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through the fence and into the side of the house.’
    â€˜Amazing,’ I said, kicking a rock.
    â€˜It was a big deal!’ said Peter. ‘If I’d been playing in the yard it would have killed me!’
    Suddenly inspired, I said sweetly, ‘Do you often play in the yard, little boy?’
    Emma snorted with laughter and Peter blushed angrily. He was quite a handsome boy, with thick blond hair and long eyelashes. ‘It was years ago. I was much younger.’
    A magpie whose nest we were passing swooped suddenly, clicking its beak in Peter’s hair. He swung at it in fright. It flew up into the branches ahead of us and perched there, glaring.
    â€˜Come on,’ I said, prodding Peter in the small of his back.
    â€˜You’re much bigger than it is,’ said Emma.
    We went forward, turning to face the bird as we passed, then continuing to walk backwards. The magpiesnapped its beak again and hopped along the branch speculatively, but did not swoop.
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    When I was eighteen Emma and I moved to London, using the money that our grandmother had left us. We had a place to stay: a flat, belonging to wealthy friends of our parents, who lived for the most part in their farmhouse in Surrey. They were in their sixties, and had no children. The flat was furnished with cream carpet and cream brocade sofas. The windows had double glazing, so that the traffic outside could hardly be heard, although it made the ground bounce under your feet when you went outside. The kitchen shone. We took our boots off at the door when we came in, and the carpet would always be warm underfoot.
    In our second week Emma started applying for work. I went with her to her first interview and sat outside on the street, in a quickly shifting rectangle of sunlight. First the sunlight was on the steps of the office, which was in a silent lane of low sandstone buildings with pretty window boxes. No cars. Then it moved to the pavement, so I sat there, my back against the cold stone. When the light moved on to the road itself I stayed where I was, growing colder, watching it cross the narrow space.
    The door next to me opened and Emma was handed out by a man in a white shirt and linen pants. My legs had gone to sleep. I tried to get up to say hello but the door closed before I was upright.
    â€˜Did you get it?’ I said. I put one hand on the stone wall for balance while I flexed my stiff feet.
    â€˜Pretty much,’ said Emma.
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    They were a civilised group of people – all men except Emma – working in a white, light-filled space with its tilted desks set up at a sociable angle. They rarely designed actual buildings – everything they did was a renovation, a conversion, of one of the many difficultly small houses, apartments and offices owned and rented by the well-to-do of London.
    Emma’s office was only a few tube stops from our flat, and I met her for lunch sometimes, but mostly I sat at home, too weary to struggle along in the fine bubbles of her wake. I couldn’t get warm. It was only September, and the flat was centrally heated, but I was doing nothing except sitting at the table in our white kitchen, whose window overlooked Vauxhall Bridge Road. Sometimes I ate porridge oats, dry, from a bowl. There was something solid and sustaining about them. You could make porridge in your own mouth, mashing the oatsinto a warm paste with teeth and saliva. I could eat two or three bowls at once. I looked in the newspaper for work. Sometimes I had baths to try to ease the cold ache in my sides and legs.
    One evening Emma brought a friend home from work. When they came into the kitchen I slipped down from my stool, shoving the book I was reading to one side. I wished they’d found me doing something, being busy. I saw myself in the face of the microwave, eyes ringed with black, mouth thick with red lipstick.
    â€˜Your voice sounds English already,’ I said to Emma, unable to speak to Jerome. He was