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said that yourself. She’ll own a bit of something, even if it is only a share of the place.’
    T don’t see we’ve any choice. Either we have her at home feeding her and all her friends and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, or we have to pay to get her out.’
    ‘She’s twenty-one,’ said the mother, suddenly exhausted with anger, her voice low and tight. ‘It’s time we did something for her.’
    He heard, and was going to retreat, but said first, ‘It’s the legal age, isn’t it? She’s an adult, not a baby.’
    She did not reply.
    Out came the Japanese young man with yet another tray. More cakes piled with cream and jam, more coffee. As soon as he had set these down before his wife (girlfriend? sister?) and his (her?) mother, the three of them bent over and began eating as if in an eating contest.
    They aren’t short of what it needs,’ he grumbled.
    That peevish old voice: it was the edge of senility. Soon she would be his nurse. She was probably thinking something like this while she smiled, smiled, at the bird.
    ‘Come on,’ she whispered, ‘it’s not difficult.’
    And then … the baby hopped down on to the table with its round eyes fixed on her, clumsily took up a crumb, swallowed it.
    ‘Very likely that’s the first time it has ever done that for itself,’ she whispered, and her eyes were full of tears. “The little thing …’
    The small sparrow was pecking in an experimental way. Then it got the hang of it, and soon became as voraciousas its elders as she pushed crumbs towards it. Then it had cleaned up the table top and was off-an adult.
    ‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘Wonderful. Probably even this morning it was still in its nest and now …’ And she laughed, with tears in her eyes.
    He was looking at her. For the first time since they had sat down there he was outside his selfish prison and really seeing her.
    But he was seeing her not as she was now, but at some time in the past. A memory …
    ‘It’s a nice little bird,’ he said, and when she heard that voice from the past, not a semi-senile whine, she turned and smiled full at him.
    ‘Oh it’s so wonderful,’ she said, vibrating with pleasure. ‘I love this place. I love …’ And indeed the sun had come out, filling the green garden with summer, making people’s faces shine and smile.

T he Mother of the Child in Question
    High on a walkway connecting two tower blocks Stephen Bentley, social worker, stopped to survey the view. Cement, everywhere he looked. Stained grey piles went up into the sky, and down below lay grey acres where only one person moved among puddles, soft drink cans and bits of damp paper. This was an old man with a stick and a shopping bag. In front of Stephen, horizontally dividing the heavy building from pavement to low cloud, were rows of many-coloured curtains where people kept out of sight. They were probably watching him, but he had his credentials, the file under his arm. The end of this walkway was on the fourth floor. The lift smelled bad: someone had been sick in it. He walked up grey urine-smelling stairs to the eighth floor. Number 15. The very moment he rang, the door was opened by a smiling brown boy. This must be Hassan, the twelve-year-old. His white teeth, his bright blue jersey, the white collar of his shirt, all dazzled, and behind him the small room crammed with furniture was too tidy for a family room, everything just so, polished, shining. Thorough preparations had been made for this visit. In front of a red plush sofa was the oblong of a low table, and on it waited cups, saucers and a sugar bowl fullto the brim. A glinting spoon stood upright in it. Hassan sat down on the sofa, smiling hard. Apart from the sofa, there were three chairs, full of shiny cushions. In one of them sat Mrs Khan, a plump pretty lady wearing the outfit Stephen thought of as ‘pyjamas’-trousers and tunic in flowered pink silk. They looked like best clothes, and the ten-year-old girl in the other chair wore a