Oh my! What a dramatic moment! Hamish X has returned to himself, only more so. At last he is able to remember the events of his past. Most of them anyway. Still, he is unable to remember clearly the one thing he wants to remember most: his mother.

Isn’t that always the way with memory? The one thing you are racking your brain to recall is the one thing you can’t quite seem to grasp. For me, it’s where I put my favourite trousers. They are such beautiful trousers: thick corduroy with glittering gold piping down the outside of the leg. They are fastened by a polished, pure silver button in the front and the zipper is fashioned out of diamonds. In the sun, the zipper and button combined with the gold piping is quite a dazzling spectacle. If I am planning to wear them on a sunny day, I am required to report my intentions to the local traffic authorities as a safety precaution: the majesty of my glittering trousers ha s been known to cause traffic accidents and to dazzle pilots in low-flying aircraft. The pants were a gift from the Sultana of Benmurgui as a reward for a particularly well-narrated story at her thirteenth birthday party.⁴⁸

The point is, I put them down somewhere and I can’t remember where. The more I try to remember, the more I can’t quite seem to recall. Highly annoying. One might wonder how such a shining pair of trousers might be overlooked. Surely they’d be difficult to miss, which leads me to believe that perhaps they have been stolen by a rival narrator, jealous of my success and my clothing. Time will tell.

I digress. Let us return to the story. Weeks have passed and the former residents of Windcity are settling in to their new home. Everyone seems happy … everyone but Hamish X.