Winter has now fully relinquished its grip on London, and brave new life can be found forcing its way up from previously frozen flower beds, bare branches, and even between cobbles and paving slabs. Small birds flit to and fro gathering twigs and beakfuls of all manner of snatched materials for their nests. The sun is still low in the sky, and the days not yet lengthened into spring proper, but there is a sense of regeneration, of renewal, of hope. This rebirth of slumbering life has infected Bram with what he knows in his heart to be a misplaced optimism. He has even managed to persuade Lilith that they can venture out in public together for once.

The second he sees her slender figure standing by the entrance to the zoological gardens he knows the darkness of winter, of her time of mourning, of the most acute phase of her grief, all have passed. She is quite changed. Although still dressed in her sumptuous black woolen coat, she has chosen a hat of silver-gray, with matching gloves. He marvels at how such a tiny lifting, a minute step of barely a shade, can bring about such an alteration. Her complexion seems rosier, brighter, more alive.

For a brief moment she does not see him, so that he is free to enjoy watching her. As he does so he notices something curious. Lilith takes out a handkerchief to dab at her dust-smarted eyes. As she is putting it back into her bag she drops it. It falls to the ground, and she stoops to pick it up, but she does not reach the ground. Instead, the small square of cotton and lace appears to rise up to meet her outstretched hand. Bram marvels at what it must be like to have magic as part of one’s everyday life. At one’s disposal for things both trivial and important.

And then she looks up and spies Bram, and her green eyes shine, and the smile with which she greets him warms his heart. As soon as she reaches him he snatches up her hand and presses it to his lips. For a moment they stand close, without speaking, desire fizzing between them. At last she pulls away.

“Come along,” she says, smiling, “I want to visit the wolves.”

They walk on past the aquarium, beyond the new Mappin Terrace with its bears and arctic animals, and to the very edge of the zoological gardens where a wooded area borders Regent’s Park. Here a shaggy-pelted wolf pack have been given an unlikely home. Lilith loops her arm through Bram’s, and they watch the lupine family stretch and yawn and stir themselves for a new day.

“They don’t look at all savage,” she says.

“That’s because there is a sturdy fence between us and them.”

“No, it’s because they are never hungry. They don’t have to hunt. Everything is given to them.”

“I shouldn’t imagine they mind. Look at that one, he’s positively plump,” Bram points to a black wolf lolling beneath a silver birch.