Wednesday 16th November

I rehearsed my pitch on the train all the way to Waterloo, drawing strange looks from the couple sitting opposite, who were no doubt wondering why my mouth was moving silently and my eyebrows were wavering between imploring, glowering and deadly serious.     

      At Waterloo, I approached the usual mix of homeless, beggars and Big Issue sellers, rummaging in my pocket for change. The smart-suited man ahead of me made the mistake of giving a fiver to the bolshy guy at the end. I’d noticed the more money he was given, the longer his tirade would be.

       ‘Fiver wouldn’t even pay your dry-cleaning bill, you rich tosser,’ Bolshy Guy hurled at him, deftly pocketing the note.

      Smart-suited man shook his head, shuffling from polished black shoe to polished black shoe as the tirade continued.

       ‘The world would be better off if you didn’t exist. If you didn’t bother with your dry-cleaned suit and stayed at home and did sweet fuck all. Smart-guy-city-tosspot,’ he accused, peering up through overgrown eyebrows and shaggy hair.

      He had a point. I’d calculated the environmental impacts of laundry using the Costing for Nature software and could have informed them about the high carbon footprint of washing clothes and the contribution of dry cleaners to air pollution. I decided not to interject and walked on past ‘smart-guy-city-tosspot’, who stood patiently accepting the abuse. The tirade might go on for a while and I couldn’t afford to be late. Anyway, I didn’t need my daily dose of psychic self-flagellation, because today I’d be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

      I walked the familiar route over Waterloo Bridge and gulped in a lungful of the bracing wind, taking in the open vista of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament etched against the cornflower blue sky. A cormorant perched on an old barge, drying its wings. Gulls circled raucously above; crabs picked among the debris on the muddy banks where the tide had receded. Nature in the heart of the city.

      Last week, Extinction Rebellion protestors had occupied the bridge. Part of me had been thrilled to see them. Hordes of young bearded, pierced and tattooed protestors beating drums, chanting and waving banners: ‘Save the Earth’, ‘Rebel for Life’, ‘Wise up. Rise up’. There had been families too, mothers with pushchairs, dads with toddlers on their shoulders. But no amount of smiles and thumbs up on my part could disguise my city suit and complicity. They’d chanted, ‘this is the sixth mass extinction,’ and in my paranoia and guilt, I’d been sure it was aimed at me.

      I got to work with twenty minutes to spare and headed straight for the bathroom, suddenly nervous. I hated our office toilets, the scent of the air freshener worse than what it disguised. And they were pretentious, with toilets that automatically flushed the moment you got off them, or, unnervingly, when you moved on the seat. I washed my hands quickly. It must be nearly time for my pitch. I hoped Simon, the financial director, wouldn’t be there with his intimidating beard. I regarded my pale freckled face in the mirror and longed to be more hirsute. I didn’t even want a beard necessarily, just the feeling that beneath my skin were follicles of thick, dark, bristly hair bursting to come forth. Then I’d feel equal to the task.

      I regretted again scheduling my meeting with the carbon offsetting enterprise on the same day. If the pitch failed it would be a waste of time, but they’d been insistent. 

      I headed to the conference room and sat amidst the pot plants in the waiting area.               ‘By valuing the ecosystem and everything that depends upon it, we will protect it,’ I whispered earnestly to the Areca Fern and Rubber Plant. ‘Unless we cost for nature…’

       I stopped quickly as several suited men and a woman trailed out, leaving Martin and Simon at the table. Through the glass walls, I saw Simon open up his laptop and show something to Martin. They talked animatedly, probably working out how inputting the environmental and social impacts of each project would affect the overall costs. Martin beckoned me in. I entered with the gait of a confident man who was bringing them the best thing since sliced bread.

       ‘Hi there. Right, er…’

       ‘That’s us on the beach,’ Simon was saying.

       ‘Looks lovely,’ murmured Martin.

       ‘Four-star resort, but we wouldn’t go back.’

      I sat at the table opposite them and placed my laptop on the top pointedly. Martin eventually looked over.

        ‘What are we meeting about again, Tim? Remind me.’

        ‘This is to talk about the Costing for Nature software that will transform the way we do business. For the better,’ I added quickly.

        ‘Okay, go ahead.’

        ‘We need to cost for nature.’ Simon was still swiping through his photos. I paused, but he showed no sign of looking up. ‘For example, when we cost a project for time and money, we factor in the carbon cost too, and allow money to offset.’

       Martin looked doubtful.

        ‘It’s not a perfect solution, but at least the environmental costs would form part of the cost-benefit analysis.’

       No reaction.

        ‘My degree was in biology. I don’t know if you knew that? So I’ve been able to feed the latest environmental data and predicted carbon costs into the algorithms.’

        ‘Sounds expensive.’ Simon finally looked up.

        ‘No, we developed some software that calculates it for us.’ I searched in vain for a sign they’d checked it out. ‘There was a link in my email?’

       I waited while they murmured among themselves. It was a brief conversation.

        ‘Thanks for your idea, but it’s not something we’ll be taking forward right now,’ said Martin.

        ‘But—’

        ‘We’re a business, not a nature reserve.’

        ‘But we’re part of nature. Don’t you see?’ I searched their faces desperately for a hint of understanding. ‘We’re costing for ourselves!’

       Martin nodded towards the door. Simon was already back on his photos.

       I returned to my desk, sat in my ergonomically designed chair among a sea of similar chairs and desks in the open-plan office and gazed at my screen. The screensaver showed endless forests against a startling blue sky. I tapped a key and up came accounts for a global IT company we were helping to make richer. Standard financial modelling indicated that designing products to fail with parts that couldn’t be replaced was the most profitable business model. I gazed blankly at the numbers as it sank in. They hadn’t even looked at my CFN analysis that costed in the e-waste, unnecessary carbon emissions, and health costs from sweatshop conditions and toxic ingredients that seeped into the water. A new screensaver sprang up. A tropical island with clear turquoise sea filled with colourful fish. I was suddenly furious. They hadn’t looked at any of the sample scenarios. I grabbed my laptop and marched back in.

       They were still there exchanging holiday horror stories.

        ‘Bali was crap too. You couldn’t swim in the sea,’ Martin informed Simon.

        ‘It’s not more expensive,’ I declared loudly, striding in and banging the door behind me. Well, I tried to, but it was a glass door on a hinge designed to shut gently.               I opened my laptop and pointed to the example scenario.

         ‘See that,’ I pointed at a graph showing two lines comparing current costs with costs using the CFN.

         ‘What’s CFN?’ Simon deigned to glance over.

         ‘It’s Costing for Nature accounting software,’ I told him through gritted teeth.

         ‘Well it costs more, doesn’t it?’

         ‘Now look.’ I typed three years into the time box. The two lines for standard cost and CFN costs came together. ‘Now see.’ I typed five years into the box and the CFN line shifted below the standard cost line. ‘CFN saves money. This scenario is for the construction companies we deal with that we walk past every day coming into work. Simply switching to green cement, for example, substantially lowers CFN costs due to its lower carbon footprint.’

         ‘I drive,’ Simon said.

         ‘What? Why would you drive?’

         ‘I’ve got a Ferrari.’

        I looked at him in his perfectly cut suit, shoes too shiny for public transport and hated him.

         ‘Way overpriced for what you get. Now if it were a Porsche—’ began Martin.

         ‘But the point is,’ I shouted over him, ‘for every company we deal with, in the short term, yes it costs money to properly cost in environmental impacts, but in the medium to long term it costs way more not to.’

         ‘I’ll tell you what costs too much money,’ Martin said.

         ‘What?’ Simon asked.

         ‘A Ferrari,’ said Martin.

         ‘No, two-week holidays swimming in plastic,’ Simon retorted.

         ‘Ouch.’

         I lost it.

         ‘I don’t care about your car or your two weeks’ holiday on your tropical island.’

         ‘The holiday was shit anyway,’ consoled Simon. ‘We had to return early. My son got asthma and the hospitals were full.’

         ‘Don’t you see we’re the engines of all this?’ I cried. ‘Plastic didn’t get in the sea by magic. The asthma didn’t just happen. It was the pollution from clearing rainforests. The whole of bloody Indonesia has breathing difficulties. We crunch the numbers and depending on what goes in, out come the decisions. If we added waste and air quality and climate change to our numbers, you wouldn’t get plastic in the sea and asthma. You must see that? It’s us, it’s all us! It’s all our fault.’

        They looked at me aghast as my voice hit soprano pitch. ‘I’m not jealous of your Ferrari or your holiday, or your beard.’ Simon looked up sharply and stroked his beard possessively. He shot Martin a look. Was it guilt? I pressed the point home. ‘Surely you must see it’s our fault? But that’s okay, because the Costing for Nature software can put it right. We’re part of nature, we’re costing for ourselves. Don’t you see? We crunch the numbers. What goes in is what comes out.’ I knew I was repeating myself, but was unable to stop. ‘We’re not just complicit, we’re guilty, but we can make it right!’

         ‘Mmmhmm,’ soothed Martin. I petered out, finally deciphering their expression. It wasn’t guilt. It was pity.

        I fell silent and packed up my laptop and left the room.

        I returned to my desk and fell into my chair. Twenty-five years. I’d been in this job for twenty-five years. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, but nothing happened. I couldn’t type a word. I tried to close the file I’d been working on but fell at the first hurdle. ‘Save’, ‘Don’t Save’. I gazed at the simple question. Eventually I realised I didn’t care. I clicked on another tab and another screen of numbers popped up. I went to close it and faced the same query ‘Save’, ‘Don’t Save’. Over twenty windows were open. I pushed the power button hard until it gave up the red light and set off early for my next meeting.

        I walked back across Waterloo Bridge to Waterloo station where I handed the bolshy guy a twenty-pound note and passed the time by gazing at my black polished shoes as he told me at great length how the world would be better off without me.

* * *

As the business and shopping centres of Woking come into view, I realised that the pitch hadn’t stood a chance. Of course they’d said no. They only cared about profits and to expect anything more was naïve. With a longer time frame, the Costing for Nature policy would save money, but who thought beyond the next quarter? On the walk from the station I berated myself for being an idiot and getting people’s hopes up. Specifically Ian and Cathy, a married couple I was on the way to see, who were looking forward to seeing how the Costing for Nature software could link up with their carbon offsetting app.

        Ian, a tall blonde man in his thirties, answered the door beaming. ‘Tim! Thanks for meeting us in our home. It makes it easier with the kids.’

         ‘I’m sorry,’ I said straightaway. ‘There was probably no point my coming. They didn’t bite.’

        Two girls rushed up to the door. ‘What didn’t bite? Do you mean the crickets?’ the eldest asked eagerly. 

         ‘They do bite so,’ claimed the younger one.

         ‘This is Lucy and Anna. Girls, say hi to Tim.’

         ‘Do you have crickets?’ I asked, distracted for a moment from my woes.

         ‘Loads!’

         ‘Your garden must have excellent biodiversity.’

        Ian looked proud. ‘Come and see.’ He ushered me inside and we followed the girls into a kitchen that led out through a patio door into a garden.

        I opened my mouth to continue my apology, but was immediately hushed by Lucy.

         ‘Listen!’

        We heard the unmistakable chirp of crickets.

         ‘Do they bite?’ Anna asked me.

         ‘We just heard them for the first time today so they’re all excited,’ said Ian. ‘We let our grass grow to attract more wildlife, and it looks like we’ve succeeded.’

         ‘Well?’ demanded Anna.

        I thought back thirty years to my biology practical and the wildlife habitat we’d created in the University gardens. ‘There is one species that bites, the wart-biter bush cricket. But they’re very rare.’

         ‘Told you,’ declared Lucy, satisfied.

         ‘Anyway, I’m really sorry—’ I began.

         ‘So you know about wildlife gardening do you?’ Ian interrupted.

         ‘I used to be a guerrilla gardener before I joined the rat race.’ 

         ‘What did you do?’

        I smiled, remembering. ‘Gardens on bus shelter roofs was our thing,’

         ‘Cool! Why did you stop?’

         ‘PansyGate!’

         ‘What?’

         ‘We got overrun by the Bassett Ladies. They’d see a space that had a lovely bit of scrub, dandelions, great plants for wildlife that thrive in such conditions. And they’d pull it up to plant something pretty.’

         ‘They sound pure evil!’ He grinned and nodded over the fence. ‘Just like my neighbour. If she comes out, pretend to be a wildlife garden consultant!’

        I glanced over at the neat garden next door. ‘Sorry, I don’t understand?’

         ‘It starts with an enquiry if our lawnmower is broken and would we like to borrow theirs, but what she really means is cut your damn lawn.’

         ‘Er…’

         ‘If we can say we paid someone to check our garden as a professional habitat man, then that’s different,’ said Ian.

         ‘Your garden already seems to be a perfect habitat for wildlife,’ I said, looking round. The grass was quite long. Garden debris piled up by the side, providing a habitat for invertebrates. Half-buried logs for the vertebrates, water butt, a swift box under the eaves.

         ‘Look.’ Lucy led me towards a small pond shining in the corner.

         ‘We want frogs but there aren’t none,’ said Anna.

         ‘Any,’ corrected Ian, ‘there aren’t any.’

         ‘That’s what I said. There’s no frogs.’ Anna looked at me as if I could fix it.

         ‘Their numbers have fallen, due to habitat loss and water contamination mainly, but also predation,’ I said.

        The girls looked bemused. I rephrased. ‘They need a good place to live, and your pond is great, except for that open patch between the pond and the hedge.’

         ‘Is that bad?’ Lucy asked.

         ‘Some birds eat frogs so they’d be exposed here. They like to travel without being seen so no one can see them and eat them.’

        The girls looked suspiciously up at the sky.

         ‘Let the grass grow extra long between the pond and the hedges to provide cover for them.’

         ‘Good idea.’ Ian nodded next door where the neighbour had appeared to hang out her washing and spoke loudly. ‘We should keep our grass long you say?’

        I raised my voice slightly. ‘One of the easiest things a gardener can do to enhance the wildlife value of their garden is to mow the lawn less frequently.’

         ‘We’re hoping to grow a meadow.’

         ‘For a meadow, you’ll only need to cut the grass and compost the clippings once a year, in late August.’

         ‘Thank you for your professional opinion as Habitat Man. We’ll do as you say.’ He winked at me.

         ‘If you allow your grass to grow, daisies, clover, buttercups, and dandelions will naturally proliferate, creating a meadow-like effect. For a wider variety like poppies, cornflowers, etc. remove some turf round the edges and replace with some horticultural grit or sand mix and sow wildflowers there,’ I proclaimed, getting into my role as Habitat Man. ‘Yellow rattle will reduce the vigour of the grass, giving other wildflowers more of a chance. It wouldn’t be long before your garden is alive with all kinds of butterflies.’

         ‘You’re good at this. I’m impressed.’ Ian pointed towards an intriguing wooden hut perched on a raised patio area at the bottom of the garden. ‘This will impress you.’

         ‘It’s a cool design. Is it a shed?’

         ‘Come and see.’

        Anna and Lucy followed us. ‘Do you want a wee?’ Anna asked.

         ‘Or poo,’ giggled Lucy.

        Ian laughed. ‘This is our composting toilet.’

        It was beautifully designed. Almost an arch shape, with a circular stained glass window towards the top of the door to allow in light. The way it curved into a point at the top gave it an ethereal Lord of the Rings look.

         ‘I’ve heard of these, but I’ve not been in one.’

        He looked at me expectantly, so I opened the door and beheld the toilet. It was small but stylish – a square box painted in red, gold and white.

        Ian’s face burst with pride. He lifted up the slab of wood that the toilet seat was set into. Underneath were two compartments. At the front was a large plastic bottle and at the back, in a separate section, was a square plastic container lined with a large bag and half full of wood shavings.

         ‘We have a twin-bowl design that separates the solid from the urine, to keep it dry so you don’t get flies. It goes dry and crumbly when it meets the oxygen and breaks down into germ-free compost, so you only need to empty it about once or twice a year, and you can use it to revitalise the soil.’

         ‘This is Ian’s new toy.’ A friendly-looking woman joined us. ‘You must be Tim. I’m Cathy.’ She held out her hand.

        I took it and remembered why I was there and my failure. My stuttered explanations were interrupted by Ian, who was desperate for me to try his toilet.

         ‘When you go, you use toilet paper as usual, then instead of flushing, you put down two scoops of wood shavings. No water, no chemicals. It doesn’t smell at all, does it?’

         ‘No it doesn’t.’

         ‘Would you like a go?’ He nodded, bright-eyed.

         ‘Maybe later.’

         ‘I’ll just top up the wood shavings, in case.’

        Cathy laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘We’ll leave him to it. Tim, come have a coffee.’

        Once inside, the mood lift I’d experienced in the garden disappeared, and I was left again with a feeling of despair. While Cathy made coffee, I filled her in on how the pitch had gone.

         ‘I didn’t think they’d go for it. There’s nothing compelling them is there?’ Cathy put a cup of coffee in front of me.

        I gulped it and burnt my mouth. I spat it back quickly and panted open-mouthed like a stranded fish.

        She poured me a glass of cold water. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said, watching me gulp it down. ‘Businesses seek profit. Unless we change their legal form and make them all social enterprises or benefit corporations, they’ll do what’s best for their shareholders.’

         ‘But shareholders are people too! They want clean water, fresh air, a future for their children.’ I had an image of business as a moth blindly rushing towards the bright hot lights of profit, taking humanity with it to its doom. I barely looked up as Ian joined us with the girls, realising the implications with a sudden gut-churning certainty. ‘We don’t stand a chance.’

        Cathy frowned, and Ian spoke up briskly. ‘Girls you go play outside, we’re working in here now.’

         ‘I didn’t mean to scare them.’

         ‘It’s okay.’ Ian sat at the table with us. ‘In our day we worried about nuclear war. Kids today worry about climate change.’

         ‘But this is inevitable. It’s chemistry. Ice melts at zero degrees. It’s not a might happen or it might not,’ I cried.

         ‘This generation isn’t so ingrained in the old ways. We hope they’ll help tip us over into the right mindset,’ said Ian.

         ‘One day they’ll be in power, then things will change,’ Cathy said.

         ‘But it will be too late.’ I could barely get the words out. Tomorrow I would be fifty. I’d spent half my life in that job. It was just the hope that my company would go for the Costing for Nature software that had kept me going. Could I put my shoulder back to that grinding wheel of commerce? Mid-life crisis, right on time.

         ‘Our carbon offsets are making a difference. These projects are literally drawing down carbon and pulling it out of the air.’ Cathy’s tone was desperately reassuring.

         ‘But they’re voluntary – it’s a fraction of what’s needed.’

         ‘We’re putting everything in place,’ Ian assured me.

         ‘Before we can regulate, we need to be able to calculate the carbon footprint of everything,’ said Cathy. ‘Carbon offsets normalise the idea that businesses and governments can offset to get to zero. Consumers can use them too, so they don’t feel guilty.’

         ‘But you’re right,’ Ian admitted. ‘Until it’s mandatory and everyone has their own carbon allowance, it won’t touch the sides.’ 

         ‘How do you go on?’ I was desperate for an answer to my dilemma.

         ‘Hope. There comes a point when it’s obvious to the majority that we have more to lose than gain by business as usual, and then the changes will come fast. Look at the NHS and welfare state. Concern about poverty and ill health built over centuries, but when we made the move, we did it within a decade.’

         ‘The Australians chose the greenest politicians after all their fires,’ Ian added.

         ‘Look at the Cuban revolution. Look at glasnost and perestroika, when the Soviet Union changed almost overnight. As long as the pieces are in place, change can come rapidly once the tipping point is reached, when we all realise there is more to lose than gain,’ Cathy said.

         ‘It’s like gardening. Prepare the ground, before you plant the seeds,’ said Ian. ‘I think of our wildlife garden as an island of plenty, a haven so that when we come to our senses and nurture nature, then there’s some left to start afresh.’

        I nodded to be polite, but he was kidding himself. This was just one garden. Our most likely future presented itself to me with a sickening clarity. They must have thought me so naïve. My guts were twisting as I struggled with the indigestible truth. I could hear the girls giggling as they crept into the kitchen, and it broke my heart. How we fool ourselves believing what we want to believe.

         ‘If you knew my pitch wouldn’t work, why did you agree to see me?’ I asked suddenly.

         ‘We seed ideas as well – not just about offsetting, but like the composting toilet,’ said Ian. ‘Soon we won’t be able to waste precious fresh water. Flushing away our waste, creating sewage that mixes with pesticide and agricultural run-offs to contaminate our rivers – it’s so unnecessary. So I show everyone my wonderful composting toilet – seeding the idea because the first step is to raise awareness, make people more familiar with them and how they work.’

         ‘Basically, Ian wanted to show you his new toilet,’ said Cathy.

         ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go?’ He looked at me hopefully.

        I didn’t trust myself to speak and just nodded.

        Ian smiled delighted. The girls jumped up to follow me, but he held them back.

         ‘Leave him in peace. It’s his first time.’

         ‘Have a nice wee, Habitat Man,’ shouted Anna after me.

        ‘Or poo!’ Lucy added.

        I left the sounds of laughing children and escaped outside. But there was no escape from the turmoil in my head. Thoughts bashed against each other in my besieged psyche like bumper cars at the fair. How can I go on? What else would I do? Lose myself in drink? Retreat into denial? Was that even possible?

        The freshness of the air gradually calmed my ruminations. A few slow soft drops of rain started then petered out. The sun emerged, setting the raindrops sparkling against the vegetation. I peeked over the fence at next door’s neat garden. Ecologists would call it a green desert – a tightly mown lawn, bedding plants round the border, non-native shrubs. Bamboo, Japanese maple and rhododendron may cut a dash but have nothing to offer local wildlife. The perfect grass would have been heavily treated with weed killer to look so pristine, perhaps explaining the lack of insect life.

        The quantities of toxins we were pouring into our soil, rivers and ponds alarmed me. It wasn’t just agriculture that was the culprit, but shop-bought pesticides, slug pellets, weed killers, even pet treatments. The Costing for Nature software would have revealed their true cost. Soil that was once biologically active, teeming with life and the building blocks of our whole ecology was turning to lifeless dirt, increasingly incapable of sustaining the thriving ecology we needed for our food and health.

        A sense of futility hit me again like a punch in the stomach and I returned to the glorious abundance of shelter and food in Ian’s garden. The comparison was stark, and I saw now what he’d meant by an island of plenty. I heard the sweet melody of a song thrush – increasingly rare these days. There it was on a branch near the pond, waiting for me to leave so he could pop down to the pond for a quick wash and dinner of midges. The brief spell of rain had released the smell of the lavender from the borders, attracting the bees. A tortoiseshell butterfly fluttered around the buddleia.

        I entered the composting toilet and sat down. The feeling of calm and sanctuary inside echoed the garden. It was perfectly quiet except for the distant sound of a wood pigeon. It smelled of forests and fresh air, soothing to the senses and the spirit.

        The notion of islands of plenty stirred a faint memory of my ecology module many years ago. Something to do with pockets of resilience – the idea that you can create refuges, or was it refugii? Maybe Ian was right. If you can create enough safe habitats, then wildlife could repopulate an area once conditions improved. If just a fifth of UK gardens were kept pesticide-free, and grown with native plants suited to local invertebrates, you’d have an area the size of Luxembourg. It just might be enough. 

        I’d want to chop down non-native species like bamboo and replace with a native deciduous tree, maybe a hawthorn with berries for the birds and nesting sites. A pond for sure. Pollinator-friendly plants for the bees and butterflies. Everyone’s into the idea of keeping honeybees, but they were out-competing wild bees, so I’d create habitats for mason bees. They’d be happy with a few bamboo canes tied together, and they’d hide out in the holes. Ladybirds would be good with pinecones shoved together in with some dried leaves. No need to buy compost – each garden would make their own, with food leftovers, mixed in with garden debris and their own waste.

        The smell of wood shavings reminded me of the hamster I used to keep. Trapped in its cage, running endlessly on the wheel. I thought of my job and the office toilets. But here there were no harsh lights, whirr of fans, smell of urine overlaid with air freshener. Instead, daylight streamed in through the small window, which I now saw had a picture set into the glass, a frog on a lily pad amidst dragonflies and bulrushes.

        The sun caught the stained glass window and brought the scene suddenly to life, creating an almost religious experience. The elusive frog so sensitive to water pollution, safe here where our waste was used to nurture life. I heard the chirp of a cricket and smiled. In the sanctuary of the composting toilet, at last I forgave myself.                         One person couldn’t change the world, nor should they be able to. I’d done my best within my zone of influence. It hadn’t worked, but perhaps I’d planted a seed – prepared the ground as Ian would say. Maybe when conditions were right, they’d change their mind. As for what I did now?

        Habitat Man. That was what Ian had called me.

        I realised with surprise the decision had been made.

        I breathed out for what seemed like the first time in years and relaxed. I felt a swelling up, a feeling of rightness, of great joy, a letting go.

        I used the paper, then put two scoops of wood shavings down the toilet and used the hand sanitizer. I opened the door and walked out into the garden and back into the house.

        Ian recognised something in my shining face and nodded, satisfied.

Read Less