“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” He used an affected voice that suggested mockery of her work.

‘That’s like you,’ he said, delighted. ‘You’re the hedgehog, prickly but faithful. I’m like the fox. That could be my motto: Multa novit vulpes, the fox knows many things.’ He laughed.

Rose had long since forgotten what the essay was about, but in the months before her birthday she was taken back to that conversation by a series of events.

The first notable thing to happen was that she acquired a new boss. She started when she saw the name in the announcement email: Danny Coalcliff, renowned expert on animal welfare. And there was his photo. They didn’t give his age but he looked youthful, early thirties. Appealingly shaggy-haired, like a layabout musician who’d grown up and made good. He was to be the pin-up boy for their shiny new centre. They were getting a whole new building, which didn’t exactly thrill Rose. She loved the old centre. It was little more than a demountable classroom stuck in the middle of a field, with a few pigpens, chicken coops, and miscellaneous barns. It was a cosy place to work. Best of all, she was able to bring her dog to the office.

Rose was basically content with her life as it was. She wasn’t looking for change. Each day she rode to work with Frank behind her in a trailer, leaving the narrow streets of Cowley for fields of frost or dew. At night, she came home to the small row house where she lived alone. She collected her veggie box if it had been left with a neighbour. She recycled and composted. At weekends she took long walks or did things around the house, with the TV on in the background for company.

Danny Coalcliff soon appeared in person. He turned up like a newly minted northern hero, charismatic, brilliant, friend to animals and man. Coming to Oxford, he was embraced by the faculty and staff as a breath of fresh air. He had been brought in to guide the centre towards a more commercial incarnation, no longer the dependent child of the faculty. He replaced a much older set of hands (Professor Booth was retiring).

Honestly, she guessed he would be good for the centre. He had an infectious passion for animal welfare, a passion she shared. In her early twenties, she had been very intense, even zealous, on the issue. She used to speak of wanting to punish humans for what they were doing to animals. These days, she worried about the meat content in the dog food she fed Frank, partly because of her stance against killing animals and partly because of the emissions footprint. But she was not as hard-line as she used to be, and more to the point, she loved Frank above all else.