After Martha Jane left with Colin, Kate had a choice to make. She could stay in London alone, or she could sail home on the next Cunard steamer, another three-week journey back after a three-week journey there for five days in the U.K. It was a tempting thought: her cozy bed instead of the lumpy cot at Miss Featherton’s, the safe streets of Fort William, her part-time job at the seamstress’s. Maybe even Walter, if she hadn’t already lost him for good. But she stayed on.

It felt different being in the city on her own, and she ventured away from the tourist attractions, taking photos of the double-decker buses, the sleek black cabs, the tall, narrow houses – so unlike the buses, cabs, and houses back home. Often she just sat and stared in awe at the beautiful girls of Kensington and Covent Garden, with their short skirts and shorter hair – they seemed so light, so free. London in 1969 had a terrifying, crazy spark to it, an electricity, and Kate could feel something reigniting in herself as well.

After three weeks in London alone, one evening she returned to her room to discover that Miss Featherton had accidentally given it to another guest. Kate can still remember walking in and finding Lydia sitting there on the bed in a diaphanous nightgown, brushing her long brown hair and smoking a cigarette. “I knew Miss Featherbrain gave me the wrong room, but I decided I just had to stay and meet the woman who wears this beautiful dress,” she said, gesturing to a garment strewn over the foot of the bed.

“I sewed it myself,” Kate said, feeling herself blush, although the world in which she sewed dresses seemed very far away.

But Lydia smiled, tossing aside her hairbrush and clapping her hands. “That’s even better!” she said. “Please tell me you also like brandy because I just happen to have some stashed in my suitcase.”

So they drank the brandy and sat up talking until dawn. Lydia was from Toronto, but she had been living in Spain for the previous four months. She was a poet and an artist, and had stories of travelling with street musicians, learning to dance flamenco, living in a tent in the Sierra Morena. And although next to all of Lydia’s extraordinary experiences, Kate felt like her life had been as insubstantial as a dandelion pod on the wind, she told her own stories, and Lydia listened – her eyes bright, her hair falling in waves on either side of her face. Kate talked about the farm, about Walter, and, as the sun rose and her defences crumbled, about falling through the ice at Chippewa. She had never met anyone like Lydia, or someone who made her feel so completely like herself.