When the newspapers eventually managed to compile lists of those who were missing, believed killed, he had counted eight close colleagues and three others whom he had met on a couple of occasions. John Fricker had probably been one of his closest friends, and in the instant that he read his name, he could recall every moment of the beautiful fall weekend that he had spent with John and one of their work colleagues, Debbie Leishman, in upstate New York. It was after that weekend that John and Debbie started to become pretty serious about each other. Dan found their telephone number in his address book, but it took him a full week after reading the name in the newspaper to pluck up the courage to try to make contact with Debbie. When he eventually spoke to her, he found that he couldn’t even begin to find adequate words to express the way that he felt, so for a quarter of an hour, he had just listened to the voice of complete incomprehension and desolation at the other end of the line.

It was after he had finished that telephone call, when he was alone in his office at the top of the house in Clapham, that Dan had started to reevaluate his whole life. His own troubles now seemed insignificant. He thought how lucky he was to have a family, how proud he was to have a seventeen-year-old son who had the sensitivity and strength to sit with a protective arm encircling his father’s shoulder as they had watched those scenes from New York. He thought of the girls, miserable at their new school, and he vowed that he would be there for them, to help them through it. It was, after all, only a pinpoint of time in their lives. And he thought how unimportant it was to be without his high-flying job in the City. There were so many other things to cherish, to nurture. From that moment on, he was going to be happy, he was going to be fun, and he was going to be around for a family that needed him.

There was, however, one aspect of that day that Dan had never been able to comprehend. It left a chill where before there had been nothing but the warmth of mutual love and friendship. During those interminably long, dismal hours of September the eleventh, when families throughout the world, totally unconnected with those who had lost their lives, had telephoned each other just to touch base, just to express feelings of togetherness, Jackie had never bothered to call him.

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