I did not know either of them, and advanced with the intention of clearing up a mistake. The thought in my mind was that I must have left my front door open. They turned to face me. I remember how I was even then, and at once, struck by the bright hard nervous smile on the girl's face. The man — middleaged, ordinarily dressed, quite unremarkable in every way — said: 'This is the child.' He was already on the way out. He had laid his hand on her shoulder, had smiled and nodded to her, was turning away.

I said: 'But surely…'

'No, there's no mistake. She's your responsibility.'

He was at the door.

'But wait a minute…'

'She is Emily Cartright. Look after her.' And he had gone.

We stood there, the child and I, looking at each other. I remember the room had a wash of sun: it was still morning. I was wondering how the two had got in, but this already seemed irrelevant, since the man had gone. I now ran to the window: a street with a few trees along the pavement, a bus — stop with its familiar queue of people waiting, waiting; and on the wide pavement opposite, underneath the trees there, some children from the Mehta's flat upstairs playing with a ball — dark-skinned boys and girls, all dazzling white shirts, crisp pink and blue dresses, white teeth, gleaming hair. But the man I was looking for — not a sign.

I turned back to the child; but now I took my time over it, and was wondering what to say, how to present myself, how to handle her — all the pathetic little techniques and tricks of our self-definition. She was watching me, carefully, closely: the thought came into my mind that this was the expert assessment of possibilities by a prisoner observing a new jailer. Already my heart was heavy: anxiety! My intelligence was not yet making much of what was happening.

'Emily?' I said tentatively, hoping that she would choose to answer the questions in my mind.