‘Can I have a sandwich now?’ asked Robert.

‘You’ve only just had an ice cream,’ said Kathryn.

He contemplated this for a moment before touching me on the leg. ‘Would you like a sandwich, Daddy?’

Just then a high screech seemed to bounce right round our heads and back again.

‘Did you hear that, Robert?’

‘Can I have a sandwich?’

The cry cut through the air again, clear and loud, and then I knew exactly what it was.

Robert reached for my hand. His fingers were sticky and hot.

‘Shall we go and see what it is?’ I said.

He hesitated for a moment, looking in his mother’s direction.

‘You two go,’ she said, with a nod and a smile. I thought how beautiful she looked then, with her bare legs stretched out on the grass, and her face calm and cool in the shadow of the branches.

We walked towards a clearing. Robert kept up with my step, his fingers almost glued to mine with ice cream and sweat. Then we heard the cry again.

‘Look at that, Robert.’

A peacock was standing in the middle of the dusty grass, feathers shivering in full sunlight. That bird made everything around it look bleached-out and tired. A fan of blue and green and purple spread out from its back and shook once, twice, three times. Its head glinted as it darted from side to side. I immediately wished that Kathryn was there to see it, too.

‘Isn’t it lovely, Robert?’

But he was looking off to the right. Peeling his fingers from mine, he pointed. ‘What’s that man doing?’

A man was crawling towards the bird on his hands and knees, open palm outstretched. His jeans were baggy, and with every shuffle forward they seemed to work their way that bit further down his backside. A streak of sweat darkened the back of his T-shirt.

‘What’s he doing, Daddy?’

By this time, a little crowd had gathered behind the crawling man. He managed to stay perfectly still as the bird shook its feathers again and took a step towards his open hand.

‘He’s feeding the peacock,’ I said.

‘Can we watch?’

‘Just for a minute, then.’

A few people had come to stand behind us, waiting to see whether the bird would take the bait. I held Robert’s shoulders as the man edged closer, his hairy arm stretching towards that little jerking head.

Then something else caught my eye. Beyond the bird I saw what must have been his wife and their child, a little girl. The wife was kneeling down, pointing and smiling, and the girl was watching, entranced. She wore a floppy sunhat just like her mother’s, and their teeth were very white in the sun.

When the bird’s beak finally dipped into the man’s palm, mother and daughter began to clap, and, hearing this, Robert joined in. Of course, this caused the bird to take fright and hurry away over the parched grass, feathers bobbing. But Robert was smiling so much and clapping so hard, that I, too, began to applaud; together we clapped for at least a minute as we watched the peacock disappear into the trees.