I did see Mark one further time but that was on a TV screen in 1996 during evening news coverage of the controversy over the Newbury bypass in Berkshire, when protesters camped out in the wild and, in an ultimately doomed attempt to prevent the destruction of 10,000 trees on the proposed route, chained themselves to trunks and branches (‘I wouldn’t like to be in the middle of that lot with a fully working nose,’ said my mum, who was watching with me). Several celebrities marched to stop the road being built, including the children’s television couple Maggie and Oliver Fox. During interviews with the Foxes and some of the other celebrities and protest organisers, I spotted what was unquestionably the left two thirds of Mark in the background, his aura and shine unmistakable, in clothes that he probably hadn’t taken off for three weeks. Of course, in the years since then, I’ve attempted to look him up online, but been able to find very little of substance. Mark seems to have become one of those rare people who have ducked the gaze of the search engine, his soul too tricky and deep to be googleable. His name comes up on a stag beetle survey I found printed by Natural England in 2004 and a list of organisers for an early Climate Change march in Oregon in 2009, and I heard a rumour that – after Old Boy died, fifteen years ago – Mark had fallen in love and moved to the US west coast, but other than that I know nothing. Did he forge a new identity? Change his name? It’s possible. Something in my gut makes me sure he is still alive.