My son turned eight on a wet Saturday in Stoneybatter, the sort of Dublin day where the rain seems to hang in the air rather than fall. We had balloons taped to the sitting room door, a chocolate cake from the bakery on Manor Street, and eight children running in and out of the kitchen with icing on their sleeves. I remember feeling tired but proud, because money had been tight that year and I had still managed to give him a proper party.
After the last child left, he sat on the carpet surrounded by presents. Lego, football cards, a dinosaur hoodie, two books, a remote-control car. He opened each one carefully, reading the cards aloud in his serious little voice. I was making tea when I noticed he had gone quiet. He was looking out the window at the house across the road, where our neighbour, Mary, had just pulled up in her car.
Mary was a foster carer. We knew this in the ordinary neighbourly way you know things in Dublin: from bins being brought in, parcels taken, small chats outside the Centra. That evening she was helping two children out of the back seat. A boy and a girl, maybe six and nine, both holding their belongings in plastic shopping bags. The girl had no coat, only a school jumper pulled over her hands. Mary smiled at them the way you smile when you are trying to make a strange place less frightening.
My son asked, “Are they staying with her?”
I said, “I think so, love. Just for a while, maybe.”
He looked back at the presents in front of him. “Did they have a birthday?”
It was such a simple question that I didn’t know how to answer. I said something useless, like, “Everyone has a birthday.”
He shook his head. “No, I mean did they have one like this?”
I still remember the shame of that moment. Not because I had done anything wrong, but because my child had noticed something I had trained myself not to look at too closely. I was worried about party bags and crusts on sandwiches, while two children across the road were arriving into a stranger’s house with their lives in plastic bags.
He stood up and began sorting his presents into two piles. At first I thought he was just tidying, which would have been unusual enough. Then he put the remote-control car, the dinosaur hoodie, one book, and a packet of football cards into a gift bag.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m giving them these.”
I told him he didn’t have to do that. I said they were his birthday presents, that people had chosen them for him, that maybe he should think about it. I said all the sensible adult things, and he listened, but his face didn’t change.
“I still have loads,” he said. “They don’t have any.”
We walked across the road together in the rain. He carried the bag with both hands, pressed against his chest like something breakable. When Mary opened the door, she looked exhausted in a way I had not seen before. There was noise behind her, the television on low, a kettle boiling, someone crying and trying not to.
My son stepped forward and said, “It was my birthday today, and I got too much. These are for them, if they want.”
Mary put her hand over her mouth. For a second nobody spoke. Then the little boy appeared behind her, peering around her cardigan. My son took the remote-control car from the bag and held it out. “This one is fast,” he said. “But it needs batteries. We have some at home.”
The boy didn’t grab it. He
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