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So, I guess at some point we have to talk about the fact that your year is nearly up. Do you have a date in mind to come home? I’m guessing you can’t stay in the old woman’s place for ever.

I’ve been thinking about your dress agency – Lou, you could use my house as a base if you wanted, got a lot of spare room here, completely free. If you fancied it, you could stay too.

If you think it’s too soon for that but you don’t want to disrupt your sister’s life by moving back to the flat, you could have the railway carriage? This is not my preferred option, by the way, but you always loved it and there is something quite appealing in the thought of having you just across the garden …

There is, of course, another option, which is that this is all too much and you don’t want anything to do with me, but I don’t much like that one. It’s a crappy option. I hope you think so too.

Thoughts? Sam x

PS Picked up a couple who had been married fifty-six years tonight. He had breathing difficulties – nothing too serious – and she wouldn’t let go of his hand. Fussed over him until they got to hospital. I don’t usually notice these things but tonight? I don’t know.

I miss you, Louisa Clark.

I walked the length of Fifth Avenue, with its clogged artery of traffic and its brightly coloured tourists blocking the sidewalks, and I thought how lucky you might be to find not one but two extraordinary men to love – and what a fluke it was if they happened to love you back. I thought about how you’re shaped so much by the people who surround you, and how careful you have to be in choosing them for this exact reason, and then I thought, despite all that, in the end maybe you have to lose them all in order to truly find yourself.

I thought about Sam and a couple who had been married for fifty-six years, whom I would never meet, and his name in my head became the drumbeat of my footfall as I walked past the Rockefeller Plaza, past the gaudy glitz of Trump Tower, past St Patrick’s, past the huge glowing Uniqlo, with its dazzling pixellated screens, past Bryant Park, the vast and ornate New York Public Library with its vigilant masonry lions, the shops, the hoardings, the tourists, the street vendors and rough sleepers – all the daily features of a life I loved in a city that he didn’t inhabit, and yet, above the noise and the sirens and the blare of the horns, I realised he was there at every step.

Sam.

Sam.

Sam.

And then I thought about how it would feel to go home.

28 October 2006

Mum,

In haste, but I’m coming back to England! I got the job with Rupe’s firm, so I’ll be handing in my notice tomorrow and no doubt headed out of the office with my belongings in a box minutes later – these Wall Street firms don’t like to hang on to people out here if they think you might plunder the client lists.

So, come the New Year, I’ll be executive director in Mergers and Acquisitions back in London. Really looking forward to a new challenge. Thought I’d take a little break first – might do that month-long Patagonian trek I’ve been going on about – and then I’ll have to find somewhere to live. If you get the chance, could you sign me up with some estate agents? Usual postcodes, very central, two/three beds. Underground parking for the bike if possible (yes, I know you hate me using it).

Oh, and you’ll like this. I met someone. Alicia Deware. She’s actually English but she was out here visiting friends and I met her at a bloody awful dinner and we went out a few times before she had to head back to Notting Hill. Proper dating, not the New York kind. Early days but she’s good fun. I’ll be seeing a bit of her when I come back. Don’t go looking at wedding hats just yet, though. You know me.

So that’s it! Give my love to Dad – tell him I’ll be buying him a pint or two at the Royal Oak very soon.

To new beginnings, eh?

With love, your son

Will x

I read and reread Will’s letter, with its hints of a parallel universe, and what-might-have-been landed gently around me like falling snow. I read between the lines at the future that could have been his and Alicia’s – or even his and mine. More than once William John Traynor had pushed the course of my life off its predetermined rails – not with a nudge but with an emphatic shove. By sending me his correspondence, Camilla Traynor had inadvertently ensured he did it again.

To new beginnings, eh?

I read his words once more, then folded the letter carefully back with the others and sat, thinking. Then I poured myself the last of Margot’s vermouth, stared into space for a bit, sighed, walked to the front door with my laptop, sat on the floor and wrote:

Dear Sam,

I’m not ready.

I know it’s been almost a year and I originally said that was it – but here’s the thing: I’m not ready to come home.

All my life I’ve ended up looking after other people, fitting myself around what they need, what they wanted. I’m good at it. I do it before I even realize what I’m doing. I’d probably do it to you too. You have no idea how much right now I want to book a flight and just be with you.

But these last couple of months something has happened to me – something that stops me doing just that.

I’m opening my dress agency here. It’s going to be called the Bee’s Knees and it’s going to be based at the corner of the Vintage Clothes Emporium and clients can buy from the girls or rent from me. We’re pooling contacts, stumping up for some advertising, and I hope we’ll help each other get business. I open my doors on Friday and I’ve been writing to everyone I can think of. Already we’ve had a whole lot of interest from film-production people and fashion magazines and even women who just want to hire something for fancy dress. (You would not believe the number of Mad Men themed parties in Manhattan.)

It’s going to be hard and I’m going to be broke, and when I’m home each night I pretty much fall asleep on my feet, but for the first time in my life, Sam, I wake up excited. I love meeting the customers and working out what is going to look good on them. I love stitching these beautiful old clothes to make them as good as new. I love the fact that every day I get to reimagine who I want to be.

You once told me you’d wanted to be a paramedic from when you were a boy. Well, I’ve waited nearly thirty years to work out who I’m meant to be. This dream of mine might last a week or it might last a year, but every day I head down to the East Village with my holdalls full of clothes and my arms ache and I feel like I’ll never be ready and, well, I just feel like singing.

I think about your sister a lot. I think about Will too. When people we love die young it’s a nudge, reminding us that we shouldn’t take any of it for granted, that we have a duty to make the most of what we have. I feel like I finally get that.

So here it is: I’ve never really asked anyone for anything. But if you love me, Sam, I want you to join me – at least while I see if I can make this thing happen. I’ve done some research and there’s an exam you’d need to pass and apparently hiring in New York State is seasonal but they do need paramedics.

You could rent out your house for an income, and we could get a little apartment in Queens, or maybe the cheaper reaches of Brooklyn, and every day we would wake up together and, well, nothing would make me happier. And I would do everything I could – in the hours that I’m not covered with dust and moths and stray sequins – to make you glad you were here with me.

I guess I want it all.

You only get one life, right?

You once asked me if I wanted a grand gesture. Well, here it is: I’ll be where your sister always wanted to be, the evening of 25 July at seven p.m. You know where to find me if the answer’s yes. If not, I’ll stand there for a while, take a long view, and just be glad that, even if it was only in this way, we found each other again.

All my love always, Louisa xxx