In the middle of all this was Cooper. He wasn’t moving. Like yesterday, he stood motionless in the middle of the same aisle with both arms limp at his sides, head lolled forward and inclined towards the shelves. Two yellow signs warning ‘Caution, wet floor’ had been stationed down either end of the aisle to cordon it and Cooper off from the rest of the store, like the situation was just an accident waiting to be cleared up. But everything about that dormant state was dangerous.

Peter’s dad had told him that once, when he was six, he’d rushed down to say hello to a stranger who’d appeared at the foot of the island looking out over the frozen lake. The man didn’t take any notice of Peter jumping up and down up to say hello. Nor did he turn round when he was invited to make snow angels. It was only when Peter took him by the hand and that stone-cold thing bolted round with swivelling eyes to take him into his mouth that he realized how like the living the Dead could be. Peter thought back to what Essie had said about the Returned being able to mimic and shuddered. But she was wrong and she was dead and he wished so very badly that those thoughts would just die with her.

Peter stood on the lot shivering, barely noticing the snow flurrying into his face. After a while Sheriff O’Hurn came, looking first at Cooper through the large front window and then back across the lot directly at him with the same troubled expression and that word Timberdark blazing in his eyes. But Peter had nothing to offer the sheriff, so he hurriedly turned away and made his way back towards the movie theatre.

He was halfway down Mainstreet, passing the diner with the busted neon sign at the window that read di er whenever it flashed, when the door opened and Becky stepped out. She pulled her pink waist-apron off and locked eyes with Peter. He didn’t even have a moment to decide if he wanted her to know he was standing there. But she didn’t have a chance to compose her reaction either and before she could make the decision to look defiant, he saw her hurt. And in that moment, it would’ve been so easy for the pair of them to have rushed in and said sorry. Sorry for punishing her. Sorry for letting it go on so long. Sorry for not being there for her now. It would’ve been so easy to say all those things if the hurt in her eyes had stayed. But it didn’t.