There were several weeks when Raul didn't leave the annex. Every morning, he would arrive at Drummond Hall, allow us to check his pockets (to make sure he wasn't carrying anything dangerous), then he’d go upstairs and sit in silence in a room on his own. There are large frameless chairs in there, the kind you find at soft play, and he’d slump in one, hood pulled up to cover his face, and stare out of the window. Sometimes he slept. When we went to talk to him, our questions went unanswered, his lunch went uneaten. He tolerated us until he didn’t. We sat with him and read out loud until he told us to shut up. We suggested games and walks and trips to the shops, anything that might induce him to engage, but nothing worked. His classmates tried too. They knocked on the annex window and pulled funny faces to make him laugh. They told jokes. Occasionally, he would agree to play, maybe a card game or Monopoly, but most of the time he just shook his head. The staff held regular meetings about him and organized appointments with therapists and the school psychiatrist. His family rarely attended these meetings, which made progress harder, and all the while he grew quieter and thinner and weak.

It isn't always easy to hope and hopeful books, books with Answers, books with Solutions, books with progressive visions of the future, can for this reason be hard to read. They can seem unrealistic, maybe even delusionary. We just need to expand our conception of parenthood (they say) and imagine more liberatory forms of family – of community – of childcare. If only, I think. There have been times while writing this book when I have wanted to express a similar sentiment (about foster care's radical potential, for example). More often, however, I have struggled to hold onto hope. This may (as discussed) be constitutional, but it may also be an appropriate response to a bleak situation, a hopeless world.