The woods are quiet during lockdown. On dirt-grey weekday afternoons they’re rarely busy anyway, but since the world ground to a halt even the dogwalkers have abandoned the narrow paths that wind their way between the viridescent thickets, under a canopy dense enough to block out any ambient noise from the busy London suburb in which the woods sit.
Paradoxically, the silence makes it hard at first to be sure just where the sound is coming from. It’s both faint and somehow all around you, as if it’s echoing from one tree trunk to the next. If it wasn’t for the rhythm – metronomic and insistent – you’d dismiss it as wet leaves slapping against bark. That’s what it sounds like, but as you close your eyes and try to pin down where it’s coming from, you realise that it’s firmer, more substantial.