Oh, Rose knew his name, of course. It was etched on her mind. As was his face, from all the newspaper stories, the TV reports. All those times she used to speak of wanting to punish humans for what they were doing to animals, she’d never thought of that punishment landing on one person in particular, out of all of the billions of humans on Earth. She never thought of a single person bearing that suffering, as distinct from the mass of greedy, grasping humanity.

He was nineteen – the same age as her. He had picked up work from the college doing night patrols at off-site buildings. He had a habit of going everywhere with his earphones in, but as the porter’s son he was trusted and liked. ‘A good sort of lad, never a trouble to anyone.’ That kind of thing was said. But for all they knew, argued Garrett, he was dealing drugs and screwing thirteen-year-olds.

She believed it for a time. She had the zealotry of the young. Then she found a way to rationalise it as the fault of the college. They had sent him out to patrol the building, having received reports of kids hanging around, kids who were not from Halsbury College. God forbid anyone should trespass on hallowed college property.

To make everything worse, the fire did not stop anything. It only slowed things down. The police knew an animal rights group was probably to blame: the fire came after bitter protests against the university’s plan for a new animal-testing laboratory. Undaunted, the university opened the facility several years later, in the specially built, secure Biomedical Sciences Building. Mice, ferrets and primates – they did the full spectrum of vivisection. The government stepped in to pick up the bill for the extra security that was needed. The college put up the new boathouse, this time with student accommodation on the second storey, using the students as human shields to deter future arson attacks.

Not that they would have tried it again. They were already scared off after what had happened to the watchman, after what they had done. The group broke up and its members scattered, all except for Rose, who stayed exactly where she was, suspected by no one. There was the inquest, the verdict of probable manslaughter.

What is it like to be Rose Dawson?

For all her sensitivity to animals and the natural world, and despite everything she’d learned about animal behaviour, she was insufficiently attuned to specifically human perils.

The harm they could do and the harm that could come to them.

The game was on, Nottingham Forest and Swansea City, red- and white-clad players darting here and there onscreen. At the back door, the dog was barking, going mental, the neighbours said.