She lives eleven minutes away, in a two-bedroom in Stamford with a bad kitchen and a good spare room that is Nell’s and that Nell decorated herself with a level of commitment that produced, at one point, a ceiling.

She left the firm she was at and works now for a hospital foundation for a good deal less money.

She is not with anybody as far as I know and I do not ask.

What we have is not a friendship.

I want to be careful about that, because the version where the divorced parents become warm and easy is a nice story and is not this one.

What we have is a working arrangement between two people who are civil and specific with each other, who talk about schedules and shoes and a molar and a school trip, and who have, over two years, arrived at something I did not expect and would not have designed.