Alice was right, she told herself, secretly savoring the fact that she had just come from coffee at a fashionable restaurant with a famous actress, you didn’t need the countryside. Except for their honeymoon in Marrakech, she would be as happy never to leave London as long as she lived. She stopped at Chapel Street Market to buy a bunch of fluffy-headed yellow chrysanthemums, and crossed Upper Street, at a safe distance past Manolete’s, to carry them behind the Tube station and home.

“I was about to send out a search party,” Matthew remarked mildly when at last she returned to the flat.

“Sorry, was I a long time? You should have telephoned.” She smiled at him, feeling rather glamorous as she rummaged for a vase, carrying flowers home from coffee with two actors and a fashion designer to a man who had missed her, whom she would marry. “How was your boys’ night out? Did you get roaring drunk and gamble all our money away?” The night before, Matthew had been for a drink with his manager, which had turned into dinner; Emma had taken the opportunity for an early night.

“No, we mostly talked shop,” he said. “Sit down, Emma, there’s something I have to tell you.”

She sat, suddenly wary. “Something good, I hope?” she said.

“That’s the thing,” he said. “I’m not quite sure. I think it’s good, but I’m not sure how you’ll feel about it.”

“Then you’d better tell me,” she said.

“Okay.” He took a deep breath and stared downwards at the table. “There’s a project that I’ve been asked to head next year. It’s quite a big installation of quite a complex system, and it’s actually quite a big thing that they’ve asked me to head it. It’d take a year to complete, possibly longer than one, but not more than two, and after I’d done it, which I’m confident I could do successfully, then I’d have made myself quite an impressive reputation, and we could look forward to a very nice career for me.”

He stopped talking and continued to study the table.

“Well, so far,” said Emma, “that all sounds pretty good to me. But I’m interested to know the reason why you’re not looking at me when you’re talking about it.”

He did look up at that, and straight at her.

“Because it’s in North Dakota,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

Emma had lived in London for all her life. She also knew Boston quite well, of course, and New York less well, although she liked it, and had visited California once, where she had preferred San Francisco to Los Angeles. She was not entirely sure that she would be able to find North Dakota on a map.

“It’s a place called Closker College,” he said. “It’s in a farm-country town called Lamott, about a hundred and fifty miles north of Bismarck. The president went to Cambridge with our big boss, and they’ve kept in touch ever since—it seems he’s always liked us because, well, because we’re rather good, actually. Anyway, he wants this installation, and he wants us to do it, and he asked Mark to pick someone he could trust to head it. And Mark chose … me.”