The man we almost met works two desks from her sister

The night before we were due to meet him, a photograph came through and she recognised the lanyard in it. Not the man. The lanyard. He worked two desks from her sister, on a floor she had visited twice.

Nothing happened. We cancelled with an apology he took considerably better than we deserved, and then we sat at the kitchen table until two in the morning working out exactly how close that had been and how nearly we had walked into it with our eyes open.

Forty two and forty, the inner west, three years open. What that evening changed is everything about how we do this now. We ask about industry before we ask about anything interesting. We ask where you studied and where you worked before that, not to check your credentials but to draw a map of where you have been standing for the last decade. Sydney is not a big enough city for the version of this where you find out afterwards.

So expect questions that would be rude at a party. Expect us to be slow to the point of testing your patience. Expect a first meeting somewhere public with an hour on it and no possibility of anything else, and expect that to happen twice before anything at all changes.

He is in this entirely, by the way. He asked most of the questions on that call, he was the one who cancelled, and he is still the one who has not quite let it go. Write to both of us. He reads everything that arrives and answers more of it than she does.