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them. So make sure you don’t fall in!’
    Amazon knew what her Uncle Hal was up to. She was desperately worried about her parents, and Hal was doing all he could to keep her mind engaged and busy so she wouldn’t dwell on the dark fears that crept back whenever nothing more engrossing was there to keep them at bay.
    The trouble was that this sort of thing didn’t come naturally to Hal. Everything that Amazon had heard about him when he was younger from her own father created an image of a happy and relaxed person, able to enjoy life and, crucially, someone capable of standing back and letting others enjoy theirs.
    But things had changed when Hal was in his early twenties. It was then that his own father, John Hunt, had been badly hurt in an accident. After that, the burden of running the business, and looking after his kid brother – Amazon’s father – had fallen on Hal’s young shoulders.
    The spooky thing was that, although Amazon didn’t know the details, she did know that he had been in a plane crash somewhere in Canada …
    Back then they ran an operation collecting animals to sell to zoos. It was Hal at first, later helped by Roger, who changed things around and set up TRACKS, with a focus more on keeping animals safe in their own environment, rather than in zoos. He’d worked himself into the ground, sometimes travelling the world, but also doing the boring work of getting funding and lobbying governments. And so the organization had grown.
    But somewhere along the way Hal had lost his joy and his zest. Where once he zipped through life, now he trudged.
    The brothers finally fell out over Hal’s desire to bring in ever-increasing amounts of money to pay
for the TRACKS programmes around the world. Roger thought that too many compromises had been made, that TRACKS had become too close to some unsavoury governments and big corporations, which had only their own interests in mind. He thought that TRACKS had lost its soul.
    And so it lost him too.
    Frazer’s mother had died when he was a baby, which again had heaped the pressure on his father’s shoulders. He might have crumpled under it, but it just made him stronger, tougher. What it didn’t make him was easy to live with. He had become closed off emotionally, reluctant to speak his heart. Frazer knew that his dad loved him, but that was because he knew how to read the signs: a half-smile here, a pat on the shoulder there.
    Hal Hunt was trying with Amazon, he really was. She sensed that. But he just wasn’t the person you went to when you wanted a hug and a shoulder to cry on – to lean on, yes, but not to cry on.
    The trail from the campsite opened out and the crystal waters of the lake were before them. Slender pine trees rimmed the shoreline and Amazon saw a beaver lodge – an untidy mound of branches and mud – across on the far side. A single bird – a dramatic black and white Great Northern Loon – sailed serenely across the water, its wake a perfect V behind it.
    The floatplane was moored close to the lakeside, near to where a spit of shingle reached out into the water like a long, bony finger. Hal led the way to the end of the spit. It was more exposed out there, with water on three sides, and Amazon shivered.
    ‘You can feel that winter’s coming,’ she said.
    ‘Another month and you’ll be able to walk across to the other side,’ said Hal. ‘But this is still a good time for the animals. Lots to eat. And I suggest we get a modest share of it!’
    ‘You sure there’s trout out there, Dad?’ said Frazer. He was already, in his mind, feasting on the fish, hot and white from the campfire.
    ‘Oh yes,’ Hal nodded. ‘At this time of the year the trout come a little nearer to the surface. All summer long they’ve been down at the bottom, vacuuming up the baitfish. But now the water’s colder, the whole crowd of ’em get a yearning for the sun.’
    ‘How we gonna catch them, Dad. Fly?’
    ‘Does this look like a fly rod, Frazer?’