I remember lying on my side melting into an ancient sofa, intently watching one of my friends. He was cut from the pattern of a thousand guitarists from a thousand rock bands, handsome (but completely unaware of it) with intense dark eyes and the kind of facial hair that looks like it appeared there one day fully styled all at once.

He was wearing an almost-tight black long sleeved t-shirt, well-worn and faded, and loose black jeans with frayed cuffs and the imprint of a wallet gradually wearing it’s way through the back pocket.

His eyes were closed, face set in an expression somewhere between intense concentration and wild abandon, long dark hair whipping back and forth as he moved, body bent around a scarlet guitar which he played almost convulsively and with such mastery that my thoughts temporarily fractured over the idea that any one person could be that good at anything.

I don’t remember what happened just before that or just after, although I do have memories of the surrounding week. We were staying in a cottage in the Highlands, close to the North-West tip of Scotland, at the beginning of October a few years ago.

Winter had bullied Autumn out of that part of the country almost as soon as Summer ended and by the time we arrived the cold had already settled in and taken up residence in the walls of the buildings and the rocks and the dirt on the ground.

There were four of us there - myself, my husband and two friends who were brothers - with enough drugs to keep a small army euphoric and confused for about a month.

Add to that arsenal numerous packets of cigarettes, pouches of tobacco, rolling papers, shredded pieces of thin card to make roaches from, more tins of beer than would fit in the fridge, assorted inexpensive spirits and wines and the piece de resistance, the chosen theme drink for that particular holiday - three bottles of black Sambuca.

The taste of it will forever remind me of violent winds shaking weather-worn windows, the hiss and crackle of flames in the sharp night air and the view of the entire universe from an old wooden bench as the four of us sat, faces upturned against the spider’s web of delicately drifting rain, watching as our lives spread out before us.