When I come, the pleasure takes me as far from pain as I have ever been, and I kiss him over and over, stroke my fingers down his back as he shouts and shudders. He collapses against me, lips moving wordlessly against my neck, and I tighten my hold on him, his weight heavy and hot. Our breaths are ragged. He lifts his head to look at me, and I don’t want to look back but I do. Because this isn’t just sex. I knew it three days ago; I know it for sure today. This is something so, so much more than just sex, than distraction, than comfort – and Will knows it too.

When he finally moves his weight away, I close my eyes.

‘You should run out of sugar more often,’ he says eventually. He’s staring up at the ceiling, and his voice is light, smiling. Giving us both the chance to regroup.

I think about the dead crow. The maybe-stalker. The fire. And I know what he’ll say. He’ll try to rationalise, minimise; he’ll try to make me feel better. It won’t work. Instead, it will plant a seed in him, small but stubborn, one that he’ll remember when I next tell him that something has happened. And he’ll start to wonder if it really did.

I smile back. ‘I am pretty hopeless at buying sugar. It’s a problem.’

Will rolls onto his side and moves closer to me again, supports his head with one hand. The room is warm, the sheets pushed down to our waists. I look at his body, so strong and lean, so familiar to me already; the freckles on his shoulders, the darkness of his hair against the paleness of his belly.

He grins at my scrutiny, reaches out to trace a finger along my jaw, my collarbone. ‘Not from where I’m lying.’

‘Is that your dad?’

He smiles at me for a few more seconds before turning to look at the small wooden frame pushed up behind his bedside lamp. The photo is of a sun-faded and much younger Cora in jeans and check shirt, standing next to a tall, dark-haired man with Will’s striking blue eyes.

‘Yeah.’

‘He looks like you.’

Will’s mouth tightens. ‘About all I ever got from him. That, and a phone call once every few years when he remembered I existed.’

‘Tell me about Scotstoun School for Boys.’

‘It had gargoyles and turrets. We got up at five, played rugby on Saturdays, went to church on Sundays. Best of all, my stepbrother, Iain, was in the same shitty dorm as me, and only stopped making my life miserable when I got big enough to make his worse.’

I reach out to cup his cheek, trace the shell of his ear, the way I wanted to when he talked about his dad. The dad he pretends not to care about, while keeping a photograph of him next to his bed. ‘You were miserable there.’

He presses his lips against my palm; I feel his smile as he nods. ‘No one’s ever realised that.’ He pulls back, takes hold of my hand instead. ‘We’re talking about me again.’