Peter tucked his legs beneath the chair where he’d been waiting this last hour and stared at the sheriff’s desk. There was a square pad of acid-yellow paper. Seven plastic stacking trays toppling sideways because some of the metal rods supposed to prop them up were missing. There were pens in a mug with a boss-eyed moose on it yelling, ‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here but it helps.’ In the corner of the ceiling, a stub of old Christmas tinsel stuck behind tape where the garland had been ripped from the wall. A stuffed marmot getting dusty on the filing cabinet. A computer. Dust on top of that, too. A keyboard with bits of food stuck in the tiles. A fan in the ceiling with a pulley thing and eighty-two white square ceiling tiles, last time Peter counted. There were a lot of things. He’d heard of some of them, too. He used to spend whole afternoons getting Darlene to walk him through every department store and boutique in her memory until he could practically reach out and touch the world that was before. But now that he was here, in some police station on the outskirts of a town called West Wranglestone with barely any memory of how they got here or when he last saw Cooper, he realised he didn’t want any of those things.

Another ten minutes had passed when the people in the corridor suddenly stopped talking. Peter looked round. The door opened and a boy carrying a mug of hot drink scurried in. He couldn’t have been any younger than Peter, but he was working so hard to prove he could keep quiet that he tiptoed over to the desk like a child pretending to creep through a spooky mansion. His Hawaiian shirt drew too much attention, too. It was so loud. You wouldn’t think it was possible for flowers to scream at you, but, there it was.

The boy pulled a square of yellow paper from the pad, setting the mug down on top of it so as not to make a ring stain on the desk, and held back a moment. He was conscious of his weight as he kept yanking the bottom of the shirt away from his belly so it didn’t cling. Peter focused on the snow falling between the slats in the blinds and felt the boy staring at him. Growing up, he was used to being the one to break any awkward silences. Men like Bud back home weren’t disposed to small talk at the best of times.

He was about to say hello when the boy cleared his throat.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you before my dad does,” he said, “but I’m Teddy.”

Peter nodded. “OK. Hi.”