Outside, a thin veil of cloud bruised the sunlight. The air was chill and the ground firm after several days without rain. Francis decided to cut across the open ground to the woods and then curve back home along the northern edge of the estate. He walked through the familiar and yet enduringly strange English savannah that had emerged from the wilding of Howorth. When he reached the woods, he caught a glimpse of the neighbouring land through the tangled branches: huge monotonous fields of winter stubble waiting for a shower of nitrogen and phosphates and pesticides and fungicides and herbicides and a rise in temperature to turn them into huge fields of monotonous blonde wheat. Isolated from the rest of nature, it required ever larger prescriptions of fertiliser, like adrenalin shots in the heart of an overdose victim. As he made his way among the first few trees, Francis heard a commotion deeper in the wood, in the direction of the field he had just glimpsed; the sound of shaking and cracking branches. He wondered if one of the poachers who were attracted by Howorth’s abundant game had set a trap or wounded an animal with a crossbow. He pressed ahead towards the source of the disturbance and, after working his way around a thicket of brambles, came upon a full-grown fallow deer caught up in the wire of the boundary fence. Its thick neck was twisting back and forth, and its legs gouging the earth, pushing it deeper into the metal knot tangled around its palmated antlers. When it saw Francis, its frantic, glassy eyes stared at him with pure terror.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ said Francis, ‘I’m going to help you.’

He edged closer, trying to calm the tormented buck and to see if he could loosen the wire, but its agitation grew more violent as he approached.

‘I’ll be back,’ he said, hoping his tone would sound soothing, or that at least his absence would reduce the poor animal’s distress.