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feet before he realized it wasn’t a snowdrift.
    The job was shift work; he alternated with Marcel Bruchon, a farmer who augmented his income that way during the winter months. Marcel would be out there now, thundering down the main roads, snow flying off the blade of the plough like the wing of some gigantic bird, trying to get the roads cleared so people could get home from work. Marcel took the late shift and Tom took the early one, which suited him fine. He started at six in the morning, cleared the main roads—there weren’t many, Struan was a small town—then worked his way out to the side roads. Some days the snow fell so fast there was no way to keep up with it and the farmers and other out-of-towners had to resort to snowshoes or skis or just stay home. The only drawback of the job was that if there was no snow there was no work, but from November onwards that was rare.
    Summer had been more of a problem, job-wise. The previous summer he’d started off working at the gas station, but people kept talking to him while he filled up their tanks and cleaned their windshields so he quit. Then he got a job working as a ranger for the Forestry Commission. He’d spent the days perched in a fire tower on the top of Mount Allen, binoculars glued to his eyes, searching for telltale wisps of smoke above the endless rolling sea of trees. In theory it should have suited him even better than the snowplough—not a soul for miles in any direction—but in practice it had turned out to be a mistake. There was too little thinking involved and he couldn’t read to distract himself, so his mind filled up with thoughts like lungs filling up with water till he could hardly breathe. At least with the snowplough you had to concentrate on the road. So he’d quit fire-watching too and got a job driving a logging truck, which had turned out to be just fine.
    Something bumped into his shoe. Tom lowered his paper and saw that Adam was in the process of driving his battered fleet of Matchbox cars across the room and parking them at his feet. He must have felt Tom’s gaze because he looked up guiltily.
    “It’s okay,” Tom said. “You can play with them here. Just don’t run into my feet.”
    Adam nodded and moved the cars carefully around the corner of the chair. But Tom felt a stirring of irritation in his guts; unlike his father he normally had no difficulty blocking out his family but now that Adam had intruded on his privacy other things were intruding too. He could hear the thudding of Peter’s and Corey’s feet upstairs in their bedroom; there’d be a scuffle followed by a loud thump as one or other of them collided with a wall and then more scuffling. In the study his father blew his nose with an angry blast. Down beside the chair there was a tinny crash as Adam staged a pileup. It had been a mistake to talk to the kid.
    Tom tossed the paper onto the floor and stood up. Outside it was dark already, although it was only half past three. The wind was picking up, hurling gusts of snow against the windows. His stomach felt agitated. Maybe there wasn’t enough in it, he thought. He’d had lunch at Harper’s after his shift but that was a good while ago.
    He wandered into the kitchen, opened the fridge and stared into it, then became aware that Adam had followed him and was standing by his left knee and staring into it too. Tom fought the urge to tell him to go away. Definitely it had been a mistake to talk to him. He had nothing against this particular brother—relative to the others he was a model of good behaviour—but he wanted to be left alone. His wish was to be invisible and he had the uneasy feeling Adam was starting to see him.
    “Are you hungry?” he asked, trying half-heartedly to keep the irritation out of his voice.
    Those anxious eyes again. A nod.
    “What did Mum give you for lunch?” He never ate lunch at home himself. He had a bowl of cornflakes and a piece of toast first thing in the morning before