We were always reaching for each other’s hand when walking, talking, or eating. When we read, each of us would hold a book and yet at the same time we would maintain contact through our fingertips. I can still feel his forefinger circling my fingertip, faster when his book got tense, and more slowly when he relaxed.

His hand caressed me. His hand, his eyes, his laughter, and his body—they all caressed me. When he told me he didn’t love me, it was as if he’d suddenly pulled out a gun as we held hands and shot me through the heart.

SAM AND I reach the East End and we soon turn off into Columbia Road. He gazes around wide-eyed as I let him dismount in front of Café Campania, which is next door to the old tulip warehouse where my publishing offices and flat occupy the two upper attic floors above an advertising agency and a tailor’s shop.

His face is red and his eyes all shiny from the ride, and he seems younger than when we set out. When he stepped out of the Wellington in his blue suit, he resembled an earnest, pensive little old man who was nonetheless determined to endure the wicked tricks life plays and the even crueler wiles of death. Now, in his school uniform, with his rucksack on his back, he actually looks like a teenager again.

“Have you ever been to the East End before?”

He shakes his head and drinks in every detail of his new surroundings. On weekends Columbia Road metamorphoses into London’s flower market. It’s one of the few remaining roads in the city that hasn’t yet degenerated into a typical pedestrian zone populated exclusively by Zara, Urban Outfitters, Primark, and their ilk. There are over eighty small proprietor-run shops here, each boasting a different-colored front or awning. It looks like the world’s longest street café on a sunny day. I sometimes forget that the experience is drabber and less kaleidoscopic in other London streets.

Sam, whose Colet Court uniform marks him out as a member of the status-driven middle class, takes his first tentative steps in this world, like a hypersensitive cat pricking up its ears and testing the air with its whiskers.

I tuck my helmet under my arm and go into Café Campania to order two cups of freshly brewed oolong tea and a plate of scones. My editorial team at Realitycrash Publishing comes here every day for coffee, as I’ve set up a beverages tab to compensate somewhat for their paltry salaries.

I’ve held dozens of meetings with authors around Campania’s cast-off classroom and kitchen tables, which Benito and Emma have lovingly collected, refurbished, and decorated with pots of herbs. Those writers described their imaginary worlds to me, each hoping I would publish their manuscript and turn them into an author so that they might devote their lives to storytelling.