Go carefully, thought Ellen. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.

Patrick put his hand on her knee. “By the way, I don’t want you thinking you’ve got to walk on eggshells whenever anything comes up about my wife. I’m fine about it. I’m not going to go all weird on you, I promise.”

Hmm, thought Ellen. “My mother is a GP,” she said. “So—” So what? So I have some sort of medical credibility because of her? My mother doesn’t really believe in what I do either. “I have looked after clients with terminal illnesses for pain management or stress relief, but I would never, ever promise I could cure them.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that,” said Patrick. His hand tightened on her knee.

“I know you didn’t.” Ellen put her hand over his, and wondered if he was seeing his wife’s face right now.

She didn’t tell him that she did believe that the mind had miraculous untapped powers.

Show me the empirical evidence, said Jon in her head.

They didn’t speak. The sound of a ferry horn floated across to them from the other side of the harbor. There were footsteps behind them. They both turned to watch a woman wearing a dark business suit and white sneakers walking down the path toward them.

“That’s not—” said Ellen.

“No,” said Patrick, his face clearing as the woman was illuminated by a streetlight.

They were silent. Ellen thought about how she’d closed off such a huge part of her identity during her years with Jon. If this relationship was going to work, she needed to throw open those doors! Let in the light! The air! The— OK, Ellen, enough with the house metaphor.

“I really love what I do,” she said to Patrick. That defensive tone was still there. She made a conscious effort to let it go, to just be. “I’m quite good at it too.”

Patrick gave her an amused sidelong look. “Are you the queen of hypnotherapists?”

“I am.”

“What a coincidence. I am the king of surveyors.”

“Really?”

Patrick sighed. “No, not really. I’m more like the yesterday man of surveyors.”

“Why?”

“I’m not fond of all the new technology. I still prefer to do all my drafting by hand. So that makes me slower. Not as efficient. It’s a competitive disadvantage, as my younger brother likes to remind me.”

“Is he a surveyor too?”

“No, he’s a graphic designer, but he’s very techy. Are you techy?”

“Not really, but I do like to Google. I think I Google every single day. Google is my oracle.”

“What did you Google today?”

Today she’d Googled “dating a widower: avoiding the pitfalls” and “stepchildren—disaster?” followed by “cures for broken capillaries around the nose.”

“Oh, I can’t think.” She waved her hand vaguely. “Something trivial.” She changed the subject back. “Why did you decide to become a surveyor?”

“Maps,” said Patrick immediately. “I’ve always loved the idea of a map, of knowing exactly where I am in relation to everything else. I had an uncle who was a surveyor and when I was a kid he said to me, ‘Patrick, you’ve got good where-ability, you’d make a good surveyor.’ I asked him what a surveyor did and he explained it like this: He said a surveyor determines the location of things on the earth’s surface in relation to every other thing above or below that surface. Those were his exact words. It stuck in my head. And for some reason that just clicked with me. I thought, Yep, that’s what I’ll do.”

“I think I must have terrible where-ability,” commented Ellen. “I don’t have any sense of where I am in relation to anything. Like, right now—I couldn’t point in the direction of home.”

Patrick pointed over her shoulder. “North. That way.”

“If you say so.”

“Have you got any paper?” said Patrick. “I’ll draw you a map.”

Ellen always made a point of having a beautiful hardbound notebook and pen in her bag so she could write down thoughts as they struck her, ideas for her work and so on. She carefully ripped out a page for him. She didn’t want him reading any of her random scribbles; most of them were the very essence of uncool.

Patrick pulled a slim gold fountain pen from his pocket. “My grandfather’s Parker pen. I’d run back into a burning house for it.”

He rested the sheet of paper on top of her notebook, leaned it on his knee and drew an old-fashioned compass in the corner. Then he began to quickly sketch the inlets and curves of the harbor. He added a ferry and yachts, the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House. It was like watching an ancient treasure map appear before her eyes.

“Here’s where we had dinner.” He drew a little illustration of the restaurant. “Here’s where we saw that terrible play. And now we head over to the northern beaches.” He sketched a beach and a two-story house. “Here’s your house.” He wrote: Ellen’s Hypnotic House. “And now we head back over to the leafy North Shore and here’s my house.” He wrote: Patrick and Jack’s Messy Men’s Hovel. He had beautiful handwriting; it evoked another more elegant era.

She hadn’t been to his place yet. She wondered if it was a hovel.

“And this is where we met for the first time.” He continued drawing.