joke. I returned him a full-whack grin and lay back on the grass, my arms out, trying to imagine living here. My mind would drain out of my ears, I swear – a mash-up of the Brontës, the first Mrs Rochester let loose and wandering the moors. I popped my thumb out of the mouth of my beer bottle. Thwop. ‘Don’t you ever get lonely?’

His breath ignited, followed by a long exhalation. ‘Been round people a lot. Had my fill.’ He got up and went into the house. The door gave a little thump.

Right. Pushy microphone-in-the-face technique again. Nice one.

A terse clatter from inside. It was probably time to leave, but there was a cementy stubbornness in my bones. He’d invited me, after all. The other day he had said that he didn’t see people much. Maybe in a former life he’d been a taxi driver or a politician or something, and had made a Great Escape. Too bad. I imagined I was glued to the grass prickling my neck and calves. Clouds flapped overhead.