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with frost when I peeped around the curtains of a window in the hall.
    I went out through the kitchen door, purloining the cold remains of the beef and some cheese on the way but forgetting a coat. By the time I had gone ten yards my teeth were chattering.
    From the hall window I had seen that the greenhouse lights were switched on but they were not bright enough to guide me across the garden. I had to rely on an almost full moon for that and only had one bad moment when I tripped over a rock lying in the middle of the path, stubbing my toe. It seemed a strange time of the year to rebuild a rockery.
    It was paralysingly cold.
    I couldn’t see anyone in the greenhouse but snicked up the latch of the door and slid it open, desperately in need of heat myself by now. A wonderful scent of warm, damp earth and growing things wafted into my nostrils and I took several deep appreciative breaths. There were ferns and yet more orchids, gloxinias in pots, Bill’s carnations growing in the borders and rows and rows of baby polyanthus in pots on the slatted wooden staging.
    I sniffed the air again, detecting a hint of garlic. Then I saw the source of it, sitting on the staging looking at me through a fern, knees under his chin, grinning like an oversized goblin. It was enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end and, such was the shock, I think mine did.
    “Sugar for the horse, sugar for the horse,” cackled Freddie. 
    I dumped down the food and bolted. No, Freddie wasn’t safe. One hand had moved in the most lewd gesture I had ever seen.

 
    Chapter 4
     
    On the Wednesday of that week, after Robin had convinced me that driving on the right side of the road and staying alive could be achieved by the majority of British drivers, I hired a car. Or rather I rented one, as the man in the garage described the transaction. With difficulty I persuaded him that the vehicle I required did not necessarily have to be large enough to play a game of baseball in, and emerged cautiously from the forecourt with a product of the land of the rising sun.
    Emma had offered to lend me the family pick-up that was used to take gear to their boat but I declined without offending her. Never borrow cars, Daws always stressed. Now, with Andy’s death still haunting me I was going to do as I was told.
    I made myself go to Quispamsis. Right away, not giving the coward within time to make excuses for not doing so. Until I had shared a little in Andy’s last moments, seen the road as he himself had seen it seconds before he died, stood at the spot where it had happened, he would remain only a shadowy figure in my memory, merely a man with whom Peter had worked to help found a boys’ club.
    Not for one moment had I imagined that the site of the accident would be easy to find, cherishing the thought, the nearer I got to Quispamsis, that looking for it was entirely my own idea so no one would blame me if I failed after a short search and my nerve deserted me. Then, quite suddenly, I came upon it.
    The blazing car had started a small fire — small by Canadian standards, that is — a narrow band of forest destroyed some fifty yards long. The point of impact had been a large spruce, now dying from a shattered trunk and looking as though it was keeping vigil, slightly bowed.
    I stepped from the car into an uncanny silence, the only faint sounds the breeze occasionally whispering through the peeling bark of the birches and, in the far distance, a bird singing the same sad four notes. It reminded me of the responses to a litany.
    Grass had begun to grow again on the scorched earth but was not yet tall enough to conceal twisted scraps of metal that had dropped from the burned-out vehicle when it had been removed. Then — Oh, God! — I saw a blackened shoe. I bent down to touch it but found myself unable to do so.
    Standing quite still I thought of Carol, Andy’s wife, eight months pregnant with their first child, her condition preventing her from flying over for