‘David, Third World Debt isn’t coming to live in our house. Third World Debt hasn’t killed…’ I stop dead, knowing that I’m wrong, that I’ve lost, that Third World Debt has killed—has killed millions and millions, a zillion more than homeless youths have ever killed, I know that I know that I know that, but I’m going to hear all about it anyway, for hours and hours and hours.

10

The homeless kids all arrive on the same day, in a minibus that their hosts have hired for the morning. It’s a sunny June Saturday, a little hazy because of the early heat and last night’s rain, and a few people have gathered outside their houses, either to gawp or to welcome their new housemates, and suddenly I feel as though our street is, after all, special. No other street in London or Britain or the world is having a morning like this, and whatever happens hereonafter, David and GoodNews have, I can see now, achieved something.

The kids are loud and giggly as they get off the bus—‘Er, look at her, I’ll bet she’s yours’—but it’s bravado, and a couple of them are clearly scared. We are all scared of each other. David talks to each one—three boys, three girls—as they stand on the pavement, and points them towards their new houses. He shakes hands with one of the boys and points at me, and a couple of minutes later I am making tea while an eighteen-year-old who wants me to call him Monkey rolls a cigarette at my kitchen table.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Molly.

‘Rolling a cigarette.’

‘Do you smoke?’ says Molly.

‘Duh,’ says Tom, who promptly disappears to his bedroom. Molly, however, is awestruck. Her father Has Views on smoking, and her mother is a GP; she has heard that people smoke, but she has never seen anyone prepare to do it in front of her. For my part, I don’t know whether I want Monkey smoking in my kitchen, in front of the children. Probably I don’t. But asking Monkey to smoke outside in the back garden might get us off on the wrong foot: it might give him the feeling that he is not wanted, or that we do not respect his culture. Or it might serve to accentuate the differences between us—he might think that passive smoking is essentially a bourgeois fear, presupposing as it does the sort of long-term future he might feel he is currently denied, which is why he doesn’t worry about smoking roll-ups. Or asking him to go outside might simply make him angry, and his anger will compel him to steal everything we own, or murder us in our beds. I don’t know. And because I don’t know, I say nothing, apart from, ‘I’ll find you an ashtray.’ And then, ‘You’ll have to use this saucer.’ And then, when I replay that last sentence in my head, and hear a) a note that could be perceived as tetchiness and b) what could be construed as implicit disapproval, the buried suggestion that there are no ashtrays in this house FOR A REASON, I add ‘If you don’t mind.’ Monkey doesn’t mind.

He is very tall and very thin—not like a monkey at all, more like a giraffe. He is wearing (from the bottom up) Dr Martens, combat trousers, a khaki jacket and a black turtle-neck sweater that is smeared with mud, or what I hope is mud. He has spots, but very little else: the rest of his wardrobe is contained in a plastic carrier bag.

‘So,’ I say. He looks at me expectantly, which is fair enough, considering that the word I have just used clearly induces expectation, but I’m temporarily stuck. I try to think of something to follow up with, something which won’t patronize or offend, but which might indicate sympathy and curiosity. (I feel both sympathetic and curious, by the way, and so the question is not merely for show. I care. Really.)

‘When was the last time you sat in someone’s kitchen?’

That’s not offensive, surely? Because if you’ve been sleeping rough, it’s likely to have been a while, isn’t it? And maybe the question will help to draw him out, get him talking, and I’ll be able to understand a little more, learn something of what he’s been doing, and where. The only danger, I suppose, is that it could sound smug—haven’t we done well, we’ve got a kitchen, nah nah nah nah nah.

‘Dunno. Ages ago. Last time I saw my mum, probably.’

‘When was that?’

‘A couple of years ago. Is Ali G really funny?’

‘Who’s Ali G?’

‘That comedian on the telly.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen him.’

‘He isn’t,’ says Molly, who is drawing at the table.

‘When have you seen him?’ I ask her.

‘I haven’t. But I’ve seen a picture of him. He doesn’t look very funny. He looks stupid. Why are you called Monkey?’

‘I dunno. That’s what they call me. Why are you called Molly?’

‘Because Daddy didn’t like Rebecca.’

‘Oh. Have you got digital?’

‘No.’

‘Cable?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sky Sports?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

As it turns out, we are something of a disappointment to Monkey, and, if I am being honest, he is something of a disappointment to me. I cannot answer any of the questions he asks me, and nor do we have any of the things he seems to want most (apart from Sky Sports, we don’t have Dreamcast, or a dog); meanwhile he will not help me to understand how it was he came to be sleeping on the streets, which means that I am unable to show him the side of me that I wanted him to see: Katie the therapist, the listener, the imaginative solver of insoluble problems. He goes for a bath; regrettably, we don’t have a proper shower.

For a couple of days, all is quiet. We only see Monkey during the evenings; he doesn’t talk about where he goes during the day, but it is clear that old habits are hard to break, and old friendships are as important to him as they are to everyone else. And, anyway, one night he comes back and attempts to give me housekeeping money out of a huge pile of coins that he dumps on the kitchen table, which gives us all an idea of his whereabouts during working hours. I am almost tempted to take the money: after all, he is the only person in the house other than me who is working. He is courteous, he keeps himself to himself, he reads, he watches TV, he plays with Tom at the computer, he enjoys every mouthful of food he is given, and he makes no dietary demands.

One night we leave our guests in charge of the children (imaginary conversation with my parents, or social services: ‘Who’s in charge of your children?’ ‘Oh, GoodNews and Monkey’) and we go to the local cinema. We see a Julia Roberts film: she plays a struggling single mother who gets a job at a law firm and discovers that a water company is poisoning people, and she goes on a campaign to get compensation for them. Her relationship with a sexy bearded man suffers, and she becomes a bad, neglectful mother, but she is Fighting the Good Fight, and the water company is bad bad bad, and she only has two children and one boyfriend and there are hundreds of sick people, so it’s OK. It’s not a particularly good film, but I love it simply because it is a film, in colour, with a story that doesn’t involve spacecraft or insects or noise, and I drink it down in one, like I drank the Stoppard play. David loves it because he thinks it is about him.

‘Well?’ he says afterwards.

‘Well what?’

‘Do you see?’

‘Do I see what?’

‘If you’re going to do this stuff, it comes at a cost.’

‘There was no cost. Not in the film. Everyone lived happily ever after. Apart from the sick people, perhaps.’

‘Her boyfriend left her.’

‘She made it up with him,’ I point out.

‘But weren’t you on her side?’

And he used to have such a complicated, interesting mind. ‘No. I was on the side of the water company. Of course I was on her side. I wasn’t given much choice. Are you trying to say that you’re Julia Roberts?’

‘No, but…’

‘Because you’re not.’

We stop while he gives a kid fifty pence, and then continue in silence for a little while.