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into his shoulders and scratched him until he bled. But all she did was open the bureau drawer and stare at her clothes as if she had never seen them before.
        

FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 11:47 A.M.
        
        They spent a quiet morning strolling through the grounds of the Boscobel Restoration, a Federalist mansion set in apple orchards and rose gardens, with sparkling views of the Hudson River and the Hudson Highlands beyond.
        'We should have brought a picnic,' said Craig, quite unexpectedly, shading his eyes against the midday sun.
        Effie linked arms with him, and this time he made no attempt to pull himself away. 'A picnic? After all that breakfast? Three helpings of pancakes, wasn't it?'
        'Have to keep my strength up, if I'm going to be a man again.'
        'You're a man now.'
        'So you keep telling me.'
        They walked around the mustard-coloured house, and then ambled back through the orchard towards their car. Effie said, 'If you're really hungry, there used to be an inn not far from here, just the other side of the Bear Mountain Bridge. Do you want to try to find it?'
        They drove down the winding road beneath the noisily-rustling trees. Effie said, 'My father used to take us to this inn almost every Saturday, for lunch. The Red Oaks Inn. He always had a Bloody Mary, and let me suck the celery stick. My mother said he was going to turn me into an alcoholic. He said he was trying to turn me into a vegetarian.'
        They drove around three curving S-bends, and then suddenly Effie said, 'Stop! Stop! I think that's it, off to the left!'
        Craig backed up the BMW around the curve, its transmission whinnying. A small downsloping side-road disappeared darkly between the oaks, so angled and overgrown that they probably would have missed it if Effie hadn't known what she was looking for. A faded wooden fingerpost was engraved with two barely-legible names, Red Oaks, and underneath, Valhalla.
        'Valhalla?' asked Craig, as he turned the BMW around. 'What's Valhalla?'
        'Somebody's house, I don't know whose. I looked it up in my encyclopedia, when I was a kid, Valhalla. It comes from one of those Norse legends, you know, like Odin and stuff. It's the hall of dead heroes. My father always used to say that it was a warning that he should never eat at the Red Oaks Inn, ever again, or else he'd wind up joining them.'
        'Well, he was pretty imposing, wasn't he?'
        'Imposing? You don't have to be PC about him, just because he's dead. He was F-A-T, fat.'
        They turned down the side-road, and immediately found themselves plunged into a cool, hushed world of low branches and dense bushes.' Occasionally they glimpsed bright sunlit clearings through the undergrowth, but for the most part the road was. shadowy and damp, and smelled strongly of decaying leaves.
        'You sure this is the right turnoff?' asked Craig, as briars squeaked and lashed against the BMW's bodywork.
        'It must be. It said Red Oaks, didn't it? And Valhalla.'
        'Right. The hall of dead heroes.'
        The road began to rise up the side of the hill, growing steeper and steeper with every turn. The bitumen had crumbled on both sides, and it was running with herringbone eddies of springwater. On one side, they could see nothing but treetops. On the other, they were treated to a dank cross-section of the earth's interior, with twisted roots and layers of leaf mould and pale, pungent-smelling fungi.
        'Doesn't look like anybody's driven up here for years,' said Craig. 'Maybe we should turn around and find someplace else.'
        'Well, we can't turn around here,' said Effie. 'We may just as well go on to the inn.'
        They crept round one hairpin after another, but at last the trees began to thin out and the road was dappled with sunlight. A faded board by the roadside said Red Oaks Inn, 200 yards. Open Hearths & TV.
        The inn looked much