‘Do you not wear a lifejacket or anything?’

Jim shook his head, folding up another square of tin foil.

Flat, tarpaulin water. I was gripping both sides of the boat as if they were the railings at the top of the Eiffel Tower. ‘What if it, like, capsizes?’

‘It won’t.’

‘But what if I just fall in?’

He sat back and looked at me like I was a total wimp. Which I was. ‘Can you swim?’

Friday nights swimming with Dad. Fish and chips afterwards in the car, listening to his post-punk compilations, him hamming up the knifey air guitars in Gang of Four and Magazine tunes while I used chips as drumsticks and the heat and vinegar soaked through to my knees.

‘Yeah. I guess.’ I eyed the bright water, stretching the length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool on either side of me. ‘But not in there.’

Jim shrugged. ‘Better not fall in, then.’ He spiked the foil onto a hook.

Road trip. He had driven us up past the lead mines into a sky the colour of old milk, tipping over the top of the mountain and down into forest again, almost at a right angle. He’d said that this stretch was nicknamed the Burma Road, I guess due to it being World War Two-levels of bastard. Down below us was a small, squashed loch, the land puckered up around it.

The boat – small and dull blue-green – had lain upturned on a floor of matted pine needles. He’d dragged it to the edge, twigs gathering in an arrow-shape underneath it, right next to a sign that said no fishing.

So many goddamned midges. Ignoring them, Jim had dumped his bag in, held the end of the boat while I’d wobbled in, and pushed us off.

There was no one for miles. We’d passed a small stone building surrounded by barbed wire and pylons, and some sort of deserted army lodge, but civilisation felt very far away.

Once in the middle of the loch, Jim slotted the oars into their rusted locks and got to work. There were, thankfully, no rancid fish heads or tubs of pearly maggots, just a long, crude-looking rod, the end of which he lodged against his seat.

‘So, now we just wait?’

He nodded, a smile hanging on one side of his mouth.

The hills wore the pine trees like a pelt. I imagined rolling it off as easily as the hare’s skin. If you looked at the water long enough, it turned into old-school television interference. I crossed my eyes at it and went a bit dizzy.

‘How’s the leg?’ I swear he glanced at my wrist as well.

I pulled the cuffs of my jacket down. ‘Fine. Thanks.’

The water could have been sky, the sky water. We drifted, slowly, as if someone underneath had the boat in their palm and was marvelling at us. I looked for the kelpies and the selkies from Adam’s book and imagined the rod arcing, Jim wrestling with a tangled white mass like sheep’s wool, but the water was reflective and shiny and gave nothing away. It seemed safer, somehow, with him. I leant back a bit and drummed my fingers on the sides.