She stood, and Tom stood with her.

At the door, she paused.

“James,” she said, without turning around.

“What are you doing next Saturday?”

Chapter 8: The Morning Everything Changed

Saturday came the way important days always do — ordinary on the surface, the sky the same gray it had been all week, the drive unremarkable.

Anna had offered to come with me.

I told her I wanted to do this part alone.

Claire’s house was a red-brick semi-detached on a quiet street with a narrow front garden.

There was a bicycle on its side near the gate — a child’s bicycle, purple, with a basket on the front.

I stepped over it carefully.

Before I could knock, the door opened.

Rosie was eleven years old and she had been watching from the window.

She had Claire’s dark hair and she looked at me with the direct, assessing gaze of a child who has been told something important and is trying to match the story to the person.

“You’re James,” she said.

“I am,” I said.

“Mum said you might be nervous,” she said.

“Are you?”

“Very,” I said.

She seemed to find this satisfactory.

She stepped back and held the door open.

The house was warm and slightly chaotic in the way that houses with children always are — shoes by the door, drawings on the fridge, a half-finished puzzle on the coffee table.

Claire came out of the kitchen drying her hands on a tea towel, and behind her was Tom, and behind Tom, peering around the doorframe, was Daniel.

“You made it,” Claire said.

“I made it,” I said.

She hugged me.

It was brief and slightly awkward and completely genuine.

We sat in the living room, all five of us, and Rosie immediately took charge of the situation by asking me questions.

How old was I.

Had I ever been to Scotland.

Did I like football.

What was my favorite food.

I answered all of them.

Daniel crept closer as the morning went on, until he was sitting on the floor near my chair, not quite next to me but not far either.

At some point, Tom brought coffee and Claire brought biscuits and Rosie showed me a drawing she had done the previous week — a horse, very detailed, she had been working on horses for months.

“It’s excellent,” I said.

“I know,” she said, without any false modesty, and I laughed — a real laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere unexpected.