The dry seaweed was rattling. Really loudly. Just one cloud was reflected in the water now, flowering like a jellyfish. I tilted my head up to the sky, a wide swipe of glassy blue. Wait – no clouds. Not one. Nothing to make that—

I stood up, looked for the white patch.

The water was silver and black, just as before. For fuck’s sake.

I stomped along the boulders, destroying as many barnacles as I could. They made a sound like chips being deep-fat fried. This maddening, trapping vastness made my ribs tight. Maybe a prison cell would be better.

He wasn’t dead yet. If I never looked it up again, he would never be dead.

I needed to pee really badly. Too much coffee. I climbed over the low chain slung across the opening of a little dirt road. Maybe I’d find some sexy forestry type wearing only dungarees and wiping sweat off his forehead with grimy knuckles to distract me. No chance. There was a big digger in among the trees, the colour of English mustard and streaked with rust, its windows long-since smashed. More recent vehicles had churned up the mud on the path, leaving thick tyre marks filled with pools of caramel-coloured water. Damp logs were stacked in triangular piles and there was a smell like a Christmas overload, warm and oily.

A few of the trees by the track had a piece of white tape tied around their slim trunks. I found myself looking for the next one, and the next, as I climbed higher. On either side of me the ground rose up, uneven and luridly green, the scratchy trees huddled together. I jumped a ditch and landed on moss so soft that I almost trampolined back up again.

And squat. These outdoor pissings would put some definition in my thighs. Though I needed to work on not dribbling on to my boots next time. I kicked the used tissues under a few leaves and went further into the dark tree hush, wondering how far you could get before being completely surrounded by pines with bark like the backs of crocodiles and this crazy, squashy floor. Every time I took a step my foot got swallowed up.

I lay down, sank into it. Princess and the pea stuff. The smoke from my fresh joint wound its way up among the branches as I tried to ignore the numbness in my wrist. Moss was in my ears, on my cheek. I could lie here until it totally soaked me up and no one would ever know where I’d gone. My own mossy coma – the way to avoid everything. One day some hiker would come upon a strange lime-coloured thing that wasn’t quite human or flora, all splodgy and fronding and faintly female-shaped.

The moss was the best pillow ever. Caffeine hadn’t even made a dent. The vertical oblongs of silvering light between the trees at the top of the hill looked like doors if I narrowed my eyes. And that one—