‘How’s uni?’ Adam asked, drumming his fingers on the table top in some sort of self-consciously calculated math-rock rhythm.

I was just finishing a fairly heroic draining of my wine glass and made a sound somewhere between a hum and a cough.

Lottie threw a smile at me. ‘Polly’s my star.’ She squeezed my hand and picked up the sea salt. ‘She’s brought enough books to start a library.’

I wondered when would be the best time to tell her that I’d totally failed my second year, lost all my friends, killed someone.

The olds had started settling down with whiskies in the ski-lodge vibes of the conservatory, Lottie turning the lamps down low.

I picked up a wine glass and stayed standing. ‘I’m going outside.’

Lottie squinted up at me. Her cheeks were feathered pink and she’d just stopped going on about it being glorious here. And heavenly. And wild. And freeing. ‘Now, darling?’

‘Yup. Just going to have a look.’

‘Keep an eye out for the pine marten,’ said Adam. They’d got Lottie insanely excited about seeing what sounded to me like a draught excluder with teeth.

Their voices reduced to a low simmer as I shut the back door. I heard ‘She’s not quite’ and ‘Good to have a break’.

Nearly eleven and still not totally dark. I could just about see the loch’s tapered beginnings over to my left, before it stretched and got swallowed up by the hills and the rain on its way out to sea on my right. I imagined plucking the loch up like a big, porny silk sheet, leaving a load of fish flailing on the mud floor.

The moon was out, the exact shape of my thumbnail when I bit it off, gnawing a perfect seam. It had got a lot colder. At least it wasn’t raining any more. I pulled my hoodie round me and put my fists under my armpits, standing there in the squelchy grass. With the glow from the conservatory and a line of stubby little lights sticking out at the edge of the beds, the garden looked like a theatre stage, over-real props curved inward towards the lawn. Waxy near-black leaves cut out and stuck on.

Well, this was the place to get some work done. It was completely bloody silent. Maybe I should just think of it as a really wide, green prison, apply myself, like the guy does in Shawshank, read all my books, re-write all my essays, boom, done.

Lottie knew something was up, I could see it. She was looking at me like she wanted to smother me in kittens and pillows and candyfloss but was too afraid that I might wallop her. But I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone. I kept envisaging the boy, strung up to a load of drips, a big tube shoved in his mouth, eyes closed. A police officer waiting at the edge of his hospital bed for him to wake up. A mariachi band in a hot, dusty Mediterranean town – did they have those at funerals? Or tango or flamenco or something. Dead. Not dead. Fuck.