She could not have guessed the way they would be. Out in the garden in the white dresses they had begged her to buy from a charity shop, their muddy knees, their faces close together. They always seemed to be telling some great secret, some truth only they could know. The look in their eyes when she came across them, the sudden silence that fell and that she could not quite break into. The sound of her banal chatting as she tried to befriend them. Her own children.
