Shall I resist the trap Silver says so many women writers of fiction fall into and, quoting Jane Eyre, write: “Reader, I married him”? Anyway, this isn’t fiction. It’s an account of things, as much for him when he comes home as anyone. So: Reader, I married you.

I suppose it was easy to guess the identity of the husband I’ve been referring to. There was no one else for me really, and no one else for him. He had found me (after scouring Gloucestershire) by studying a London guide, spotting a Cirencester Street off the Harrow Road where he knew Beryl lived, and putting two and two together. It was fitting that we who loved heights were reunited in a high place, at the top of a long hard climb. The next day I moved in with him, into the flat he had near Morna’s in the East End. He had got rid of three-quarters of his grandmother’s money but kept enough to put down a deposit on this place.

“Is that allowed?” he said, laughing.

“It’s allowed.”

We had grown up. Or perhaps, as our parents had said, we had corrupted each other. They came around very quickly—in both senses. We were forgiven and occasionally visited. I finished at college in the summer, went to work for a firm of electrical engineers with a good reputation and planned setting up my own company. When I said I’d be a Stoic and learn to bear it if he had to be out of the country for months at a time, Silver changed his job and moved to Famaid. All the time we searched for Wim.

The trouble is, we hardly knew where to begin. There were a lot of “if onlys” at that time. If only we had found out where he had that room “in southwest London but north of the river,” where he worked in the sandwich bar, even the name of his mother’s family or some other relatives. If only we had asked him when he told us his story. Sometimes we had fantasies about going on the roofs again and dreams that if we did we’d meet him up there, scaling the heights, restored to his old agility and grace. But we had done with the roofs, they held unhappy memories that spoiled them for us. We looked up at them less than once we had and we turned our backs on Maida Vale. That’s why, when we married, we chose Highgate.