‘Over there.’ She pointed to the old Shaker dresser, whose perfection of simplicity Katie had ruined by painting daisies on the doors. ‘I fell against that when I was four and smashed my front teeth.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Yeah. It was nasty. Knocked one right back into the gum. I had an operation to get it out before it went septic. And the window there. I used to run to it and watch the trains when I heard them coming. You knew that there were no houses on the other side of Oriole when we bought this place? You could see right across Silver to the rail track and the Trans-Canada then. There was just birch-scrub across the street. I used to play at being The Man from Uncle in it.’

Sam wondered if the same trains that had flattened his dollars nearly a hundred miles away had been tracked by the eager eyes of a young Katie Crosby. It made him feel warm for the first time that day to imagine it.

‘I’d count the stairs with my eyes closed every time I went up to bed and if I got it wrong then it meant I would grow up ugly and never marry.’

‘So you always got it right then.’

She smiled at him. ‘I didn’t think so at high school. I also thought I was gay.’

Sam raised an amused eyebrow, but not very high.

‘I was in love with Betty Lendle. She was tall and elegant, and I was small and round. She had these fantastic big tits and I wasn’t even in a bra by then. And oh, I wanted her to love me back, but she never did. I don’t think she even knew that I used to dream wicked things about her and me.’

‘But you weren’t gay.’

‘No. I guess I wasn’t.’ She looked away, and Sam felt like crushing her to him when her face reddened a little. ‘I fell for a guy called, wait for this, Kirk Mahoney.’ She looked back up at Sam with sincere eyes and cheeks still coloured from the memory. ‘In fact I lost my cherry with Kirk Mahoney.’

Sam wasn’t laughing, so she continued.