Emily played alone in a backyard briny with morning light. The wind suspended strands of her hair while she danced about, dressed in bright new clothes, as if she were soon to attend a party. She held a blue balloon. Her birthday was three days ago but it still felt like a time of celebration. Emily wasn’t six anymore, she was seven. The balloon string wrapped around her leg when she whirled like a spinning top—stopping before the motion grew unpleasant—and the corpulent balloon then swung back and forth behind her as she strode across the small yard in long and comical steps, laughing. The wind made her nose run and her eyes water and she didn’t bother to wipe away the tears and gunk running down her face. Older girls on bicycles tore up and down the lane behind the house and Emily, caught up in play, responded to their shouts with little hoots of her own.

Emily’s mother called her inside: a visitor had come from London. In the laundry, inside the back door, Emily wiped her own face with a tissue and pulled up her socks, retied her laces, straightened her clothes. She didn’t want her mother fussing over these things: she liked the feeling of looking after herself. The visitor, as expected, was her birth father, Ian Asquith. Emily could hear his voice in the living room, speaking too loudly and with too much seriousness. He hadn’t slept a bit the night before, he said, because his mind had been buzzing like an old machine. Don’t worry, he told Emily’s mother, he had a ticket for the afternoon train.

Emily gave her father a hug while her mother stood by the kitchen table, and Asquith, flopping on the couch, remarked to his daughter that on the train trip he’d thought about how much he missed spending time with her when she was two years old, how he regretted the loss of her infant babble, her nonsensical speech; he treasured being a part of those dialogues, freed of meaning.

‘I’m seven this week,’ said Emily.

‘Now you are entirely confined in language,’ said Asquith, touching her hair. ‘Trapped in logos.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Ian,’ said Emily’s mother. ‘You come up with some rubbish.’

‘Where is your husband today?’

‘Working in the garage. He’s right on the other side of this wall here.’

‘There are never any books in this house!’ Ian observed. ‘I should have brought some. For when she gets older.’