“Which you will not do in any dress,” Eleanor said. “Your public mastication still needs work.” She looked down at the photo again and added, “You will wear my River Bend brooch. It was given to me in the 1970s by the Spanish king, and the diamonds mimic the curves of the Thames.”

“Thank you! What a brilliant idea,” I said.

“Of course it is,” Eleanor said. “Loaning you jewels will make them think I like you.”

The party was on the seventy-second floor of The Shard, a massive glass skyscraper designed to look like its name—as if a huge piece of debris had dropped out of the sky and embedded itself in the South Bank. It was the tallest building in London, and the open-air venue at the top boasted spectacular panoramic views of the city, making it a particularly apt choice for an organization devoted to, in its simplest terms, the layout of the world. The planners had chosen to let said view speak for itself, decorating only with well-placed antique maps of whichever part of the city we happened to be overlooking, all of which were part of the silent auction. We’d given everyone about an hour and a half to get buzzed at the open bar and overbid on a few things before we arrived and did our part: Each of us had a designated area to glad-hand as many would-be donors and society staples as possible in that radius—like zone defense, but for fundraising—and then otherwise pretend we didn’t know we were the subject of a mass gawking. Nick always said he felt like a zoo animal at these things, but I didn’t realize how dead-on the analogy was until I was in the cage with him. As I talked to each potential donor, it took all my concentration not to get distracted by the people around us craning their necks, leaning toward each other in what looked like a gossipy whisper, or, in one case, snickering in my direction at something that I had to hope wasn’t a piece of food in my teeth.

When I finally saw Richard veer from his zone to greet a cluster of his old pals, I recognized my cue to stop mingling with the toffs and start making our family circle look whole. Nick and I found each other near a north-facing window. That high up, London looked tiny and perfect, like a toy. I could have stood there for hours, looking for all the signposts of my life—the spire of Westminster Abbey, the Tower that I kept joking I’d be tossed into, and if I squinted, the part of Chelsea where my flat had been. But instead I let Nick steer me toward our friends, the touch of his hand on my back pointedly visible, and telegraphing, All is well, nothing to see here. But please, do see the nothing that there is to see.