He plucked out crabs between a thumb and forefinger and threw them back into the loch. They didn’t make a sound. Maybe you could skim them. I watched his arm toss out, over and over. He had totally swindled me – he’d made me hold that thing on purpose. There was a tiny bristle stuck to the inside of my thumb. I plucked it out and flung my hand wildly at a midge-cloud. Bastards. Bastard.

My throat felt as dry as anything. Stupid fags and nothing else since three cups of coffee this morning. With added lobster terror.

‘Um,’ I said. I still didn’t know his name. ‘Do you have anything to drink? I forgot to bring anything.’

He looked at me with his eyebrows raised, as if he’d just asked me a question and not the other way round. His gaze swivelled to where the river churned over some rock shelves on its last gasp before the loch.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’

The pool foamed like a shaken-up can of Coke. I knelt down and the falling water fanned out from my hand, leaving tiny little fronds of – something – on my palm. I gulped some, feeling it slalom down inside me.

There was a dopey thud next to me. An empty plastic bottle. I filled it up and walked back to him, holding it in front of my nose. The water was a pale, yellow-brown and there were tiny specks floating in it that I absolutely never wanted to look at under a microscope. ‘Gross.’

‘Fresher than you’d get in a tap.’ He was collapsing the cage.

‘Tap water doesn’t have insects doing synchronised bloody swimming in it.’

I definitely heard him laugh then, the tiniest, punctuated breath through his nose, as he pushed the splints together.

‘I’m Polly,’ I said.

His shoulders stiffened. He turned his chin slightly, eyes on the rocks somewhere near my feet. ‘Hello, Polly.’ Like he’d just been introduced to me at a ball. The long piece of string went around the bundle of netting and sticks. ‘Jim.’ He glanced at me, just enough, as if saying his name was the most difficult thing he’d had to do all day. His eyes were the colour of seaweed. ‘All right to head back?’

It was another dead quiet walk, apart from the river, which buckled and fizzed past us, and the slop of the water in the bucket. My little toenails were digging into the flesh of their neighbours. I was walked out.

When we finally reached his house, Jim – it felt better knowing he actually had a name – set his stuff down and looked at me hesitantly. Maybe he was mulling over whether to invite me in for a mouth-watering fish supper. Or maybe he was just wondering how to get rid of me. Either way, I didn’t really want to witness the death of my new crustacean BFF. My BCF.

‘What are you going to do with him?’

He sniffed. ‘Boil it. You just eat the tail. Crack it off.’