A mother and her young daughter sat at the other end of the bench, the girl’s gray wool coat buttoned up to her chin, faux fur around her collar and cuffs, her feet encased in a pair of navy Mary Janes. The mother smiled at Alice, and she was forced to get up and walk away, the thought of the simple act of choosing clothes for Eadie, and the likelihood she never would, setting her off crying again.

She took a familiar path, one that in summer was lined with colorful shrubs: hydrangeas with their emerald-green leaves and scented flowers, and cotoneaster, with its herringbone branches, providing a home for the bees and a forest for the insects to dance through. Today thick stalks and branches were exposed like skeletons.

Alice dried her eyes and headed toward the Penguin Pool, where she watched their show blankly, as the keepers rewarded them with fish and spectators arrived and left. Still she couldn’t feel anything, just a gnawing emptiness.

She carried on toward Three Island Pond, always one of her favorite places, yet when she reached the metal railings she noticed how much smaller it seemed now than when she was a girl, and how much slighter the grasses and rushes were that grew on the banks of the moat opposite.

“Look, Mummy, look. There’s our flamingo!” The boy held his mother with one hand and pointed with the other.

“Yes, darling, isn’t he delightful?” she exclaimed.

“They’re not going to play croquet with him, are they?” he asked worriedly.

“No, darling. Of course not.”

Alice’s thoughts turned to the times her father read her Lewis Carroll stories. Then she remembered one of their other favorites: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, who’d been Rudyard Kipling’s and her father’s hero mongoose. Rikki had protected a family that wasn’t even his, so surely Alice should be able to protect hers.

On the fence in front of her was an engraved wooden plaque: trink the ratel (honey badger) proudly sponsored by mr. and mrs. atkins, from harrow. She knew that the zoo’s adoption scheme was a success since The Sketch and Evening Standard often featured the zoo news, with articles by the eponymously named Craven Hill. But while she’d always been glad that the adoption scheme had worked, right at that moment she felt as if it existed merely to taunt her—that Alice Cotton couldn’t even look after her own child, let alone anyone else’s.

As she stood watching, the helplessness was replaced by a nagging sensation, like a sinew being pulled. She realized nostalgia had driven her to come here. What was it that she could learn from the animal kingdom about how they cared for their offspring? They all looked after their children first and foremost, not their parents. Perhaps it was that simple, the message she needed: it was time to stop protecting her mother.