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“What I was really thinking,' resumes Rachel, 'is—well, that there's fate, you see. I don't dismiss it, I don't think it's idiotic. It's quite scientific, actually. What we become. Who we—meet, end up with,' she continues, flames in her cheeks. 'You think we would have met, no matter what? Even if I were some lushy? Some loon? Street kid?' 'You're laughing at me.' 'Just asking,' he says. 'Everyone has one person, I think. For life. That's all.”

“He has come back from the verge of nevermore and is changed forever, and not just for the new bumps and scars upon his young head, bumps with a story to tell. I am a boxer! Yes, Sam has a calling now and a destiny and, day by day, gains in fortitude and definition, further moved to emotion by his bosom friends and further restored to vigour in thew and sinew.”

“There are times today when Rachel looks at Zach and sees an effusion, she sees him in colours of yellow and blue, sun and sky. She sees the yellow crew-neck jumper and blue jeans the boy of eight years old appeared in the day he came to Chelsea from the Coram Family via the two or three previous fosterers who returned him there, defeated, pronouncing him uncommunicative and maladroit in the extreme, animal, said one; unruly. So why this boy? For Katya the fractious? Of all the orphan boys in the world, why him? Of all potential mothers, why Katya? What did she see? Everyone has a part and a destiny. Rachel remembers the yellow jumper the boy rarely removed, even after the family shopping spree for a new wardrobe at Harrods followed by lunch in a restaurant with napkins large as small tablecloths, and heavy cutlery and wine for Katya and Lev and a pervasive daunting hush. Zach had never been to a restaurant before and chose spaghetti, because he knew what it was. He ate it with knife and fork. On the day he arrived in Chelsea, he stopped in the vestibule to slip his feet from lace-ups without undoing the bows, removing his shoes with institutional efficiency, left hand still held in Katya's right. Rachel sees that boy still, blue and yellow. Sky and sun.”

“We'll be up in a minute,' states Katya, speaking from a particular stillness, in sudden recognition of a dream made real, a dream annulled, so she had thought, by long words of the womb—'endometriosis,' 'hyperplasia'—and now made true, this vision of a boy on a staircase answering to his name, coming to her call. My son. She raises one arm slightly in front of Lev at her side, in gentle impediment. Not yet. Wait here. Let me see. This was always preordained.”