‘Have a cigarette,’ he offered, because in his limited experience, children were instantly impressed by cigarettes. ‘I know we can’t get warm, but they smell of Jamaica. Fools your brain. And you’ll think of waveform equations whenever you smoke one,’ he added brightly. Fred took one, stopped, and then began to laugh. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t recognise you until this very instant.’ ‘What?’ said Joe. Fred was odd, but he wasn’t enough of a holy fool to forget who Joe was.
