I was starting to fear I would never see you again, so I made a plan. I put on a stone, mismatched shoes, and a faintly sexist t-shirt. I carried a bag from that shop you rightly swore you’d never go back to, and another, transparent, with a tube of pile cream on display. I didn’t wash or shave. I went out on the street. Sure enough, the moment I cracked the seal on my Special Brew, you came around the corner. You waved, and smiled, and asked me to lunch.

We spent the afternoon carving stamps out of old rubbers. We had no ink pads, so we tested them with tea and soot and a jar of beetroot we found in the fridge. We decorated our exercise books, and we said we’d add a stamp to our notes to show they were authentic, like a wax seal. But you stole mine out of my pencil case and gave it to your new friend, and she rubbed out her mistakes with it until it was gone.

We watched her tip over from the window of our hotel room. She went slowly, the way a building seems to, though she was a small thing. I thought she might fall again, right off the bench. Jane went down while I rang for an ambulance, although I couldn’t tell them much from all the way up there. Once the paramedics arrived and Jane came back up, we shut the curtains. The ice in our drinks had melted.

For a while it seemed like the raft would hold together. We crashed over a few big waves and nothing split or loosened. The creaks that had us holding our breath became friendly, the sound of this thing we had built working to keep us alive. But then, with the sun high in the sky, something turned in us. We started pulling at knots and prying at cracks. We started willing the water over our open mouths.

In the job interview I built a five-storey house of cards. I juggled and I guessed what numbers the panel were thinking of. I peeled a satsuma in once continuous piece. Having disassembled the house of cards, I memorised the order of the pack. They said I was just the sort of chap they were looking for. My face would fit right in. It’s no wonder, when you are as accomplished as I am.

The walk was supposed to take four days, but we saw the hostel peeking over the brow of the hill after two hours. We were there before lunch, packs unopened, not a whisker to be seen on the face I shaved that morning. A few set out on a circular hike, just to get what they came for; the rest of us sat by the fire and tried to pretend we had earned it. The whole world had turned very small.

They cut off the electric, the gas, the phone. Even the postie stopped coming. Now and then, if we were in, they would bring food. Not enough, but more than none. If we weren’t in, they took it away and left a note telling us, so we made sure we were always in. After a while, they cut off the water. They weren’t allowed to do it. But who were we going to tell?

When, at the age of forty one, I finally encountered quicksand, it seemed a shame not to get caught in it. I checked my phone for battery and signal, moved it up to my shirt pocket, and got stuck in. It was strangely soothing, like something you might do at a trendy spa, but I knew you were supposed to struggle (or rather, weren’t supposed to), because that made it worse. So I kicked and flapped and waved and sank until I was good and endangered, and then I noticed that at some point my phone had slipped out of my pocket.

The stone swans had come to life again. One was on the lawn, making deep gouges with its feet. The other was nowhere to be seen. Greta knew what that meant. She found it at the bottom of the pond, waving about uselessly. They were already slowing as the day warmed. Greta radioed the groundskeeper and went to fetch the rope. The guests would be arriving soon.

Slugs ate our entry for the sunflower competition. All at once, overnight. Planted, most likely: there’s a gap in the hedge at the bottom of the garden and the people behind have nefarious eyes. Sometimes at dropoff the mum looks at me with this mix of pissed off and scornful, just the way she looked at the note I left on her car, although I didn’t sign that so it must be coincidence. Calum says it doesn’t matter, it’s just for fun and they probably won’t even check who wins. But it’s the principle. I’ll show them.

The sun was going down and nothing on the barbecue was cooked. Everyone was having a miserable time, and everyone knew it, but everyone felt that to complain would only bring the mood down further. Marnie ran a finger around the crevices of a crisp packet and sucked the salty powder off it. It was all the food she would be getting for a while. An hour later, pizza arrived. Nobody ever admitted to ordering it.

In every attic round here there is a pair of skates from when the lake used to freeze. Sometimes they get pulled out and taken to a car boot sale, where some young optimist buys them, and they sit in a bag for a while until they go to live in a new loft. Now they’re building new houses down by the lakeside, and I wonder if there will ever be skates in them.

The little mound where I liked to sit and read had disappeared, flattened by rain or else by years of feet and other arses. I built it back up, with rocks under the soil so it would last. A passer by removed his hat; he must have thought that I was building a memorial cairn. I suppose I was.

Talk turned to fights we’d been in and I realised I would have to reach back to infant school. After swinging a few tiny fists around the playground I learned how to swallow my anger, and after that I never figured out what else to do with it. The chat went round the table like a one-bullet revolver and I started to think about lying. But that got squeezed out of me in boyhood too. The only way out was to start a fight right there.