WHEN I THINK ABOUT IT, THE FREEZER CHEST, IT’S WITH a sensation of the ferry rocking and the North Sea beneath us, black because it was January, and then the artificial lighting of the lounge where they were sitting, Mark and the others—Starling, Henrietta, Poul, and Susanna—and where I was also sitting, with our English teacher, Bo, who found me interesting to talk to, for, as he said, “One would never know that you were so young.” But in any case, they sat together over in a corner and it was 1989, the DJ had left, no one wanted to dance, it was late and a long way to Harwich, and then he went to bed anyway, the English teacher, and I was actually friends with Henrietta, so I wasn’t sure what to do, but it was then that he called me over to the group, Mark did, and said he wanted to tell me the story of the freezer chest.

I should have seen it coming, for he made no secret of not liking me. Once he’d said it in the middle of the cafeteria, and he’d said it straight out: “I don’t like you.” It had been a simple statement, and the place had grown quiet, even though Henrietta was there too, and I thought she’d protest because you couldn’t just say things like that, we weren’t twelve anymore. This was high school after all and I was eighteen, most of us were, but there were a few older students who had dropped out to see the world, or to learn a trade, and had now taken up their schoolbooks again, and Mark was one of​ 102them; I think he was twenty-five. But she didn’t say a word, Henrietta, and so I said it myself, that you couldn’t just sit there and say that sort of thing, but then Mark looked at me and said you certainly could, somebody ought to. He was sitting there with a classmate who was preparing for teachers college, while Henrietta ate her potato salad and got herself a Coke, and the would-be teacher never said boo.

But then Mark was coming along on the study trip to London, and I knew that it would prove difficult, because not only did Mark not like me, but all the others liked him a lot, and even though I was friends with Henrietta I’d have to hang out with the English teacher, who claimed that he’d once flown with the Royal Canadian Air Force, and as he was telling me how he’d ended up there and how age-related farsightedness had come between him and reenlistment, I looked over at the little group gathered around Mark. Henrietta was there too, laughing every time he said something, but then when the English teacher had gone to his bunk, he called me over, Mark did, and told me the story of the freezer chest.