The only thing that stopped me from deliberately braining some of these animals and leaving the centre for good was Andrew. On my first proper shift, I spied him immediately, cleaning the pathway down to the ponds, humming along to music （what genre I didn’t learn, since his enormous headphones blocked it off, but I’m guessing it was something like UB40）。 I waited for the inevitable introduction and sure enough, at break time, Roger brought him over to meet us. As we said our hellos and Lucy droned on about how interesting the work was, I drank him in. The long hair, almost down to his shoulders, was badly cared for and straggly. He wore khaki trousers and an ancient grey vest, and his fingernails were encrusted in dirt and grime. But he was broad and fit, with muscles clearly made by manual labour and not in a fancy gym. If he’d cleaned up, I could easily see how my cousin fitted into the Artemis family. His face was kind, but his eyes had the same fleck of grey that my father’s had, and when he turned to the side, I saw that he had the same profile as Jeremy. Was there the same arrogance? Hard to tell.
I gave him the same vague story I’d told Roger and Lucy. I was Lara, an estate agent in North London, had just broken up with my long-term boyfriend, was looking for a new challenge and I’d had a fascination with conservation and rewilding since uni. I’d deliberately given myself his mother’s name to see if it unnerved him but he didn’t blink. Instead, he nodded eagerly and told me that he’d also come to develop this particular interest at university. Off to a good start at least.
That first day, Andrew was busy repairing a fence which had slipped, while the odd couple Lucy and Roger busied themselves with frogs and I cleaned the visitors’ centre. I must just note that I’d not seen a visitor as yet, but Roger was full of anticipation for a school trip on Monday. ‘Just what our young people need – the great outdoors – none of this leisure centre drudgery.’
I watched Andrew work, effortlessly rebuilding the fence, engrossed in his work. If he hadn’t looked so like his grandfather, I’d have been convinced I’d got the wrong person. This man was carefree, simple, hardworking. I’d wager nobody in the Artemis family had done a day’s physical labour since about 1963, unless you count stepping on other people to get what they want as hard work.
I had to think up a reason to talk to him, and as asking advice on how to properly clean the minuscule kitchen wasn’t really going to cut it, I waited until everybody stopped for lunch and took my sandwiches over to where he sat, eyes closed, soaking up the spring sun.
‘It’s so lovely to work outside,’ I ventured, ‘I’m so tired of working in an office just chasing profits and cynically duping clients.’ OK it was a bit too on the nose, but it got the right reaction. People so often just want you to hold up a mirror for their own opinions. This is especially true of men, and Andrew might have presented himself as a woke eco-warrior but he wasn’t immune.
‘God, that’s so TRUE,’ he said, turning towards me and smiling. ‘This place is my sanctuary. I can’t bear the way we, as a society, have been tricked by those with everything into chasing impossible gains, just so that big corporations can make more off their labour.’
OK, so this was going to be easier than I thought. After fifteen minutes of chat about capitalism and the evils of the empire, I told him a bit about ‘my’ family, the Latimers. Of course, I didn’t use their real names or explain that Sophie and John weren’t my real parents, but I hedged that, telling him about my liberal family who marched against climate change and voted Labour might get him to open up about his own relatives.
‘I guess your family was the same growing up?’ I said, as I helped myself to his Waitrose olive pot. His body slightly shifted, and he scratched at his neck with his pinky finger.
‘No, actually. I figured all this stuff out by myself. My parents didn’t bestow me with much in the way of ideological direction. Too busy enjoying themselves, making money – well, spending money, I guess. I had the best private education, lovely nannies, a good home, and for a while, I guess I drifted down that road – interned at a wealth fund at 16, enjoyed all the nice things that my family had. But uni changed me – it made me see proper inequality for the first time. People think that Brighton’s wealthy you know? But it’s got really poor pockets and the other students … well, they were all so engaged and connected to the real world y’know? It made me ashamed of myself, you know?’