When I looked up, she was watching me. ‘I know that feeling,’ she said. ‘Though I think the point of reading is not to feel more a part of the world, but less. To take oneself out of it. On paper, everything can be hammered into shape, though the world is shapeless.’ She reached up to hold her hair back. The wind knocked into her, made her seem to be swallowed by skirts and hair. ‘The trouble with writers is they spend their lives trying to lie to themselves.’

Mist suffocated trees and sky and grass, made everything so cool and quiet, like we walked under water. Two women passed us, turned and wagged their chins, and suddenly I didn’t know how to answer her. My throat closed like a fist. So, I started back, towards the gates, with her following me.

‘What did they speak about, in the library, after you went in?’ I asked, at last.

‘Nothing. Nonsense.’ She laughed. ‘Themselves. Nothing of any consequence, in other words.’

Here is another beginning. The moment I realized that the sensation she stirred in me was a feeling of wanting. Unlikely. Unnatural. Impossible. Because the thing I wanted was her.

There was a fair just beside the gates, I remember, and the three of us walked through it. Chestnuts and cider spiced the air; boards covered with paper spoke of mermaids, two-headed men, fire-eaters. Tops spun like wind. We stopped to watch a tightrope-walker, a rat frisking across a shorter rope strung beneath him. From a tent to the right of us, a man led an elephant tied with a length of hemp. An elephant! I’d seen a picture of one before, in a book written by a naturalist. But reading about something can never be the same as seeing it. The grey leathery wave rearing up and up, and then the quiet crash, the giant-legged curtsy. The people at the front hopped backwards, made a show of bringing their hands up to their mouths, shrieking laughter. Some people love to be frightened in a crowd, tossing fear around like a hot potato. ‘Step up! Step up! Ladies and gentlemen!’ the man cried. ‘All creatures, little or large, fall under man’s dominion!’

I stood on tiptoe to see over the heads in front, everyone jostling. A small boy turned, thin and dirt-smudged and bug-eyed, and tugged on the skirts of the woman beside him, and then she swung around, pursed her lips at me. ‘Imagine! A great beast like that right out in the street!’

Pru gasped. ‘Some folk should learn to keep their bone-boxes shut!’

That was when it came back. That gritted hum. Between my eyes, my teeth, my bones. Anger. It had slipped out of me momentarily while I’d walked with her, and I’d felt something like contentment. Now it was back. I gave them both a smile, tight as a well-made bed, let it go wide, to show it didn’t bother me. But, mercifully, while we’d been standing there, it had started to drizzle slow drops, and now rain pelted hard as rocks, forcing us to turn and flee. The crowd scattered, too, everyone running off in different directions. When we reached the street again, the fog hung in front of us like a grey cloud, black flakes of soot spiralling through it.