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swimming , he said.
    Full reintroduction. In thirty years maybe, and not in England. She shakes her head. She has not come professionally unprepared.
    The Highland studies are speculative – I know, I advised on one them. This country isn’t ready for an apex predator yet, won’t be for quite a while. The Caledonian Park took ten years to get off the ground, and then it was dismantled. The issue is just too divisive for Britain.
    Eight years, the Earl says, quickly. But Campbell messed it up. He didn’t spend the money. You have to spend the money.
    She shakes her head again.
    I don’t want money. No one in my line of work does it formoney.
    No. That’s not what I meant.
    Thomas Pennington’s smile broadens, becomes enigmatic. Does he mean a bribe? Or perhaps he is alluding to the returns he might make if he offers wolf-watching tours in the enclosure. He is determined; she can see that. And he has excessive confidence.
    People here don’t care about the countryside in any deep way, she says. They just want nice walks, nice views, and a tearoom.
    That may be, he says. But I have an exciting vision. Sometimes a country just needs to be presented with the fact of an animal, not the myth.
    Now there is pathos in his argument; he knows he has failed to win her over. Still, he seems hopeful. The eleventh Earl of Annerdale. He could almost be another species. Specialist cologne. No wallet carried in his back pocket. Regardless of democracy, the greater schemes are led by those in the upper echelons, the moneyed, she knows that. Perhaps he will do it. For a moment she thinks about the possibilities. She looks ahead, through the misty smirr, towards the lake, which would, she thinks again, be a good territorial boundary, if this were wilderness. The rain lisps and taps on the Land Rover roof, old and sensual, an influence long before language. The smell of it – so familiar – iron and minerals, the basis of the world. But she is not ready to come back, and may never be.
    She faces him, holds out her hand, and after a moment Thomas Pennington takes it. They shake.
    I’m sorry, she says. But best of luck.
    The Earl smiles.
    I hope we can still count you as a friend of the project.
    Of course, she says.
    *
    After their meeting she is offered lunch at the hall, which she declines. It seems unnecessary to linger. Her host is, in any case, leaving to go south – there’s a helicopter standing on a hardpad near the back of the hall, its blades bowed, the helmeted pilot sitting in the cockpit. Leaving the estate, she tries to spot finished sections of the enclosure barrier, but the trees have yet to lose their leaves fully and it’s cleverly hidden from view. The cost must have been astronomical: millions, perhaps. There are other estates in the country with small wildlife parks, housing bison, boar, and wildcats, but they are not free-ranging, they are fed, cared for – glorified zoos. Nothing as ambitious as Annerdale exists.
    The gate opens to allow her exit and closes slowly behind her, and though it’s her choice, she feels expelled. She picks up the western road, which is narrow, unwalled, and crosses the high moors. There are few properties on the way; no working farms remain, and the stretch is not popular for second homes. On the near horizon is Hinsey Knot. She decides to stop and take a walk. In a stony layby, she changes into jeans and boots, zips up her jacket. The grass underfoot is springy and dun coloured, the path wending up the fell made of shattered rock. She ascends, without haste but swiftly – it is not a taxing climb. She puts up her hood against a sudden squall, her thighs dampening. She passes no one. The mountain is more of a grassy mound, the path barely steepening past thirty degrees. The sun emerges, still with warmth in it. Two buzzards turn loops on the currents of air above. A rabbit darts across the slope and is granted amnesty. When