The river started to fatten and get deeper and quieter. It had a pale grey sheen to it, putty-coloured. Staid River. Hill Brown.

There was a wooden rope bridge across the water up ahead. It looked like a badly made kid’s xylophone. Or like something you’d have to cross in a hobbity adventure novel in order to get the ring, or the gold, or the flaxen-haired girl or whatever, although you’d only be up to your waist in water if you fell in. The handrail was barely-there rope, twisted round the boards every couple of feet or so.

‘We’re not going over that, are we?’ I said to his back.

‘Nope.’

‘Thank God. It looks like a fucking deathtrap.’

He turned around. ‘I made that.’

I stopped. ‘Oh.’ I looked at it. ‘Sorry.’

He put his lips together and carried on walking. Maybe he’d been joking.

After another mile or so, my toes starting to web together in my boots, we came out by the loch – my loch, but a different bit, with no road snaking along beside it. The grass gave way to wrinkled rocks splattered with mustard and grey – a primary school class mixing all the finger paints and going on the rampage.

‘So, what are we doing out here?’

He dumped his bag on the rocks and sat down, untying it and not looking at me. ‘You wanted to know what I get up to.’

The splints of wood became a sort of diamond-shaped cage, held together with dark turquoise netting. A home-made version of those baskets you used to get in Superdrug to dump all your hairsprays and nail polishes into. He wrapped a long piece of string around his hand just below the knuckles, putting it to his teeth and gnawing until it divided. The other end was tied to the top of the cage with a nifty triple knot.

The water looked deep here, with a sleazy leopard-skin print in dark blues and black on the surface. I dug a pebble out from a crevice and lobbed it in with a truly crap overarm throw, unused since playing rounders in Year 6. A hollow gollop. The ripples spread slowly into a massive, perfect vinyl record. A crackly version of ‘Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay’, maybe. Or ‘River Deep, Mountain High.’ Yeah – ’60s soul and this place. Perfect combination.

The grooves ironed themselves out and I noticed an acrid thread of something in the air, mixed with the scent of salt and the faint, mouldy tang of seaweed. Behind me, the birdman had a small Tupperware box on his knee, its brick-red lid on the rocks beside him.

The smell slimed up my nose and down my throat. ‘Jesus. What is that?’

He hardly looked up. ‘Fish heads.’

I could just about see some off-grey fleshy triangles. Dull button eyes. Aghast mouths. A plastic graveyard for decapitated fish. Yep. He was definitely a bit disturbed. ‘Um. Right.’

He picked one out with the tips of his fingers and put it in the cage. ‘Lobsters like their fish rotten.’