“The thing she’s gnawing,” he said. “I think it’s a human bone.”

The mother looked at her baby chomping on the bone.

“I’ve never seen it before. What do you mean, a human bone?”

“I think it’s part of a human rib,” he said. “I’m a medical student,” he added by way of explanation, “in my fifth year.”

“Rubbish! Did you bring it with you?”

“Me? No. Do you know where it came from?” he asked.

The mother looked at her baby, then jerked the bone out of its mouth and threw it on the floor. Once again, the baby broke into a wail. The man picked up the bone to examine it more closely.

“Her brother might know…”

He looked at the mother, who looked back awkwardly. She looked at her crying daughter. Then at the bone, and then through the sitting-room window at the half-built houses all around, then back at the bone and the stranger, and finally at her son, who came running in from one of the children’s bedrooms.

“Toti!” she called out. The boy ignored her. She waded into the crowd of children, pulled her son out with considerable difficulty and stood him in front of the medical student.

“Is this yours?” he asked the boy, handing him the bone.

“I found it,” Toti said. He didn’t want to miss any of his birthday party.

“Where?” his mother asked. She put the baby down on the floor and it stared up at her, uncertain whether to begin howling again.

“Outside,” the boy said. “It’s a funny stone. I washed it.” He was panting for breath. A drop of sweat trickled down his cheek.

“Outside where?” his mother asked. “When? What were you doing?”

The boy looked at his mother. He did not know whether he’d done anything wrong, but the look on her face suggested as much, and he wondered what it could be.

“Yesterday, I think,” he said. “In the foundations at the end of the road. What’s up?”

His mother and the stranger looked each other in the eye.