Wilding was not a fantasy of returning to a primordial land, emptied of traffic and filled with extinct species, but an attempt to understand the dynamics of an unmanaged landscape and relaunch them in the modern world. One reason Francis had gone to the conference was to look into the historical question of how ecosystems had achieved equilibrium in the past. Had Britain been an almost uninterrupted woodland before the dominance of human influence, the need for fuel, building materials and agricultural land, or had megafauna prevented the emergence of unbroken forest by knocking over and trampling trees, together with smaller animals that inhibited tree growth by damaging bark and feeding on saplings? Fascinated as he was by the rival visions of ancient wilderness presented at the conference, Francis soon found that he was even more fascinated by Olivia. On the second day, they drifted away from a discussion group dedicated to portraying the life and environmental impact of the giant sloth before its extermination by Native Americans – or murderous newcomers, from the giant sloth’s point of view – and started discussing their feelings for each other instead. Catching up the next day, Francis was relieved to hear that the conference had come out in favour of the kind of landscape that was emerging at Howorth.

Francis’s thoughts were interrupted by a series of short, multiplying caws. He turned around just in time to see dozens of rooks launch themselves from the shaking branches of a tree. They made him think of the drops of ink flying from his fountain pen as it twisted through the air in his Finals. The whole episode had seemed to take place in slow motion – at just about the speed of these flapping and circling rooks in the distance – induced by the spellbound terror that his pen might land on its nib in the middle of his life’s most important exams. The association was so strange, but so intimate, showing his imagination and memory were forming their own combinations in parallel to the guided tour he seemed to be compulsively preparing for Olivia.