Five of us celebrated his birthday: Will himself, of course, though he didn’t know too much about it; Sam; me; Lottie—who was still with us, babysitter in chief—and Whisky, a small Highland terrier puppy who was Will’s first birthday present. Sam, Lottie, and I shared a bottle of Scotch and sang songs from a new revue we had seen in the West End, called “Hullo!” Sam and I had settled into the flat, and flat routine, and Chelsea routine remarkably easily, considering we had come straight from Middle Hill. In fact, we hardly talked about Middle Hill or about Stratford. It was painful for Sam to look back—Wilhelm disappearing, and the school board ruling that never happened—and I now had two obsessions: intelligence analysis and Sam herself, and so I didn’t look back either. So far as our landlord was concerned, and the local shopkeepers, Sam and I were married, and Lottie played along. We spent the winter exploring London, and here I have to admit Lottie came in very useful.
