Subsequent digging efforts around the campsite unearthed the remains of seven other adolescents, three girls and four boys. Anthropologists worked at the recovery site for months, cataloguing each bone and fragment of clothing and tiny shard of debris scattered across the site, although Laura knew little of this, swathed up as she was in her bubble-wrap world.

Seven bodies, one deer, and one young boy’s head. That was the bounty of the forest, as summer turned its face to the wall, and autumn came softly in its wake.

31.

Frank, upon cross-examination, later told a courtroom filled with serious faces that he had taken up target practice at his local shooting club. He’d had his Grandfather’s gun serviced especially to make it functional for this purpose, and hadn’t thought to tell his wife, in case she disapproved. The jury stifled a ripple of laughter at this, the irony having not occurred to Frank until that moment.

Frank was not an experienced gun handler, and unintentionally leaving ammunition in the chamber of an antique pistol is a good way to be excommunicated from any self-respecting shooting club. Frank subsequently had to find himself a new hobby, so he took up fishing, which suited him much better. The gun remained in a Police evidence box for many years to come.

Laura was found guilty of the crime of second-degree murder. The jury did not look happy about this, and neither did the presiding judge.

‘Will I go to jail?’ she asked, and her lawyer nodded, patting the back of her hand sympathetically.

Laura pulled it away.

32.

Laura is much older now, and a free woman once again. She has paid for her crime, at least in the eyes of the law, and finds herself longing to undertake a pilgrimage. And so she walks through the Old Forest, her son Robert, who is now a tall, handsome replica of Frank, keeping step alongside her.

The hair that had only been speckled with grey when she’d last made this journey is now white, cropped short against her skull for the sake of ease and practicality. Her steps through the copper carpet of leaves underfoot are unsteady, but no less focused on the goal. She is headed north, to Stanley’s camp, to pay her respects to Bobby. Because she’s had a lot of time to think over the years, about one thing in particular. Bobby’s head might now rest in a small, silk- lined cedar box in the town cemetery, but the rest of him has never been recovered. Laura knows that he is here, in this forest, the parts of him that touched and held and ran and walked in step with her now subsumed. What remained of him after Stanley separated his sweet head from his body has long since rotted, composted, fed the soil and brought new life into the world. Laura feels a small comfort at this, and hopes it will not be long before she, too, becomes part of the complex tapestry of greens and browns, of pines and larches, oaks and birches, rhododendrons and eucalyptus that reach high and thick over her head and drag their fingers through the sky. For when she dies, she wants to be burned, and scattered in this place, so she can join her friend, and they can mingle down there in the cool earth, and catch up on all that has happened since they last saw each other.