‘Did they train them to do that because the adults are tripping?’

‘I guess so. Have to hope the kids weren’t given any drugs.’

Tunnel ball mastered, the kids have moved on to simply throwing the ball about. Mark watches as Beau helps Joanne with her clumsy catch.

‘Great hand-eye coordination,’ he says to me. ‘Incredible. Might take him down to the nets.’

I smile, but my mind has gone elsewhere. Tomorrow, I decide, I will go to the library to read about how adoption works and what grounds qualify a child to be removed from his father.

At bedtime, I steer the children towards Sarah’s room.

‘But who owns it?’ Sarah asks me again.

‘It belongs to all of us,’ I say.

‘Whose room will it stay in?’

‘Yours and Beau’s.’

‘Mine, you mean. My room,’ she says. She’s happy to play with Beau, but not at all happy at having a boy sleep on a camp bed in her room. Especially one who, she tells me, cries when she’s trying to sleep.

‘Our room,’ says Joanne.

‘I haven’t read a single page yet. Why do you care whose room it lives in?’

‘Because you said it’s good,’ Sarah replies.

‘That’s enough. Get on the bed, all of you. Leave space for me in the middle.’

The four children line themselves up on Sarah’s bed with their backs resting against the wall, jockeying for more space, lobbying for their preferred configuration and the right to hold certain soft toys on their lap.

‘I need to wee.’ Petey scuttles off the bed.

‘Is it a girls’ book or a boys’ book?’ Joanne asks. I stroke her long shiny hair.

‘It’s both. This was my favourite book when I was a little girl but there are lots of poems in here for boys, too.’

‘Poems?’ Sarah slumps down the wall until she’s lying across the bed, her t-shirt ruching up around her neck and exposing her belly, willing to tolerate discomfort to make a statement. ‘You didn’t say it was poems.’

‘Can I see the cover?’ Joanne asks, and I pass her our new copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses. The cover is different from that of my childhood copy, but still lovely – two girls and a boy sit in a meadow, circled by poppies, daisies and woodland creatures. Bluebirds hover above them. The boy holds an open book from which a cast of characters fly off the page: a king and queen, a witch, a winged horse.

Joanne passes the book back to me, sceptical it will offer anything pleasing. Petey runs back into the room and bellyflops onto the bed, causing another round of laughing, outrage and wriggling. Only Beau stays composed. He reaches across my lap and taps Petey on the leg and Petey becomes quiet. When Beau sits back, Joanne rests her head on his shoulder.

I whisper into Beau’s ear, ‘Please teach me how to do that.’

After a few pages, Joanne and Sarah drop onto the floor to play marbles. Petey wanders off to do who knows what. And I read Beau a poem called ‘At the Seaside’. He shows me the pictures he likes best: a parade of Arabian royalty and African animals, children building a ship from cushions and chairs, a boy making a sandcastle.