Edinburgh feels different when I return. Nothing has changed. That is the problem. My office is still my office. James still leaves coffee cups beside drawings until I threaten to invoice him for cleaning. Daniel still calls with problems five minutes before I am supposed to go home. But I see my work differently. Every plan now looks like evidence. I spend a Saturday pulling old projects from storage. University drawings. Competition entries. Concepts nobody built. There it is again and again. Separate spaces moving toward shared centres. Bridges where nobody asked for bridges. Openings where another architect might have used walls. At three, James finds me on the floor surrounded by paper.
“This looks healthy.”
“I’m having a crisis.”
“Architectural or personal?”
“Yes.”
He sits. I show him three plans.
“What do you see?”
He studies them.
“That you hate corridors.”
“Anything else?”
“You keep making people meet.”
I look at him. He shrugs.
“You do. Every building. You create these points where paths cross.”
“How long have you noticed?”
“Since university.”
James and I met at Edinburgh in our second year.
“You never said.”
“I assumed you knew.”
That sentence follows me for the rest of the day. Saoirse arrives around six carrying takeaway.
“I was told you were still here.”
“James is a traitor.”
“He seemed concerned.”
“He is dramatic.”
She steps around the drawings. For once, she says nothing mystical. She simply sits beside me and starts opening food containers. I show her a bridge concept from eight years ago. She studies it.
“This was before the Council contacted you again?”
“Long before.”
She traces one line without touching the page.
“You were doing it already.”
Apparently everyone knew except me. We eat on the floor. Later, she picks up one of my old sketchbooks. A folded photograph slips out. My father and me in Istanbul. I am seventeen, taller than him for the first time and unbearably pleased about it.
“Your dad?”
“Yes.”
“You look like him.”
“Everyone says I look like my mother.”
“Then everyone is wrong.”
I take the photograph from her. That is all. She doesn’t ask where he lives or why the picture is in an old sketchbook. I don’t explain. At nine, we finally leave. Outside, Saoirse shivers. I take off my coat and hand it to her. She smells it before putting it on. Then she looks at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You keep doing that.”
“This one is good.”
“My coat?”
“Your fragrance.”
She slips the coat on.
“It smells like a building you’d design.”
I laugh.
“That may be the strangest compliment I’ve received.”
“I meant it as one.”
I know. That is the problem.