Bidding was brisk, and resulted in the Royal College of Surgeons buying it for one hundred pounds. Mary would be pleased, I thought, if she weren’t more likely to be furious at being robbed of such a fee.

The ichthyosaurus was the final lot of the sale. I had been missing from Montague Street for an hour and a half; if I got a cab quickly I might yet manage to get back to my bedroom without anyone noticing my absence. I stood, preparing to slip out so that the men I knew in the room wouldn’t see me. It was at that moment, however, that Colonel Birch chose also to detach himself from the front row. He moved to the lectern and called out over the hubbub, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen-and ladies,” for he had spied me. I froze.

“I am overwhelmed by your interest and by your generosity. As I announced earlier,” he continued, his eyes reaching out and pinning me to my place so that I would at last listen to what he had to say, “I have auctioned off my collection to raise money for a very worthy Lyme family-the Annings.”

I shied like a nervous horse, but managed not to gasp.

“You have kindly responded in a most generous fashion.” Colonel Birch kept his eyes on my face, as if to calm me. “What I did not tell you before, ladies and gentlemen, is that it was the daughter of this family-Mary Anning-who discovered the majority of the specimens that make up my collection, including the fine ichthyosaurus just sold. She is-” he paused “-possibly the most remarkable young woman I have had the privilege to meet in the fossil world. She has helped me, and she may well help you in future. When you admire the specimens you have bought today, remember it was she who found them. Thank you.”

As a wave of murmurs swept the room, Colonel Birch nodded at me, then stepped aside and was engulfed by a mob of coats and top hats. I began to push my way towards the exit. All about me men were looking me over-not as they had done on the street, but with a more cerebral curiosity. “Pardon me, are you Miss Anning?” asked one.

“Oh no, no.” I shook my head vigorously. “I’m not.” He looked disappointed, and I felt a thread of anger tug at me. “I am Elizabeth Philpot,” I declared, “and I collect fossil fish.”

Not everyone heard my answer, for there were murmurs of “Mary Anning” all around me. Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I did not turn, but shoved my way between the men in front of me until I reached the street. I managed to control myself until I was safe inside a cab heading up Piccadilly and no one could see me. Then I-who never cry-began to weep. Not for Mary, but for myself.

7. Like the tide making its highest mark on the beach and then retreating

Istill remember the date his letter arrived: the 12th of May, 1820. Joe wrote it in the catalogue, but I would have remembered anyway.

By then I weren’t expecting a letter any more. It had been months since he’d left. I had begun to forget what he looked like, how his voice sounded, the way he walked, the things he said. I no longer talked to Margaret Philpot about him, nor asked Miss Elizabeth if she had heard of him from the other fossil gentlemen. I didn’t wear the locket, but put it away and didn’t take it out to look at and finger the lock of his thick hair.

I didn’t go upon beach either. Something had happened to me. I couldn’t find curies. I went out and it was like I was blind. Nothing glittered; there were no tiny jolts of lightning, no pattern popping out from the random shapes.

They tried to help-Mam, Miss Philpot. Even Joe left his upholstering to come out hunting with me when I knew he’d rather be inside covering chairs. And when he come to Lyme, Mr Buckland, who never noticed anything about other people, was gentle with me, guiding me to specimens he found, showing me where he thought we should look, staying at my side more than usual-in fact, doing all the things I normally done for him upon beach. He also entertained me with stories of his travels to the Continent with Reverend Conybeare, and with his antics at Oxford, how he kept a tame bear as a pet, and dressed it up and introduced it to the other Oxford dons. And how a friend brought back a crocodile in brine from a voyage, and Mr Buckland got to add a new member of the animal kingdom to his tasting list. I couldn’t help smiling at his stories.

He was the only one who got through the fog even briefly. He begun talking to me about things we’d found over the years that didn’t seem to belong to the ichie: verteberries wider and chunkier, paddle bones flatter than they should be. One day he showed me a verteberry with a piece of rib that was attached lower than on an ichie’s verteberry. “Do you know, Mary, I think there may be another creature out there,” he said. “Something with a spine and ribs and paddles like the ichthyosaurus, but with anatomy rather more like a crocodile’s. Wouldn’t that be something, to find another of God’s creatures?”

For a moment my mind went clear. I studied Mr Buckland’s kindly face, even rounder and pudgier than when I first knew him, his eyes bright and his brow bulging with ideas, and I almost said, “Yes, I think so too. I been wondering about a new monster for years.” I didn’t say it. Before I could, my mind sank down again like a leaf settling to the bottom of a pond.

Mam and Joe went hunting while I stayed back and minded the shop. It was a surprise the first time Mam went out with Joe to Black Ven. She give me a funny look as they left, but she said nothing. She had been out with me now and then, but always as company, not to hunt herself. She was good at the business side-writing letters to collectors, chasing up what we was owed and describing specimens for sale, convincing visitors to buy more than they’d meant to at the shop. She never went looking for curies. She didn’t have the eye, or the patience. Or so I’d thought. I was amazed when they come back hours later and Mam, all smug, handed me a basket heavy with finds. It was mostly ammos and bellies-the easiest curies for a beginner to see since their even lines stand out from the rocks. But she’d also managed to find some pentacrinites, a damaged sea urchin, and, most surprising of all, part of the shoulder bone of an ichie. We could get three shillings for that bone alone, and eat for a week.

When she was in the privy I accused Joe of putting what he found in her basket and saying it were hers. He shook his head. “She did it herself. I don’t know how she manages it, she’s so haphazard in her hunting. But she finds things.”

Mam later told me she’d made a bargain with God: if He showed her where the curies were, she would never again question His judgment, which she had done many times over the years with all the death and debt she had to suffer. “He must have listened,” Mam said, “for I didn’t have to look hard to find ’em. They were just there upon beach, waiting for me to pick up. I don’t know why you fussed so much when you went out looking, needing all that time day after day. It ain’t so hard to find curies.”

I wanted to argue with her but was in no position to since I weren’t going hunting any more. And it was true that when Mam went out she always filled her basket. She had the eye all right, she just didn’t want to admit it.

All of that changed on the 12th of May, 1820. I was behind our table in Cockmoile Square, showing sea lilies to a Bristol couple, when a boy come by with a packet for Joe. He wanted a shilling to pay for it, as it was bigger than your average letter. I didn’t have a shilling, and was about to send the boy away again when I saw the handwriting I had been waiting for these months. I knew his hand because, just as Miss Elizabeth had taught me, I’d shown him how to write labels of each specimen he found-a description of it, the Linnaean name if known, where and when found, in which layer of rock, and any other information that might be useful.