‘You remember how to get to Hilltop?’ asked Jim. ‘I can’t bring myself to call it Yab-Yum, it’s what my granddaughter says when I buy her an ice cream. I don’t know when arrested development became a virtue; around the same time as greed and grievance and self-pity, I guess. Resentment used to be something folks wanted to get rid of, now they water it and put it on a windowsill, like a favourite pot plant.’

‘Sure,’ said Francis, ‘but we have to get rid of the causes of resentment at the same time.’

‘Good luck with that!’ said Jim. ‘If you breed a resentment hound, it’s going to sniff out resentment, even if you put it in a forest full of truffle and deer.’

‘That’s true,’ said Francis with a smile. ‘Anyway, your directions to Hilltop were very clear, and I saw the totem pole on the way up.’

‘Now that’s what I call environmental damage,’ said Jim. ‘If it had been there in the first place, I would have conserved the hell out of it, but having it erected by a woman whose family came over here from Germany to make a fortune in the snack industry doesn’t seem to me like a compliment to the folks who used to live here, more like another slap in the face.’

‘I can’t really judge,’ said Francis, in modest defence of Hope’s pole. ‘I suppose intention plays a key part in it.’

‘Her intention was to put the biggest goddam pole she could get her hands on at the entrance to her property,’ said Jim with a mischievous chuckle. He tapped the roof of the car twice and called out, ‘Send me that proposal,’ as he turned to walk back to his house.

‘I will,’ said Francis, pulling away quietly in Hunter’s spare Tesla.

Jim’s two-hour tour of his ranch had demonstrated that homespun common sense was not just a requirement he expected from others.

‘My grandfather was acquainted with an old forester who was something of a legend up in Washington state,’ Jim had told him, as they had driven up to an area he had designated for redwood plantation. ‘He managed to make a living off the same stretch of land all his working life and he left the place with more trees on it than when he arrived. “It’s really quite simple,” he told my grandfather, “I plant more trees than I cut.”’

‘That should do it,’ said Francis.

‘Every species grows to excess,’ said Jim. ‘A blackberry bush doesn’t know when to stop growing; it just keeps on spreading. If we harvest the excess, everything is going to stay in balance.’

‘True enough,’ said Francis.