The skin around his eye was still puffy and looked like it needed scrubbing. I stared past him up the hill.

He tried again. ‘You’ve not been in for a drink.’ He tapped his ear. I put my headphones round my neck and he repeated it. ‘Do you fancy doing anything?’

I shook my head. My snare-beats were like someone spitting onto the road, over and over.

‘Look, I’m sorry. About what happened. It’s all fine now. I promise.’

Twat. ‘You don’t get it. I don’t want to hang out with you. You were so shit up there, not just to me. To Finn and Becca.’

Tyger tried to high-jump the car door and scratched the paint with his claws.

Fraser faced forwards and clenched the steering wheel. ‘They’re talking to me, though.’

‘Maybe they’re nicer than me. Or more stupid. I don’t know.’

His knuckles bleached further. ‘I don’t know why you can’t just forget it.’

‘You just want a shag.’

‘I don’t.’ He cast a quick look at me, his dimple going. ‘It was nice, though.’

I pulled my jacket in, stretching it tight around the back of my ribs. ‘No, Fraser. I’m not seeing you, and I’m not having sex with you. Just go away.’

He crunched into gear. ‘OK. Whatever.’

‘At least your mum will be happy. And you can tell her I said that you were a shit kisser, too. A fucking octopus could do better. And you have a midget dick.’ His head turned just slightly and I saw his eyes, a flash of hurt and surprise, as he drove off.

Tyger was in front of me, at the end of his lead, his tail shimmying. He barked, once.

‘You’re a slag,’ I said to him.

One serving of dollopy, 100 per cent cocoa eyes, before he snuffled off to the verge and squatted down, looking effortful. I sighed, put my hand in my pocket for a plastic bag, and tilted my face up to the sky, eyes closed.

Stupid shitty attempts at sunshine. Stupid shitty attempts at manhood.

Something landed on the tip of my nose. Tiny, cold. I carefully lifted it off with my nail, and there, for a split second, before it disappeared into a translucent droplet that spread down the contours of my fingertip, was something that shouldn’t have been there. Something that made absolutely no sense.

A snowflake.

Another night of reading non-feminist chick-shit, custard creams stacked by my head. Tyger was on my lap, the hairiest hot water bottle ever, sorting out my period pain.

I was just being stubborn. I knew that I was probably shooting myself in the foot, ridding myself of a boy who was up for stuff. But he’d been so spineless.

Lottie’s phone shone on the arm of the chair. I picked it up, shouted the message from my uncle to her in the kitchen, and kept it under my thumbs. Jim had said he’d phoned the number on Tyger’s collar when he’d found him. I scrolled through until I found the right date and the only unrecognised number, with Bev’s before it. Lottie had probably been wailing to her when he’d tried to call. I guess he hadn’t left a message, seeing as speaking wasn’t exactly his favourite hobby.