She offered him the forest with a little wave of her hand, as a princess might gesture to a visiting ambassador as if to say: ‘my lands’.

J nodded. The girl took his hand and pulled him a little way towards the trees. He was to go and collect whatever specimens he wanted. J paused.

‘What will you do?’

She made a gesture to show that she would stay there. She picked up a few dry sticks and piled them together: she would make a fire. She took a little hoeing stick from the purse at her belt, and mimed digging up roots: she would find food. She gestured towards the trees and mimed sleep: she would find some shelter for them.

‘We stay here tonight?’ J asked, repeating her mime of sleep.

She nodded.

‘I will come back here in a little while,’ he said. He pointed to himself and to the forest, and showed his walking fingers. She nodded, and then mimed herself calling and then a mime of listening.

‘I’m to stay where I can hear you?’ J asked, and was rewarded with a nod and a smile.

Feeling like a child sent out to play, J went to the canoe and pulled on his leather boots, took his bag and went along the shoreline. He glanced back.

She was drawing the canoe higher up the beach, away from the reach of the tide. Then she turned and started collecting firewood. She seemed as comfortably at home in this wilderness as a young woman in the kitchen of her own house. J turned away and wandered further along the shoreline, his eyes at the edge of the wood looking for saplings and little plants in their first flush of spring growth that he might get safely home to England.

He obeyed her order that he stay within earshot, and worked his way in a sweep around their little camp until he emerged on the shoreline on the other side, his satchel bulging with seedlings and cuttings wrapped in damp linen.

She was putting the finishing touches on a shelter for the night. She had bent three saplings together and lashed them to make a low bender. She had roofed them with some wide green leaves and filled in the walls with rushes. The canoe was drawn up before the open mouth of the little hut and tipped on its side as protection, and there was a small fire smoking before the hut and two fishes staked on sharp sticks, waiting to be roasted. J came quietly but she did not jump when she saw him, he imagined that she had heard his every move since he had left her at midday. She nodded gravely as she saw him and then pointed to his satchel.

‘Yes. I’ve done well,’ he said. He opened the flap of the bag and showed her. She nodded her approval and then indicated behind him. She had weeded and dug a little patch of ground.