“You know, you could sell them off on eBay.”

“I couldn’t do that,” he said, and blushed as though I’d suggested something indecent. It was a gift, I realized. He’d been inspired to give me a gift, and I regretted what I’d said.

After that, I felt obliged to walk a little. Instead of Green Park, I headed for the station at Saint James, which took me across the park where Peter and I had fallen out only a few weeks before. The rain pitter-pattered on the canopy above my head and as I crossed the Mall, passing cars splashed through puddles, sending up waves that spilled over onto the pavement.

The clouds were so low they seemed to touch the trees. Visibility was poor. I saw myself moving down the wet pathways as though through a stranger’s eyes, and I was a dark shape, an indistinct human figure hurrying along with an obscure purpose. I wondered what it was, beyond finding Peter, or finding out what had happened all those years ago. Didn’t we all have a purpose really, bundled up inside us like a secret?

I hadn’t lied to Rob, but I had not told him the whole truth, if there was such a thing. My progress had been less linear than I let on. London keeps no accounts. Two streets away from home, there’s a blank slate and you can start again. I imagine it’s harder now, but once it was the same with jobs. When I came to London, companies were computerizing their payroll systems. I knew the software from working for Darren. It was simple, but people were scared of it. The temp agencies I signed up to practically threw their arms around me. In those first years, I lost count of the desks I sat at, the rooms I stayed in.

Scraps of the lives I ghosted: a bedsit room in Earl’s Court, the orange shower curtain getting stuck in the fridge door, the Chilean with the guitar singing “Eleanor Rigby” late at night in the next-door room; a basement flat in Finsbury Park, barelegged women on the Seven Sisters Road cadging cigarettes on winter mornings; Brixton, Tufnell Park, Mornington Crescent, Clapham North, Bounds Green; a month’s rent as deposit and a month in advance, a current CV, a jar of ten-pence pieces for the hall phone, a packet of Marlboro Lights, extra-long Rizla, Coco Pops two meals a day; Friday nights given to the dance floor, the teeth grind, sweat drenched with my top tied round my waist, going back to parties in Tower Hamlets one week and Chelsea the next; walking back on Sunday morning, the city empty, baked beans in a caf, the tea like treacle, phone numbers thrown in the Thames from London Bridge.

“Is Peter there, Mrs. White?”