James woke to the announcement of the small aircraft’s descent into the border country, and the couple sitting in front of him started to point out the landmarks below. But the sight of isolated farms along the meandering river left him unmoved. Sunlight was reflecting off dams as the plane cut through a layer of low cloud onto the tarmac, without a hint of turbulence. Touchdown was so smooth it felt surreal.

He was the only one getting off at Wishaw. An older couple waiting to board the last leg to the coast smiled in the tiny glass-walled terminal, but James gave them nothing. The coffee cart and car rental desk were closed. An envelope with his name on it contained the key.

The squat blue hire car was the only vehicle beyond the main entrance. James threw his bag into the passenger seat and let the road take him down the heavily-wooded ridges around Wishaw. After an hour the dense forests gave way to farmland, then James glided back into Kippen just as the towering pair of cylindrical concrete water towers emerged silently from the mist.

At the crossroads, the town’s century-old pub left him completely devoid of nostalgia. The heritage train station looked like it had been renovated into a tourist centre with a café. It was closed. No chance of a coffee yet, so James accelerated straight ahead up the ramp onto the Kippen Bridge.

It seemed right to take a look. That’s what journalists did.

As he crossed the road bridge the reflections coming off the adjacent railway viaduct made him blink. He squinted in order to find the turnoff at the far side, braked at the new-looking gate, turned onto the concrete road that had replaced the old track, and descended into the parkland below the pair of bridges.

The place couldn’t have appeared less like the scene of a suicide. James took in the signs of recent landscaping: a curved planting of native saplings and a sign about wildlife. As he pulled to a stop he also noticed the utes parked at the margins of the bitumen car park and let out a groan, picturing the headline:

Prodigal son goes straight to sex spot.

Since he was already thinking up screamers to avoid the angst of new situations, it was no wonder James found himself drawn to the frosty shadows below a lonely bridge at a gay beat, a journalist exhibiting enough anxiety for his boss to suspect it was starting to affect his work.