Robert had sat facing south, drinking in the view, the city’s hatch lines of streets stretched out before him on a grid that was dazzlingly illuminated by streetlights against the dark underlying plains. How he longed for his youthful ease with heights; merely the memory of having been so close to the clouds started a thin line of anxiety trickling across his chest like a barium tracer.

His office was on a side street off Michigan Avenue, in a low-slung building of cream stone, with modernist windows lying flat as a map against the line of its outer skin. The press was on the third of five storeys. The university’s main campus was in the near north suburbs, not far from Robert’s new home, but its famous medical school was based here in the city, and the press had been tucked in as well. This suited Robert; he could think of nothing more dreary than to be located ‘on campus’. Occasionally, noises emanated from his university overseers that it might be useful to have him closer, on tap. He ignored them, determined to preserve a distance he intuitively associated with independence.

On the third floor he walked down the corridor, flinching reflexively as he passed Dorothy’s empty office, until he saw Vicky at her desk. She was on the phone and waved at him frantically. She cupped the receiver with one hand and said, ‘I’ve got David Balthazar on the line.’

‘Really?’ He was surprised. ‘Okay, tell him I’ll be right there.’

Balthazar was a New York literary agent Robert had first known during his own time in Manhattan when he worked at Knopf. Once in London, Robert had not lost touch – perhaps every other year, they had a drink together during the city’s book fair. Still, Robert was surprised to find him phoning. He could not conceive of what business they might now do together, unless Balthazar was trying to foist off a client he could no longer sell to more commercial houses.

‘Hello, Robert, so how’s the Second City treating you?’ asked the agent.

‘I’m okay, David,’ he said, ignoring the traditional New York jab at Chicago. Balthazar thought of himself as a smooth operator; Brooklyn born and bred, he had worked scrupulously to eradicate any trace of the borough. He dressed with natty fastidiousness: a silk paisley handkerchief jutting out like a gigolo’s badge from his Paul Stuart blazer, gold cufflinks with the punch of an ancestral family on the cuffs of his bespoke soft shirt. Although Balthazar was tactless, even obnoxious, he was someone Robert found impossible to dislike – you had to admire the sheer industry of his social climb.

‘Enjoying the new job? It’s a good little press.’

‘It’s pretty good. I’m trying to make it really good.’

‘Ah,’ said Balthazar. ‘You know, some people wondered why you wanted the job. I mean, going from a big one to, um . . .’

‘Such a small one?’

‘Something like that,’ he said, acknowledging his tactlessness. ‘I mean, it’s not as if the job’s a sinecure. Or that you got in any trouble in London.’ He made both statements with such certainty that they were obviously questions.

‘If I had screwed up over there, David, I’m sure you’d know about it.’ Balthazar had the decency to laugh. ‘But no, I wanted to come back to America, and Anna wanted a change.’ This was more or less the truth, though it was also true that he had been spinning his wheels in his old job, thanks to a cloud over his reputation which he had been powerless to dispel.

‘It must be nice to be back in your hometown.’

‘I suppose so.’ Robert looked out the window towards the lake, the city’s one natural advantage – a blue sea-sized body of water rimmed by yellow sand. In the distance he could just make out a lone tanker. An ore boat, cruising to Duluth for another load? He had never understood the complicated commerce of the Great Lakes. ‘Though it’s not like I know the place. I left here when I was thirteen – they shipped me to boarding school out east.’

‘A preppy, eh?’

‘Can’t you tell?’ They both laughed.

He found himself thinking of Duval. Had he been phoning that night from Chicago? His mother had moved years before to St Louis – Aurelia, that was her name. Would she still be alive? Given her history back then, Robert thought it unlikely.

‘Does your wife like it here?’ asked Balthazar, snapping him out of his reverie.

He spoke with energy to cover his abstractedness. ‘Very much. I was worried she might find it all a bit too alien, but she’s taken to the place.’ She had indeed, to his intense surprise.

‘She can’t practise here, can she?’

‘No, but she’s got a job at the British consulate.