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forwards, and Jack felt himself following them. The fugitive cassettes fell on ‘the already warped shelf, which instantly gave way. There was a roar of burning wood and celluloid and plastic, and a mass of flames which dwarfed Jack sprang at him. But he was past the door with most of the pile of cassettes. He stumbled across the pavement and stacked them against the lamppost, then he used the concrete pole to haul himself upright and peered indistinctly at the shop.
    The poster beside the door was peeling away from the window, and he saw Stan’s and Ollie’s faces shrivel. The nozzle of the blow lamp was still trapped of course he had only seen the air wavering, not the door and what would happen if the flames reached the tank of gas? ‘(jet away from the entrance,” he shouted, and dashing more or less accurately at the door, bruised his shoulder against it. The door faltered backwards, releasing the nozzle. He dragged the blow lamp out of the shop, seized the door by its letter-slot and banged it shut in the hope of suffocating the fire somewhat, staggered to the back of the van and unlocked the doors, heaved the blow lamp inside and loaded one of the empty cartons with the cassettes he’d rescued, sat on the edge of the floor of the van and held onto it with both hands to keep himself upright. He felt exhausted and slightly delirious, but he’d achieved all he could. At least, he thought he could rest, until he noticed where the woman and the old man were now. “Stay away from the window,” he almost screamed.
    “Anything else you’d like us to do?” the woman said. Neither of them seemed in a hurry to move.
    “It might shatter,” Jack told her and stood up unsteadily to urge them both away. He’d taken a step and was having to support himself against the lamppost when a not altogether new voice said “What don’t you want them to see through your window?”
    The man with the duffel cowl on his head had returned. The old man turned to him, sensing someone else with doubts about Jack. “He’s a maniac,” he cried. “He tried to set fire to me to get me out of his shop.”
    “Destroying evidence,” the cowled man said triumphantly, and addressed the woman. “Is that your house with the open door? If you’ve seen any goings-on at this shop it’s your duty to speak out.”
    “What sort of goings-on?”
    “People coming out who looked as if they didn’t want anyone to see what they had.”
    “Well, now you mention it the woman mused aloud, but the old man interrupted. “And he stole my shoe,” he said.
    Jack shoved himself away from the lamppost so furiously that the three of them retreated uphill. “I’ll fetch your wretched shoe,” he said through his teeth, ‘and then we’ll see where it fits best.”
    He sneezed several times before he reached the crossroads. The traffic lights seemed to grow more lurid each time they turned red, as though they were embers the wind was fanning. He staggered into the centre of the junction while there was no traffic and unstuck the shoe, which had been flattened to almost twice its original size, from the tarmac. By the time he climbed onto the pavement the old man was hopping downhill to meet him, his arms around the shoulders of his companions. As Jack held up the shoe, which flapped as if it was greeting its owner, the old man gave a cry of anguish.
    The task of finding something appropriate to say to him felt potentially even more disastrous than the rest of the day had been. Jack was dawdling, and wishing he could plead sneezes as an excuse not to speak, when Julia came up behind him. “Is that Mr. Pether?” she said.
    For a moment the day made sense. The old man was indeed Mr. Pether, the father of the policeman who lived at the opposite end of the street from the Orchards. “Hasn’t he aged since they put him in the home?” Julia said. “I’d hardly have recognised him.”
    If only Jack had! He saw himself turning off the blow lamp saying