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he offered her a proper job, with hours and a salary and sick leave and holiday entitlement—her first, ever. Then Bob Todd drove away again, with a cheery toot of his horn.
    Jane took the job. They needed the money; it wouldn’t be for long.
    Patrick wanted to go back to Africa. He missed the light. He wanted to write a novel about pirates. Instead, they moved to Bath, where the light came in weaker, dissipated, at an English slant, and it was impossible for him to write much of anything.
    Bob Todd had permitted a fly-on-the-wall documentary crew to film the park’s management takeover: they’d record the slumberous boardroom combat, the behind-the-scenes crises, the ear-tugging, the glance-averting.
    The Park was a moderate hit, at best; four half-hour episodes tucked away on BBC 2. But Jane was bigger than it. Viewers liked her; they liked her unsentimental devotion to her animals, and they liked her khaki shorts and Caterpillar boots.
    In episode four, during a marketing meeting, the camera lingered on her face as she struggled with her contempt. All around her, fat men with five o’clock shadows and cufflinks pronounced balderdash and bullshit, their nervous eyes flitting sideways to the single recording lens.
    The episode faded out on that same face, stoic as the vet administered a lethal injection to a sick lion. Jane’s jaw was clamped and her eyes didn’t waver from the table. Intended as an arch editorial comment on the state of the safari park, this was the moment that made her television career.
    That Christmas, she appeared in a popular woman’s magazine—the kind you buy at the supermarket checkout. She was wearing a party dress, smiling for the camera. TV’s Jane Bowman says LOOK AT ME NOW! She was laughing and twirling; showing some leg, some teeth.
    She said to Patrick, ‘Why not?’
    â€˜Why not?’ said Patrick.
    In 1991, she was invited by The Park’ sproducer to co-present a series of wildlife documentaries. The producer’s name was Richard.
    Jane resigned her post at the safari park; it was doomed anyway. She said, ‘What the hell.’
    â€˜What the hell,’ said Patrick.
    So he and the kids remained in cultured, decorous Bath while Jane and Richard—and his two-man crew—went to Morocco, Gibraltar, Spain, Greece, Turkey, filming hungry donkeys, sad-eyed spider-monkeys, traumatized baby chimps—and Koukla the bear.
    Jane and Richard had the kind of on-screen rapport that cannot be faked. They wandered, side by side, affecting to ignore the camera. It was called chemistry; the show was called Zoo Undercover, and it was a big hit.
    More was to come.

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    Three years later, because Jane’s celebrity had given rise to some difficulty in their marriage, they decided on the move to Monkeyland. This was 1995. They wondered how to tell the kids.
    At thirteen, Jo was conscientious, scruffy, unpopular and by far the tallest girl in her year, or the year above that, or the year above that. She was skinny and knobby, her long body full of corners, and she had sulky eyes and big feet—that, and a dandelion clock of frizzy hair.
    At ten years old, she had exceeded Patrick’s ability to teach her. Now she spent time showing him patterns and symmetries and mysteries.
    â€˜Take a river, right? Any river.’
    He imagined a river.
    â€˜Now take a point, any point. And measure along the curves of the river until you meet the sea. Okay?’
    Cunningly, he said, ‘But where exactly does a river meet the sea?’
    â€˜That’s an arbitrary decision. Go on—pick a point.’
    â€˜Done it.’
    â€˜Okay. Now—starting from the same point, draw a straight line to the sea.’
    â€˜Yup.’
    â€˜Now, divide the second number by the first. And what do you get?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜Pi!’
    â€˜No!’
    â€˜Yes!’
    He sat back in the chair.