“Really, Oscar!” Abreast of me now, she flashed me a smile I was too bewildered to return. It was the face I’d seen on Antonio’s phone, leaning down to fit between her sons. The suddenness of the encounter, the ease with which I had found them, and her amused, conspiratorial smile paralyzed me. I’d imagined no further than wanting to be in their company. She opened an umbrella; the older boy tugged her arm, still arguing; the younger one skipped alongside. I watched them climb the hill toward where the spire of a church pierced the sky at an odd angle. At the top they tilted over the edge and disappeared.

Friday morning, I completed my final interview at the Royal Academy and in the afternoon I set off again for Blackheath. There would be no other chance. The Tate opening was the following day, and Monday I was to fly home. I arrived early this time and settled on a low wall near the school gate.

When Maddy was small, an even greater pleasure than taking her in the mornings had been picking her up after school. I’d shared that task with my parents. Tuesdays and Fridays had been my days. I could see that in good weather, English parents stood around as I had once done, knowing their children had been kept safe for another day and would be returned to them soon.

The last two houses on the street had been converted into classrooms, their windows now covered with paper snowflakes and letters of the alphabet. Staff with clipboards crossed the courtyard to open the gates, and the children spilled out. Erica was easy to spot in her purple jacket. I watched the boys run to her. Oscar soon veered away to wrestle with another boy, but Daniel stood looking up into his mother’s face, playing with the toggle of her zipper. She was talking to someone, resting her hand unthinkingly on her son’s head.

I stood. Antonio would be furious to see me there. He would rush his family away and never speak to me again. I could feel the child’s skull under my hand. If I left now, no one need ever know. I forced myself down, gripped the edge of the wall, and fixed my gaze on the pointed dormers of the school, until the unruly group of Erica, the boys, and their friends moved together up the sidewalk. They passed close enough to reach out and touch me.

Once they crossed the road bordering the heath, they kept to the low ground while I made my way to a bench partway up the slope. Crisscrossed by footpaths, the yellow grass stretched down to a gray-stone church that looked defeated and out of place on the bare heath.