Edging quietly backwards to a respectable distance, I sat on my jacket next to the wheelbarrow and three damp lozenges of wood. I ran my thumb underneath the nails of my other hand, flicking the little eraser flakes of dirt into the grass. Took my plaits out. Imagined Jim on a pavement in Dalston, and me sitting patiently by him, waiting for an ambulance.

Wow, it was quiet. Just you and all your maddest thoughts out here. The river made a little popping noise, like it was cracking its joints. Other than that and the wind humming against my ears, there was not a single sound. I pulled my own book out of my bag.

My brain was soupy. Felt a bit like going to sleep myself. There weren’t too many midges and the sun was still winning, just about. The sky was so big. A puddle of shadow sopped slowly over the valley. It dribbled over the sheds, coated Jim, then me, and disappeared behind us.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to crash out here. Might give him a seizure, finding a catatonic girl in the grass. I eyed the two sheds.

Just a little look.

Immediately, I wished I hadn’t. You knew what the first one was from the smell as soon you opened the door. Ripe and hot, the stench of sweating hay. It was like a festival loo, except without the queue of people hopping about outside, the thump of the dance tent making the plastic hum. I shut the door again.

The second one had no tool shelves, or pipes, or tins of tomatoes. Inside was death.

Death in the form of a single rabbit, hanging upside down in the middle of the shed. There was a thin buzzing sound, indeterminate white noise. The rabbit was tied by its ankles with red cord to a short, horizontal wooden bar that hung from the ceiling. A spray of white tail. Long feet. Its front legs dangling as if about to clap. It felt hallowed, being in the same intimate space as something so wrong – an animal that should have been moving fast along the ground, instead suspended in the air, inanimate. I put my hand out. There was a short, loud spitting sound, and a black spot appeared on its eyeball, like a sudden growth. A fly.

In a millisecond I was outside again, my palms flat on the wood of the door behind me. That beer didn’t seem like such a good idea any more. Time to go.

There was a sniff. Jim folded an arm up over his face followed by the other, clasping his elbow. I took a sidestep. He stretched and arched his back off the ground with a muffled expulsion of air.

Oh, fuck it. ‘Hello,’ I said.

He froze, before lifting his head through the frame of his elbows. ‘Christ.’

I tried to look extremely unassuming. ‘Sorry. Didn’t want to wake you.’

‘How long have you been there?’ His voice was peppery.