The Wolf Border

She should tell him not to worry about what can’t be changed. The past damages, the old wounds. The trick is not to limp; one has to forget one was ever limping, like Ra, whose leg has healed.

Maps of the estate have been sent to her. Spatially, the argument is easily made; it is one of the few tracts of land where such a project is viable. The new game enclosure bill has given the Earl licence for such a project. No doubt he pulled strings to have it passed. Work is underway on the barrier. The money seems limitless. What he does not ha

She does not take her mother’s hand. Instead she finds herself repeating a line she read once, in a poem, in a book on a shelf in a house where she spent no more than a few illicit hours. Everything tends towards iron.

Are they really so blind? she wonders. Sylvia, protecting her father, complicit in his scheme by virtue of her institutionalisation. Huib is reconciled, co-opted, too white of heart to suspect anything nefarious. She begins to feels sick. There is a conspiracy around the table, and they don’t even realise they are taking part. Even she is implicate

Susiraja (Finnish) – Literally ‘wolf border’: the boundary between the capital region and the rest of the country. The name suggests everything outside the border is wilderness.

She tracks through the papers and the blogs – there is a huge public outcry over the dead wolf; the picture is being widely circulated. So like the English, Rachel thinks: object, ignore, and then, late in the day, after a tragedy, rally.

They continue on, into the mountains, sedately, like some kind of royal procession, the diplomatic arrival of a crowned couple. And it is historic, she thinks. It’s five hundred years since their extermination on the island. They are a distant memory, a mythical thing. Britain has altered radically, as has her iconography of wilderness, her totems.

His belly is tight under his soft skin, glabrous, like stone wrapped in chamois leather.

Look, she says. Binny and I didn’t get along, granted, but that has nothing to do with you and I and we shouldn’t let it muddy the water. I just think we should meet and talk. Start from scratch. Her tone is level, calm, exactly as if she were talking to volunteers, instructing them on sedation, how to inject or take a sample, inserting the syringe