The supermarket sat beneath the foothills at the edge of town. A parking lot, vast and white like the lake in winter, stood between Peter and a long glass window where a row of cash tills had been stationed. Cars, domed with snow, sat in gridded formation across some of the lot. Peter supposed that most of them had been here since the world before. Icicles caked their exhaust pipes with banks of snow that flanked the wheels right up to the chassis. Further out across the lot, a pack of shopping trolleys stood stranded and exposed. They were huddled one inside the other, the way buffalo do out on the plains when finding warmth in each other’s bodies. A short way away from the pack, one of the trolleys had come undone. It lay on its side all alone with the ribs of its metal carcass completely buckled. Pawprints led away from its skeleton. Bears were in hibernation. Wolves, perhaps. The prints led back across the lot up into the hills beyond. Peter looked up, taking in those dark places beneath the snowy pines where any beast could be watching him, and for a moment recalled the roughness of Cooper’s hands touching him. He could see them now too, reaching back from his place on the saddle, with those blond hairs flat across the back like dry summer grasses, to stroke his inner thigh as they rode. Rising blood flooded Peter’s body, making his racing heart pump. He ran across the lot, swinging his arms about him to gain good traction in the snow, and stood gazing up at the hills, panting. But he couldn’t chase that memory to make it come any closer. He scoured the pines for a wet muzzle or a pair of turquoise eyes, pierce and hunting. But there was nothing, and a moment later, the blood drained from his limbs and all memory of Cooper’s touch had gone again.