"It is not an easy position to be in. One tends to find one's priorities changing, sometimes in the most peculiar way. Boundaries move about all over the place. Moral codes shift and standards slip. Sometimes, in the rush to get further and further back, away from the danger, things are left behind. Forgotten about. Things like, oh, books and bottles, maps and memories... Toy-boxes and toolboxes. Small change, silver charms, children. Terrible creatures for getting lost, children."

Mrs Matthews stopped to take a sip of tea. Her odd eyes watched Colin over the rim of her cup. They seemed to work independently of one another, but Colin couldn't decide which one of them was the glass one. They both looked real. They just... weren't a pair.

"What is your name?" she asked, suddenly.

"Colin Hyter," Colin said. He realised, too late, that he should have made something up.

Mrs Matthews nodded slowly. "Yes..." she said. "Yes, I see."

Colin looked at his shoes. He felt uncomfortable and itchy, as though tiny insects were crawling on his face. He wondered whether he dared ask Mrs Matthews if he could use her toilet.

"Of course," she continued, "that was all long before my time. But things don't really change very much, do they? Children still get lost. Even now, all over the world, people are forgetting, and losing, and turning a blind eye. Allowing things to slip through the cracks in their minds.

"When I was a girl, we lived in Norfolk. I was an only child, unusual in those days, amongst people like us. My father worked on the land. I played on the edges of fields and streams, ran through the sand dunes and looked for skeletons in the crumbling cliffs. Does your father beat you?"

"No," said Colin, startled into defensiveness. "I haven't got a father."

"Mine did. Not uncommon then, of course. But my father was hard on me, even for the times. He beat me for tracking dirt into the house. For being a clumsy lump. For saying the wrong thing, and for saying nothing at all. He beat me when he was drunk, and he beat me when he was sober. He beat me with my mother's broom handle, while she stood and watched and wrung her hands. He beat me black and blue, my father did. What do you think of that then, eh?"

Colin shifted in his seat, embarrassed. "I dunno," he said.

Mrs Matthews nodded, turning her teacup round and round in her hands. "When I was about your age, perhaps a little younger, there was a storm. It came in overnight and knocked some of the cliff away. It filled up houses with water and left people sitting on their roofs. A farmer who'd spent the day sowing a field returned to find all his hard work wasted, because the field wasn't there any more.

"I was sung to sleep that night by the sound of the wind, by the creakings and rattlings of the timbers, and when I woke up the next morning, the world was all on the tilt. You can imagine my surprise! Everything in my bedroom had slid right down the floor, which was now at an entirely new angle. My nose was pressed into the window, and when I opened my eyes, I could see all the way down to the sea crashing on the shore. I thought this was odd, as we did not live on the edge of the cliff. I closed my eyes again. I didn't know what else to do.

"And then someone said, 'You stayin' there all day, chick?' I struggled upright, tugging and scrabbling at the bedclothes. I thought it must be my father, and I was afraid. But it wasn't my father. It was the strange man sitting at the end of my bed, perched on the brass rails with his feet on the blankets. He certainly wasn't my father. He was much smaller than my father, fine-boned and delicate, like a jockey. His skin and hair were both the same shade of sandy brown, and his eyes were a very bright green. I was afraid, but not the in the same way I was afraid of my father. I pulled the sheets up to my chin. I could feel the house rocking underneath us, very slightly.

"The little man rubbed his face with his hands and yawned. He was quite a young man, although he looked old to me. When you are a child, all adults are old. He was dressed in the ordinary clothes of a labourer, the sort of clothes my father wore, and he had a slight growth of beard on his chin, as though he hadn't had a chance to shave. He would have looked just like a lad from the village, except for the fact that he didn't. Not at all.

"'Stay there if you want,' he said, and shrugged. There was something of the old Norfolk flint in his voice: hard and warm and familiar, rough one side and smooth the other. 'You can stay there and fall in the sea and drown,' he said, 'or you can jump up and get dressed and come along of me. It's up to you, chick.'

"So I got up and I got dressed, after a fashion, throwing a coat on over my night-gown and lacing my boots up anyhow. I clambered carefully about the room, hanging onto the walls, holding my breath. All the time, the cottage creaked and moved beneath us. But the little man seemed untroubled. He lit a pipe and looked out of the window as he smoked it, smiling down at the waves breaking on the sand so far below. Then he looked up. 'Ready?' he said.

"I nodded. I was clinging onto the wardrobe. 'Good,' said the man, tucking his pipe back into his jacket pocket, 'because that's time to go.' Then he hopped down from the bed-rail (he had a curious way of moving: jerky, elegant, precise). I was not a small child -- I've always been too big for my own good -- and he was, as I've explained, a small man. But he picked me up in his arms as though I weighed nothing at all. There was a loud and ominous groaning noise coming from somewhere. I realised that it was our house, getting ready to slip right over the cliff and into the cold grey water.

"It is difficult to explain what happened next. The memories have run together in my mind like watercolour paints, or perhaps they never were clear. Perhaps what happened in those few moments was really a blurring, a fudging, a compromising of time and space. I thought there was a whirl of snow or sand or earth, or perhaps it was soft feathers, pale on dark. A crack. A rush of stones and soil.

"The next thing I remember clearly is walking along a sandy track up through trees, away from the sea. The stranger walked next to me, his hands in his pockets. I stopped and turned around to look. There was no house clinging to the edge of the cliff any more.

"'Did it fall in?' I asked.

"'Yes," said the little man, in his flinty voice. 'It fell in.'

"I thought of something. 'What about my mum and dad?' I said. 'Did they fall in?'

"'No,' said the man. His face was blank, unreadable. 'They didn't fall in. They left you behind.'

"'Where are we going?' I asked, as we started off again down the path, and he said, 'Home.'"

Mrs Matthews stopped. She felt a little hoarse, she said. She heaved herself to her feet and felt around under the chair cushions until she brought out a crumpled paper bag. She held it out to Colin.

"Would you like a Murray mint?" she said.

"No thanks," said Colin.

Mrs Matthews sat and sucked on her sweet. She didn't look at Colin, but at an indeterminate point somewhere behind his left shoulder. He wondered whether she'd forgotten he was there. Perhaps, if he was very quiet, he could sneak out without her noticing. He was good at being quiet and creeping about. He was always making people jump, simply because they hadn't noticed he was in the room.

"I suppose I thought," continued Mrs Matthews, as though there had been no interruption to her story, "he might take me away somewhere. I didn't know where, but I didn't really mind. I don't remember feeling particularly sad about my house falling into the sea, or my parents forgetting me. It was just the way things were. The storm was over and the sun had come out. I thought perhaps the stranger could be my friend. As we walked, he whistled a little tune. I hadn't heard it before, so he taught me the notes and I hummed it to myself, swinging my arms to the rhythm. There weren't any words to the tune. My new friend smiled at me, and cut a switch of hazel from the hedge for me to use as a walking stick. He called me 'chick'. Had I been just a little older, I suppose I might have fancied myself in love with him. I've forgotten the tune now."

The old woman paused, and the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

"I don't think, though," said Mrs Matthews to Colin, "that people like that make very good friends. Do you?"

Colin shrugged. How would he know?

"No, I don't think so," she answered herself. "He didn't take me away, you see. He took me into the village, and he took me home.

"They'd set everyone up in the church hall, all the people who'd been displaced by the floods and the winds, who'd been left stranded, clinging to their chimney pots, or who'd simply had the ground ripped away from beneath them. All those who'd survived the night. Village women buzzed around making tea, being useful. You know the sort: Women's Institute. Mothers' Union. Friends of St. Mary's.

"I saw him at once, my father. He was sitting on a camp bed with his head in his hands, his hair and beard bedraggled and stiff with salt. My mother was there too, standing, crying, wringing her hands. She wasn't looking at him, or at me. She looked the way she always looked -- the other way.

"'Call your mum and dad over,' said the stranger. 'Go on, chick.'

"Children did as they were told then, you know, by and large. Not like nowadays. It didn't occur to me to disobey. I called to him. 'Dad,' I said. He looked up and saw me standing in the doorway. It is difficult to say what his expression was, when he lifted his head from his hands. Whether it was relief, or disappointment, anger, guilt, or fear. Perhaps it was a mixture of all those things. My mother heard my voice and hurried outside, her arms outstretched, her face all red and white from weeping. My father followed.

"The stranger turned to me, reached out and ruffled my hair. Light, his hand was, like a dry leaf touching me, or a feather. 'Sorry, chick,' he said, and he did look sorry. After that, he was gone. I don't remember seeing him leave.

"They found us a new cottage, further inland. Things went on much as before. The new cliff-edge weathered, lost its rawness, and the sand martins made new holes in it for their nests. After a while, people stopped talking about the great storm. My father beat me for climbing trees, and my mother looked the other way. I suppose it wasn't her fault -- he beat her, too. He said bad things about us -- that she was a whore, and that I was a bastard.

"It wasn't until he broke my arm that things changed. I lay in my bed that night, feeling shivery and hot at the same time, the arm tied against my chest in a sling. 'Fell out of a tree, silly bitch,' he'd told the doctor, grinning, and the doctor had pursed his lips and said nothing. I shifted under the covers, unable to get comfortable. My arm itched inside the plaster.

"I was just drifting off when I heard it: a sort of drawn-out howling, coming from my parents' room across the little landing. I was suddenly awake, staring into the darkness. The noise died away, and then it came again. It sounded like something that wasn't a person. It was, though. It was my dad. I knew this because my bedroom door opened and he came stumbling in, making the noise and beating wildly at the air around his head. 'Get them away from me!' he said, wailing and sobbing. 'Get them off!' His eyes were open and staring, but he seemed to see nothing, or nothing that was real. I shrank away, gripping the sheets tightly. My mother stood in the doorway, weeping and wringing her hands. He whirled round blindly and grabbed at her night-gown.

"'Get the damn birds away from me, girl,' he snarled. Then he let go of her with a shriek, clawing at his eyes, and sank down onto the floor, crying and whimpering.

"My mother looked at me, her eyes wide. 'Go back to sleep,' she said. 'It's only a nightmare.' I wasn't sure whether she meant me to believe the nightmare was his or my own. Something to be forgotten in the soft light of day. Either way, I knew it was nothing of the sort. My mother heaved and pulled at my dad, dragging him, still whimpering like a puppy, from the room. Before she left, she turned and looked at me, one hand resting on my father's back. I realised then that it was not my father she was afraid of. It was me.

"In the morning, she put my breakfast in front of me, saying nothing, avoiding my eye. Their bedroom door was shut. I didn't go to school that day -- I went down to the beach and watched the sand martins, flying in and out of their holes in the crumbling cliff-face. Later, as I walked home in the drowsy afternoon, I thought I saw him again, my strange little man from the night of the storm. He was sitting on a gate into a field, smoking his pipe and kicking his heels against the bars. He looked up, and he seemed to see me. But when I ran down the dusty lane, there was nobody there. Perhaps it was only a sort of mirage -- a trick of the heat. It was a scorcher, that summer. Everybody said so.

"Perhaps he flew away.

next: "My father never touched me again, and neither, now that I think about it, did my mother..."