It was a lot brighter today, but damp as anything still – the grass had a glitterball glimmer to it. I needed my sunglasses just to walk straight. Birds bleeped away, mobile phones with different ringtones. Apart from that, not a single sound. I felt as if I had to turn my ears up to try and catch a breath of anything.

I had nicked some navy blue wellies from a cupboard, way too big, so I was rocking three pairs of socks, two lots over my knees. Sexy. I splashed my way through the coppery water this time, slipping and sliding my way down the stream, invincible. Yeah, fuck you, stream. The loch, when I reached it, glinted like a watch catching the light.

I found the rock I’d been sitting on the day before. The book wasn’t there. I scouted around, lifted up a couple of stones, wondering if I’d somehow emerged in a different place, but you couldn’t really go wrong following a stream. I’d expected the book to be sodden, the pages all stuck together, and having to blowdry it back to life, but at least to find it here. Maybe a great big bookish golden eagle had snatched it and was sitting in a nest turning corners over with its talons, disagreeing with Butler’s take on anti-intellectualism. That was one of my essays fucked then – I’d written tons of notes in the margins. I lit a joint and sat down.

The loch was making quiet slurping sounds on the seaweed, like a drunk old man blowing kisses. I looked for a floating book being used as a raft by a frog or something. And as I did, a tingle swept up my throat.

There. The white patch was there again. Further down the loch this time, though nearer to the shore. The light was different today and the patch looked brighter, more textured. Maybe it was closer to the surface.

Joint in teeth, I began to climb round the stones by the shoreline, following them back inland towards the trees and out again to the next ridge. Slow work. I had to lean on the higher rocks, dried seaweed making bubble-wrap pops under my hands. There was a green, heavy smell, like overcooked broccoli with a whole salt-shaker accidentally emptied onto it. I grazed my knee against a rock and jabbed my palm on a mussel.

Judging distances was obviously not my superhero skill – I’d moved fifteen metres or so and the patch didn’t seem any closer at all. Bastard. I clambered further round to a bay with a thin-lipped smile of beach, put a foot down and sank two inches, yelping and wobbling and falling forward, wrist-deep, into Polyfilla mud. Brilliant.

Hand coated, I did a stupid skipping walk, like long-jumpers do just before they take off, over the rest of the beach and got up onto a boulder. I couldn’t see the white patch at all now. Maybe the angle of the sun had changed. Or it had just been a reflection of a cloud. I stood on tiptoes. Crouched down. The loch had an oily skin to it, the film you get when you make proper chicken stock. There – floating, like a flat, shredded piece of chicken breast. Except more shimmery.