What the Robin Knew

On the first morning of the autumn term, a robin landed on the kitchen windowsill and looked directly at me. I do not mean it glanced, or hopped past, or pecked at the glass. I mean it stopped, turned, and looked at me as though it had something extremely important to say.

Then it flew away.

The same thing happened on Tuesday. And on Wednesday. By Thursday I had begun, against all my better judgement, to wait for it.

I did not tell my parents. I did not even tell my best friend, Imran, who would have either laughed or, more likely, drawn up a complicated chart of robin behaviour over six weeks and presented it to me at the school gate. Some things you have to keep, for a little while, to yourself.

On the following Monday — the seventh morning — the robin did not come. I waited at the window through breakfast, then through the brushing of teeth, then through the search for my missing left shoe. At twenty past eight my mother told me, in a voice that did not invite discussion, to leave the house immediately.

I walked to school more slowly than usual. The pavements were wet. The sky was the colour of old newspaper. At the corner of Brook Lane, where the road bends sharply, I stopped. The robin was sitting on a fence post.

It looked at me, the same look as the other six days. Then it flew, low and quick, into the lane.

A car came round the corner where I would have been walking, much too fast, and braked hard. I felt the air move past me as it skidded to a stop.

I did not see the robin again that day. I do not know whether I will.