The east portion of the apartment was all glass, with its southernmost portion opening on to a small balcony on which my father had installed a gas grill and a small ironwork table and two chairs and from which there was a clear view of the skyscrapers in downtown Chicago. Light flooded in; the rich azure of the lake provided, in effect, the eastern wall of the apartment. My father had bought all new furniture for the place; at least I recognised none of the things from our Hyde Park apartment on Kimbark Avenue. Everything was modern, glass and black leather, elegant but a touch severe, nothing like the slightly overstuffed, chintz-covered comfy furniture our mother favoured in our old apartment.

"Your dad tells me that you're a very successful New York lawyer," Randy said. "Pretty awesome."

"Not as successful as some," I said. "But tell me, what do you do?"

"I'm an administrator at a charter school on the west side, in the Austin neighbourhood."

"Done that long?"

"Two years. Before that I taught American history at St Scholastica High School in Rogers Park."

"Have you known my dad for long?" I asked, wanting to discover if my father had been seeing him when my mother was still alive.

"Less than a year," he said, "but we hit it off immediately."

Just then my father walked into the room, looking very much like, well, as Ellie said, like himself. I'm not sure what I expected him to look like. I assumed a loosened collar maybe, a pair of gym shoes, possibly jeans. But, no, he was in his standard get-up: grey trousers, white shirt, black knit tie, brown tweed jacket, tasselled oxblood loafers, closely shaved, as always. He kept himself slender, his black hair, now streaked with grey, was only just beginning to thin out slightly at the front.