On page four runs a list of every detour one must take to avoid construction on the Champlain Bridge:

Stay clear of 15 south from the Turcot Interchange from Highway 132. Stick to designated routes on Atwater and de La Vérendrye Boulevard to access the Bonaventure Expressway during installation of two modular trusses upstream of the bridge…

Below this item a restaurant reviewer outlines the merits of scalloped veal over the Salisbury steak at his favourite diner. Things have not changed an iota from the coffeehouse drivel I used to read in London at Osinda’s or the Cocoa Tree….

It’s the same with what I overhear in the streets. I eavesdrop on Montreal hoping I might hear its civilians discuss the latest findings in astronomy, or new perspectives on ancient philosophy, but they bleat the same small-talk I could neither abide nor understand in London of 1752: sports, weather, insipid flotsam sent on the wind by the latest political scandal—details petty and trivial and numerous as Sophie’s froth-flecks on her painted walrus’s sea, ephemeral. You’d think it all the most weighted precious stones, the way people bleat on. This fills me with chagrin and always has done.

On torn page fourteen, half a face resembles Harold’s—but I know it’s just me wishing I could find him again. I miss his cheerful yellow clothes. His was a motherly understanding. In the absence of both Henrietta and Madame Blanchard, might not one’s best mother be a man? The bit of headline remaining under the photograph says Man Apprehended After Exp….I recall Harold said he’d caused a small avalanche climbing Mont Royal, and wonder for a moment if he might have graduated to explosions.

Dejected, I walk to Rue Laurier and try poutine with lamb and pomegranate: then to Crescent Street for a mountain of sausage and mash. None of this is cheap, but the cheque for seven hundred dollars in Madame Blanchard’s paperwork means I can afford it. I feel surprised the nursing home hasn’t gulped every last cent of Madame Blanchard’s account, but I suppose seven hundred is no big deal to Gisele Thunay-Dufresne.

Now I’m too stuffed to visit the place I found last year, where they grill coins of potato sliced so thin you can see through them. Instead I head to Dépanneur Tracy to buy Sophie’s favourite potato crisps, a type made by Miss Vickie, or so the package proclaims.

I’m headed back up the Main when I realize I have Sophie’s crisps and I have the brown envelope from the nursing home with my cheque in it and Madame Blanchard’s papers, but I no longer have the box that holds her ashes. I’ve left her with my Styrofoam plate and plastic cutlery and greasy paper napkin littering the table at Le Petit Québec.

Has Saint Augustine saved Madame Blanchard?

I race back down.