Hale Dankforth, in my mind a Trump-voting open-carry fan, full of bluster and dumbass self-righteousness, turned out to be none of those things. He was a delivery guy, a contractor rather than an employee, a card-carrying Democrat sunk in his own hole in life, debts pulling him down. He was on the phone to the company that was going to repossess his TV. He had the legal minimum insurance, 50/100/25 – a maximum of fifty thousand for each person injured, a hundred for all people injured and twenty-five for property damage.

The maths is complicated, but okay so far. My surgery came in at fourteen grand, though there may be more ahead. Physical therapy and the gym – paid for, since the program comes from my physical therapist – account for a couple of thousand more, as does the series of braces I went through.

Hale Dankforth drove a Fiat Marea, the Marengo-version panel van, discontinued long ago. He now has no van and no TV, and I don’t know if he has a job.

My new van – paid for out of that twenty-five for property damage – is in better shape than the one it replaced. It’s a 2013 Ford Transit, with only 28,000 miles on the clock. It was customised by its first owner to have one row of seats behind the front, so it can carry five people as well as substantial cargo. I bought it from its second owner, a flower-grower with greenhouses outside Palmer who used it to take flowers to Anchorage Farmers Market. They sold the business in the summer to move to Florida, and the new owner didn’t need the van. I got it for three grand under market, according to Wade when he heard the price, though what his credentials were for the observation I don’t know. I almost told him I’d stuck a photo of a van on the fridge when I got home from hospital, but thought better of it.

Sometimes, when I open the door, I think I can still smell flowers in there, particularly if I’ve left the van in the sun. The flowers it brought to town would have spread all over Anchorage – anniversaries, thankyous, get-well-soons, babies. Flowers in maternity wards, with their coloured foil balloons, pink or blue. One thought leads to another.

A minibus is stopped up ahead at a viewing spot, its load of tourists all pressing against the seawall, peering at the water for belugas or taking selfies or shots of the rugged landscape. Across the Turnagain, Hope is barely visible in the folds of the Kenai Mountains, where they meet the water in a lip of flatter, damp green land.

Brutus struck a coin with the Ides of March on it? Ellen seemed to say that. Maybe I didn’t hear her properly.