Not that there was so much wrong with the city. Indeed, for many people, New York was becoming a better place to live than it had been for years. Mayor Koch had been succeeded by Mayor Dinkins who, as an African American, had been perceived as more sympathetic to the troubles of Harlem and the other deprived areas. But the city had retained its reputation for crime, especially muggings, until nearly halfway through the nineties, when hard-line Mayor Giuliani had taken over. Like Giuliani or not, his “zero tolerance” policy on crime seemed to have worked. One could walk the streets nowadays with little fear of trouble.

The city felt cleaner, too. Behind the New York Public Library, where once the Crystal Palace had stood, the little green of Bryant Park had become a dismal enclave where rats scurried through the vegetation, and dope dealers plied their trade. Now it was made into an area where people from the nearby offices could sit and have a cappuccino. Along Forty-second toward Times Square, the dreary movie houses that purveyed hardcore porn were swept away. Downtown, Soho and the area next to it, known as Tribeca now, were becoming fashionable enclaves for people who liked to live in lofts. True, this gentrification and yuppification of the city might take away some of its older character, but on the whole Gorham thought the changes an improvement.

No, his desire to leave the city, at first anyway, was simply a desire for more physical space.

For large and handsome though the apartment was, there were times when all the family yearned for a place where they could spread out a bit. The boys would have liked their own rooms. July and August in New York City could never be anything but punishing. Many of the commercial bankers that Gorham knew lived in the suburbs. Two of his friends, both SVPs like himself, had splendid houses in New Canaan, with two or four acres around them, tennis court, swimming pool. They got up early to commute into the city, but they reckoned it was worth it.

“They don’t have working wives,” Maggie very reasonably pointed out. “I can’t be a mother and commute as well.” She smiled. “Not even if we could afford a car and driver. Anyway,” she added, “the city schools are better.”

In 1997, however, they had found a useful compromise. A country house. It was maybe a tad inconvenient that they should both have fallen in love with a little farmhouse up in North Salem. A mile or two further and they’d have been in Putnam County, where the prices and property taxes were lower, while North Salem was just inside Westchester County, and had unusually high property taxes to pay for the local school. But they adored the house, and there it was.