of graduated reading books. I heard it again and again, with the same stir of panic. It's what every child fears: to be far, to be flung wide, to be lost without hope of gathering-in. And so the mind arrives at the blocky geometry of that defective video screen; the toddler's arm stretched up, the older child in step with him, and the other form -- the third point of the triangle -- moving weightily ahead, purposive, as if in a hurry to arrive at the obscenity being prepared. Two ten-year-old boys, truanting from school, go to a Liverpool shopping-centre. They stole, or may have stolen, 'a pen, a packet of batteries, Humbrol enamel paint tins, sausage rolls, party poppers ... a troll ... a packet of iced gems, a balloon, a plum, a pear, a banana'. Think of the young Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trying to steal apples; standing rapt before a fruit stall, gazing at ripe pears. Today it's Robert and Jon who are on a spree: they steal a yoghurt, a milkshake, two cartons of Ambrosia rice. Finally they steal a child, blond-haired, not quite three. One of them takes him by the hand. They lead him into the city. They walk some busy roads, they are seen many times, remarked by passers-by. At intervals the baby shows distress, and adults do stop, ask questions; after all, this is Liverpool, where mouths are not zipper-ed and concern is not frozen and a child is everyone's concern. But the big