I took a step and a half for every bowling stride of his, keeping Tyger – giving me mega guilt-trip looks as he got more and more rained on – well away.

‘And how are you finding our neck of the woods?’

‘Oh, you know. It’s definitely different.’

‘Aye. It is that, I suppose.’ There was a little more weight to his voice. The rain began hitting my calves as it bounced off the road. ‘Arm?’ He angled his elbow out.

‘Um, OK.’ I slotted my hand in. He smelled faintly of menthol cough sweets.

I wondered about that stone on the beach. The stone that had a shine on it like Johnny’s shoes. Somehow, it didn’t feel right to ask – he’d not been so garrulous when I passed him that day. As if he was happy to talk about the bright wide world out there, but would say nothing of this place. I prodded him about the Rhine again, and he was off, telling me about knowing the words to the German-language covers of Beatles songs, getting pissed on glasses of beer as thick as golden syrup, and being married to a chain-smoking girl called Hansi for two years.

‘She’d gone down to the Schwarzwald by the time I came back. Callous woman. Left me a note. Her friend took the edge off the blow, though, as I recall. There you go.’ Johnny tilted the umbrella back and showed me the sky. The rain had stopped. ‘When you least expect it,’ he said. ‘And this, lassie, is where I disembark.’

A scrubby driveway led up to a bungalow. Dirty, streaked walls, sitting low in a well of damp grass. A battered, maroon-coloured car was parked next to it, a shade darker than his cheek. An old motorbike with no seat leant against the side of the house. None of it looked like him, with his polish and flair, inflated voice and gestures.

‘Thank you for the cigarette,’ he said, giving me a little bow. ‘And the charming company.’

I almost sniggered.

He began to walk up the driveway, that slight lilt to his step, before turning and raising the folded umbrella as if a military baton. ‘Another one for the collection.’

Kilt porn

Very gay. My fingers made tiny raindrops on the keyboard.

Loch porn

Full-on and in your face, literally, with a confusing lack of water until I translated the word into German.

Feminist porn

A lot of long articles that I should actually read, as well as some nice pictures of naked vegan people in parks and a menstruation porn site that somehow seemed scarier than everything else put together. God, I was bored.

I scrolled through mine and Fraser’s messages, back when he’d been top of my limited Sex Order and not the worst contestant on a more savage version of The Apprentice. I was starting to think I shouldn’t have been such a bitch until I got back down to the most recent ones, him asking how I was after I had bolted out into the night. If he’d really cared, he would have come after me.