‘Fish don’t get morse code, you know,’ he said.

I stuck my hands between my knees. ‘Sorry.’ I looked at the sky. ‘Do you really just sit here?’

‘Aye.’

Lots of thinking time, then. Time to form grand philosophies and plan world takeovers. I should probably write my essays out here. I’d nail them like a demon.

‘Or I read,’ he said.

I swapped him. His was quite a classy spy book set in Istanbul, monochrome turrets on the front. He was holding my Gilman – still shoved in at the bottom of my bag – like it was some medieval illustrated manuscript you should only touch wearing surgical gloves. I blathered on about gender-based economics and division of labour and fourth-wave feminism and how I was never going to have children, probably talking way too loudly and scaring the fish off, but he didn’t seem to mind.

‘You’ve had company.’ Jim nodded at my bite-riddled leg. I had a line going up my calf as well, like the seam on some retro tights. Super sexy.

I crossed the other one over it. ‘I’m English. They don’t like me.’

He gave me a wry grin. ‘They don’t discriminate. And you’re wrong. They really like you.’

I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Don’t you get bitten, then?’

‘I’m too tough for them. Thick skin.’ He sniffed and shut one eye up at the sky. ‘Trick for someone like you is to smoke. All the time. Pipes are good.’

I nodded, mock-considering. ‘I could totally rock a pipe.’

‘Here we go,’ Jim said, sitting up a bit.

He picked up the rod, his concentration suddenly honed on the point where the line met the water. My breath caught on its own little hook as something slim and pale loomed up. Out it came, not a white thing but a half silver, half black fish, sleek as lycra, and he grabbed the line and brought it in. A wet dart with a slash-mouth.

It bounced around crazily in the bottom of the boat and I yelped and lifted my feet up, just about resisting the urge to chuck myself over the side. There’d only be more fish in there, after all. It made slick, flapping sounds, like Hannibal Lecter thinking about fava beans.

‘Grab us that.’ He pinned the fish between his knees and nodded at my feet.

I handed him the blunt wooden pole as long as my forearm and he promptly bashed the fish on the head with it. Demented death dance over.

‘Ow.’

‘Man’s got to eat.’ He worked the hook out of its mouth.

‘Man can go to Sainsbury’s.’

He breathed a little laugh through his nose.

We walked back to the jeep. My hands smelled of fish.

‘Do you want to keep my book? I mean, borrow it?’

‘Don’t you need it?’

‘Plenty more I can be getting on with. They’re short stories, won’t take you long. Or you can just read one.’

‘All right.’ He glanced down at his bucket. ‘Want some dinner?’