It was the first shimmer of dusk that summoned birds from their nests to the feeder she’d hung outside the window – she loved to see them, taking turns to cling on and scatter the seeds over the ground where others were waiting. They’re sociable birds, long-tailed tits, with round bodies and pretty black-and-white tails. The kind of bird she could imagine holding in her palm. She felt responsible, realising it was her own offerings of food that had brought it to the glass.

It wasn’t dead. She could see its neck turning this way and that. It looked questioning. Confused. She willed it to gather its wits and fly off, but its wings seemed immobilised and when it tried to get up it stumbled awkwardly on twig-like legs and fell again.

Should she go down? Could she help, or would she just frighten it?

She stood there debating what to do before Piotr came in and realised something had happened.

‘What is it?’ he asked from the doorway, approaching her gently as though she were the one who’d been injured. They were particularly close, around that time.

‘A bird flew into the window,’ she said. ‘I heard it.’

He joined her where she stood, looked down where she was looking.

‘It’s still alive,’ he said. ‘It’s stunned.’

‘I think it’s injured.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It’s just what I think,’ she said. ‘It can’t fly.’

‘That’s the shock,’ he said. ‘When they’re stunned they need time to regroup. I’ve seen it before.’

He spoke with such confidence it was easy to believe him.

She wanted to believe him.

‘You think it’ll be OK?’

‘Let’s give it a while,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to upset it.’

She hesitated. Surely birds didn’t need privacy – they weren’t human.

‘Should we take it some food?’

‘There are seeds on the ground.’

It was true. There was plenty of food nearby that it could reach.

‘We’ll check on it later,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ Leading her back to the sofa, sitting down with his arm raised invitingly.

She leaned her head against his shoulder, picking up her book again. She was upset, but it seemed silly to show it. So she read for a while, and they cooked dinner, and later she forgot about the bird and slept well through the night. She remembered it in the morning, though, after Piotr had brought her a cup of tea in bed. Slipping on her dressing gown, she went to the window to check and there was no sign of the bird. No body. No feathers either. Just a smudge on the window of where it had hit. She cuddled back under the duvet and sipped her tea. He looked at her, questioning.

‘It was OK,’ she said. ‘That little bird. Just stunned, like you said.’

‘That’s good.’

‘It’s flown away.’