"My father never touched me again, and neither, now that I think about it, did my mother. I left home at 14, and I didn't see much of either of them after that. I think my mother was relieved. I became somebody else, you see. I became many different things over the years... I have not always been the person I am now. My father died in hospital, many years back now. Not an ordinary hospital. It was the sort of hospital where people stay for a long time."

Mrs Matthews looked at Colin. He looked back at her. "Have you ever," she asked, apparently out of the blue, "wondered what a person would look like who was changing into a bird?"

"Yes." Colin realised as he said it that it was true. He had wondered, often. It was the sort of thing he thought about at night, lying in bed. He wondered, too, what it might feel like, to transform into something else. The way a caterpillar did, turning into a butterfly or a moth. He'd stretch his legs out under the duvet and imagine them all tough and scaly, his feet clawed. He'd spread out his arms wide, and think them into wings. Sometimes, teetering on the edge of sleep, he'd leap into open space and take flight into his dreams.

Mrs Matthews nodded. "So have I, so have I. And I have, of course, attempted research. Your people are not terribly well-documented, you know."

"What do you mean, 'my people'?" Colin knew he sounded rude, and that, considering everything, this might not be wise, but he couldn't help it. He was confused, and he wished he could just go home. He wished so much that he'd never come here.

"Your people," repeated Mrs Matthews. "Oh, it's quite obvious! Once seen, you are not easily forgotten, any of you. Hyter, you said, didn't you? Well, then. That was the name. Hyter sprites, you were called -- fairies of a sort, I suppose. You found lost children, and you took them home. Made sure they were safe. That was simply what you did, don't ask me why. And it was said, in the old tales, that the Hyters were able to change themselves into sand martins whenever they wished to. Just imagine that -- a person turning into a bird!"

Her funny eyes gleamed independently of one another. Colin said nothing.

"So few people have even heard of you now," she mused. "You never made it any into any of the famous collections, I'm afraid. The Grimms and so on... they didn't really take to you. I'm not sure why. But perhaps it's all for the best. In any case, one can always find little pockets of people who remember, if one chooses to look. And I chose to look."

"I don't know what you're going on about," said Colin.

"My dear child," said Mrs Matthews. "I am telling you of your heritage. Of your history. I'm giving you back what you have lost!"

Colin stood up. "I'm sorry I tried to steal your lighter," he said, carefully. "But I don't believe you. And I've got to go back to school now. Goodbye." Then he turned and walked as quickly as he could without running, back through the doorway into the shop, and towards the front entrance.

"Wait," she called after him, and he stopped with his hand on the door handle. He could feel sunlight through the glass, warm and ordinary and real.

"Perhaps..." she began, and stopped. She was standing right behind him, although he hadn't heard her follow. "Perhaps it would be a good idea if you were to ask your mother, when you get home. Ask her to tell you a bit about the family." She smiled at him, or at least he thought that was what it was meant to be. Colin got the feeling she didn't try it very often.

He pulled the door open and slipped out. It closed silently behind him.

He didn't go back to school that afternoon. Instead he went home and lay on the sofa watching the schools' programmes all afternoon. He'd eaten three quarters of a packet of Jaffa Cakes by the time his mum came home.

"Nice day, love?" she said, as she always did, and threw her bag and keys down on the table. "Mine was a shocker. Put the kettle on, would you? Oh, you haven't eaten all the Jaffa Cakes? What are you like, you greedy bugger?"

"There's still some left," he said, dragging himself off the sofa and into the little kitchen.

"You'll spoil your tea," she called after him.

"What are we having?" he asked.

"Well... I thought I'd nip just nip downstairs tonight," she answered. "Honestly, love, I'm knackered. Shocker of a day. You don't mind, do you?"

"No," said Colin, although they'd had fish and chips twice already that week, and in truth, he was a bit sick of them. He pulled a couple of mugs off the draining rack and dumped in the teabags and sugar. Then he went back into the living room and sat down on the sofa next to Yvonne.

"Mum?" he said.

"Mmm?" She was watching Richard and Judy interviewing a comedy double-act.

"Where do we come from?"

She looked at him and laughed. "Bit old for that sort of question, aren't you? I thought they taught you all that stuff at school these days."

He felt his face heat. "Not that!" he said. "I meant... us. Our family."

Yvonne turned back to Richard and Judy. "Oh," she said. "Well... that's a lot of boring old nonsense. Bore the hind leg off a donkey, that would."

"But... I mean, are we from round here?"

"Er... no," she said lightly. "No, not originally, I suppose."

"Where, then?"

"Oh for goodness' sake, Colin. I'm trying to watch this! Norfolk, okay? I think we're from Norfolk originally."

"And what about--"

"Kettle's boiled, love."

He went and made the tea.

"Oh, that's better," she sighed, sipping it and warming her hands on the mug. She slipped her shoes off and tucked her feet up neatly under her on the sofa.

"You never tell me anything," muttered Colin.

"Oh, don't sulk, love, it's been a long day." She sighed again, and looked over at him with a tired smile. "Look, it's just... dragging stuff up like that. It never does any good, you know. It's all past. It's history. It doesn't matter any more."

Colin looked at his mother, with her dusty-looking skin and hair, so much like his own. Her small, delicate frame and her pointed features, and her green, green eyes. Just like his.

"S'pose not," he said.

"All that matters," she said, "is what's happening right now. Not a load of dead and buried stuff from ages ago, that nobody even remembers. Now is what matters. The two of us, and we're all right, aren't we?"

"Mm," he said.

"Course we are." She reached over and patted his knee. "Just give us a couple of minutes, there's a love, and then I'll pop down and get us some dinner."

That night, Colin managed to read about half of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone before Yvonne called out to him to turn the light off and go to sleep. He'd read the book before, and he was too old for it now, anyway, but it helped him not think about anything. He turned the light out, but he didn't go to sleep straight away. He lay under his duvet with his eyes open.

He wondered what he would dream about if he slept. Perhaps about trees, rivers, hedges, about holes in sandy banks and cliffs. Or perhaps he'd dream of lost things: the past and the way home. Maps and minds and memories.

Maybe he'd only dream of Mrs Matthews rolling her funny eye and trying to smile.

He got out of bed and went and pushed up the heavy sash window, although it was still too early in the year to be really warm. He climbed onto the sill and sat there with his legs hanging over the edge, kicking his heels on the brickwork. The stars were out, faintly, above the town's electric glow, and he could smell the freshness of the air beneath the petrol fumes.

What does it take, he thought, for something to change? To really change? Does it hurt? Maps and minds and memories... Some things changed all the time, because they had to. Because if they didn't, they'd die.

He wondered whether a person could be two things at once. Perhaps there was a part of himself that had always been there, lying hidden in the darkness, where it couldn't be seen. Or perhaps, in order to change, you'd have to give up the thing you were before, just so you could be the new thing properly. You'd have to kill the old you, or let it wither away.

That sounded like something that was bound to hurt.

He thought again about caterpillars, sitting tight in their cocoons, waiting to become butterflies. Everything changed, didn't it? The land changed with the seasons, and with the passing of years. Bodies changed all the time, and nobody thought it miraculous or strange. Children grew up, and then grew old. His mother kept locks of his soft baby-hair in an envelope, his first shoes, a milk-tooth. Things he'd lost and left behind.

Colin balanced himself against the window frame and leant out further into the night, until he was hanging only by his fingertips. He looked at his thin legs floating in space, and felt the strong pull in his arms, stretching back behind him. Gravity plucked at him. The air was cold on his face, and the ground seemed very far below, but for once in his life he was not afraid. He felt light as a bird.

What would happen, he wondered, if he just let go?