I followed her to a side gate. Her earrings were black and white dice with silver stars dangling underneath. A tattoo of some soft-focus leaves peeked out from her neckline.

She turned round, giving me those eyes again. ‘Next time, follow the loch to the village.’

I answered her with multiple yeahs and sorrys, thinking, well, I would have done if the water hadn’t been scaring me shitless.

Spidergirl was still standing in the same place, sucking on her fingers, eyes big as bowling balls. The loch sliced into slivers by the trees behind her.

I think of you as the sky spills onto the loch, stirs itself in. I float on it, stick my neck down. There are pockets where it’s saltier, pockets where it’s warmer. Pockets where trout clump together, or where mussels open and shut like the clasps of purses.

The loch collects shadows of birds. It collects clouds like laundry rolled over an arm.

It collects me. I am sheets and old-fashioned petticoats, drifting. A white shirt tugged in the wind.

I was always drifting, dreaming. Time waits for no man, and no bloody girl either, my uncle would say, rapping me on the backside for standing on the porch caught up in my own thoughts. He had lots of sayings.

But I shouldn’t speak of him. Not to you.

Essay splurge with mild online distraction and a soundtrack of rain. ‘Romantic poet porn’ drew a blank, apart from a pretty diverting article about Byron and Shelley’s free-love tendencies, a hundred and fifty years ahead of their time.

This soon morphed into playing a game on my phone in which I had to infect the whole world with a contagious disease. Mine was airborne and starting to spread.

I messaged Fraser. Hey fiddler

I watched my plague cross the Atlantic and fuck up America.

Whats up

China’s government had fallen.

Fancy hanging out then?

I was now more infectious than HIV.

Yeah cool free later, maybe 4?

☺ Where?

Perfect. Zombie apocalypse.

The rain had stopped. Tyger was looking up at me as I picked up my bag, a tiny whine coming from him like a radio frequency.

‘No, Tyger.’

He attempted emotional blackmail, wandering around, sniffing the skirting board and looking back at me occasionally, his eyes going all melty.

‘You won’t like it.’

He froze.

‘I’m going to see a boy.’

His tail twitched hopefully.

I dug my toe into his flank. ‘You’re a wuss. You’ll want to come home after half an hour.’

He sat down on his back legs and put on his best sticky-toffee-pudding face.

I picked up his lead. ‘I’m taking Tyger!’ I yelled to Lottie. A muffled response floated back from the living room.

‘Now that’s service.’ I got into the passenger seat, Tyger in my lap. ‘Do you mind a threesome?’

‘As long as he likes drinking.’ Fraser was wearing a T-shirt with triangles all over it. Some bleepy drum and bass was pulsing away, like a wardful of faulty hospital equipment.