Zoe didn’t tell her mum where the Green Club was camping. The original plan was up on the common overlooking Astrid, but that had been changed at the very last minute. Apparently there was a weather front coming in, and the common was too exposed. It was Ravi who’d suggested Harcourt Wood. I’m sure my grandmother won’t mind, Zoe said, but I’ll ask her just in case. And the others nodded.

In the end, the weather held, in a manner of speaking. No storms, although it rained on and off, as the wind moved the weather through. Enthusiastically, the Green Club explored the wood. They communed with the trees. The great old oak on the boundary with the North Field was centuries old, its wide, comfortable trunk covered with little twigs, like stubble on a scruffy man’s chin, or hair on an emancipated woman’s leg. Zoe pointed out rabbit holes to her friends, and gave them wood sorrel to taste, a tangy shot of lemon. They listened to the birds sing. For supper they ate sorrel with potatoes, which, since they had forgotten a knife, they cut into pieces with their teeth, then fried with eggs. ‘Gross,’ said Ravi, looking at the shreds of premasticated raw tattie. ‘It’ll be delicious,’ said Stella, stirring it around in the pan with a stick. It was pretty good; and afterwards, as Stella played the fiddle, and the others washed up, they shared out Ravi’s only packet of Minstrels.

The girls were camping in one tent, Ravi alone in another. Will you be OK? they asked him, mostly as a joke. You won’t be scared? Or cold? By yourself? He scowled at them, and ducked inside his tent and that was the last they heard of him for the night.

In their tent, side by side in the dark, the girls talked about trees, about the things Mx Thompson had told them.

‘How beautiful this wood is,’ Stella said.

‘The pride of the islands,’ said Tara.

‘My dad loves this wood,’ said Zoe. This was a true fact because Eva had told her.