On the other side of a heap of broken and discarded armchairs, atop an eroding mountain of garbage bags, three scruffy black bears. A few hundred metres away from where Anouk now stood with her trolley of junk. Administrative in their movements, the bears looked as if they were employed by the municipality to sort through the garbage, item by item. They expertly pulled at plastic, systematically discarding what lacked potential for the more luxurious items. Spoiled for choice. All at once, answering some silent communication, they stopped what they were doing and gazed at Anouk. Even from a distance she could see the resignation in their eyes, which were as lightless as coal. These bears were corpulent and old, habituated and made lazy by this food source. They were not beautiful.

The dumping area marked B would have brought her closer to the bears, so she ignored her instructions and jerked the trolley around, difficult with one dicky wheel on the uneven ground, and headed back closer to the truck. Some of the boxes were flimsy, poorly packed, and fell apart as she unloaded them. Papers and school folders and old scrolls of artwork on faded construction paper, flaking with powdery pre-school paint, fanned to the ground. Among this detritus, a large Manila, bubbled envelope, creased and softened with years. Unopened. Anouk’s name and address on the front, written in her own, years-ago handwriting. She picked it up and balanced it in both hands, remembered Mr Chester and his soft shoes. Remembered an X-ray but nothing else. She tossed the envelope on to the passenger seat of the truck and finished unloading the rest of the junk.

The only light on in the house when Anouk got home was a reading lamp, directing its yellow glow on to her father, who slept in his armchair by the living-room window. Three empty beer bottles lay at his feet like discarded toys. Another, mostly full, rested in between his legs. His head was thrown back and his mouth sleep-gaping. The skin of his neck, unshaven, sagged in a way that made him look old, and his glasses hung, monkey-like, off one ear. Anouk eased the bottle from the half-curl of his grip, and went into the kitchen and poured the beer down the sink.

She sat at the kitchen table under the hanging lamp, and pulled the Manila envelope towards her and slit it open with her little finger. First, she pulled out the chest X-ray and held it up to the light. A silver-and-black impression, a shadow; her chest her bones her arms spread wide. A ten-year-old girl lying on a hard slab under a suspended box that whirred loudly with the mechanics of medical investigation.

Black lung cavity. The areas of scar tissue, as insubstantial as cottony wisps of cirrocumulus cloud. Now, her X-rays revealed more damage, like water stains from rising damp.

Next, she pulled out an empty pill bottle that once held, she remembered, river water. Other objects: a desiccated leaf, brown and brittle and flaky as dried blood. A pin badge with a red heart on it, which meant nothing to her now, and an ammonite fossil in a plastic case. A rough grey rock shaped like an ear with a coil relief. Pressurized stone. Mineral-rich water had once filled the cast left by the disintegrated skeleton of some small beast, and then there was great pressure and aeons of time and then there was this fossil. She’d forgotten all about it.