Jimmy’s earliest complete memory was of a huge bonfire. He must have been five, maybe six. He was wearing red rubber boots with a smiling duck’s face on each toe; he remembers that, because after seeing the bonfire he had to walk through a pan of disinfectant in those boots. They’d said the disinfectant was poisonous and he shouldn’t splash, and then he was worried that the poison would get into the eyes of the ducks and hurt them. He’d been told the ducks were only like pictures, they weren’t real and had no feelings, but he didn’t quite believe it.

So let’s say five and a half, thinks Snowman. That’s about right.

The month could have been October, or else November; the leaves still turned colour then, and they were orange and red. It was muddy underfoot—he must have been standing in a field—and it was drizzling. The bonfire was an enormous pile of cows and sheep and pigs. Their legs stuck out stiff and straight; gasoline had been poured onto them; the flames shot up and out, yellow and white and red and orange, and a smell of charred flesh filled the air. It was like the barbecue in the backyard when his father cooked things but a lot stronger, and mixed in with it was a gas-station smell, and the odour of burning hair.

Jimmy knew what burning hair smelled like because he’d cut off some of his own hair with the manicure scissors and set fire to it with his mother’s cigarette lighter. The hair had frizzled up, squiggling like a clutch of tiny black worms, so he’d cut off some more and done it again. By the time he was caught, his hair was ragged all along the front. When accused he’d said it was an experiment.

His father had laughed then, but his mother hadn’t. At least (his father said) Jimmy’d had the good sense to cut the hair off before torching it. His mother said it was lucky he hadn’t burnt the house down. Then they’d had an argument about the cigarette lighter, which wouldn’t have been there (said his father) if his mother didn’t smoke. His mother said that all children were arsonists at heart, and if not for the lighter he’d have used matches.