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It was a Sunday morning in March, one of the coldest London winters in modern memory, and—although she was totally alone—Coralie Bower, aged twenty-nine and a half, was certainly not unhappy!

Which superpower would you prefer: to be invisible or able to fly?

Her first and only Guardian Soulmates date had asked her that question at Nando’s.

(An agronomist from Walthamstow, he identified as a “contrarian,” had worn a full Tour de France–style cycling kit, and had asked if Australia had “any universities.” Never again.) The answer was invisibility, and she had that power right now.

All it had taken was moving to the other side of the world.

She marched down the canal, dodging bikes and strolling couples.

As she reached Victoria Park, she realized she hadn’t spoken a word all morning.

She cleared her throat a few times to loosen up.

In her mind, she rehearsed her order: “One latte, please….” She said it out loud: “One latte.” Was that weird?

It was weird! She’d spent the whole weekend writing, books and papers spread out across the flat, and she’d forgotten how to exist in public.

It was so incredibly cold—whippets on their walks shivered in double jackets.

Only the thought of coffee kept her going.

It was far from ideal. (It was terrible.) But she’d learned her lesson during the Christmas-party season: better to stay up and keep busy than to lie in bed, failing to sleep, questioning every life choice.

By midnight, she’d hung her hand-washing out near the radiator to dry.

Her work emails were up-to-date, replies in her drafts for Monday.

She’d dealt at last with her brother’s scrupulously nonjudgmental update from what she supposed she should call home.

Don’t worry, it’s fine, keep your distance , his polite email seemed to imply.

You’re totally not wanted or needed. Coralie managed other people’s emotions for a living!

She didn’t welcome having the tables turned on her by Daniel!

She’d drafted and deleted several hurt responses before accessing a higher plane.

You’re doing an amazing job with Mum , she’d replied.

I bet she’s so glad you’re there. Please keep me updated on it all.

The truth was she could hardly bear to know.

Inside the Pavilion café, every seat was taken, and the warm breath of laughing friends and families had fogged up the windows and even the high glass dome.

(“One latte, please”—it had gone well, though she’d been forced to freestyle some small talk when the barista had been nice.) She took her coffee outside and stood by the lake to drink it.

Soon the wind changed, and the fountain’s spray changed direction too.

The sun came out for a brief moment; the mist glowed with a streak of rainbow.

She slipped her hand in her overcoat pocket for her phone.

Images like that killed on her nascent Instagram and performed an important function by reassuring friends in Australia she was alive.

“A rainbow,” a man said. “Zora, look, a rainbow.”

The lake, at least the part next to the café, was bordered by a low fence of interlocking cast-iron semicircles. A small girl raced right up and bumped it with her scooter. “A rainbow!”

She was so sweet, with bobbed hair, a little fringe, and serious dark eyes and brows—Coralie glanced up to take in the man, enviably warm-looking in his woolen jumper, scarf, and coat.

To her surprise, he was already studying her, turning on her the full force of his gaze.

Did they know each other? But the whole point of Coralie Bower was that, apart from her colleagues at the office, she knew no one in London at all.

“Dada, see the baby ducks?”

“I can see them.” He sounded amused, and from the direction of his voice, it seemed he was still looking at Coralie, even though she’d turned away and drifted off, staring down at, although not seeing, her phone.

“Can you get me one? A baby duck?”

“I could get you a croissant. Or a pain aux raisins—would that do?”

“I don’t want the duck-ning to eat ,” the girl said.

The man laughed and picked up her scooter. “Why do you want it, then?”

“To love it and take care of it!”

They were walking off—the man carrying the scooter in one hand, the other hand holding the girl’s.

When Coralie was five or six, her neighbor’s cat had kittens.

The cat received visitors like a queen in a pile of towels in the laundry, her babies fanned around her, their eyes closed.

If Coralie could’ve got away with it, she would have stolen one—she’d wanted one of those kittens so badly.

She knew exactly where the little girl with the fringe was coming from.

Now she studied the ducks, very fluffy and newly hatched—hatched too soon, surely, in this cold.

A sudden yearning filled her, too, although the ducks must have been swimming near her for five minutes without her even noticing.

She was back, suddenly—the girl, leaning on the fence by the lake.

Coralie glanced through the windows into the café and thought perhaps she saw the man, his head thrown back in a laugh.

The wind changed again, and a wall of frigid spray advanced on them from the fountain.

She raised her hand to shield her face. When she lowered it, the girl was in the water, face down. Fuck!

Was it an emergency? It was an emergency.

As in a nightmare, her throat ached with panic, but she couldn’t scream for help.

Seconds passed in a horrible flash. Why was the girl so still, her coat puffed around her like a life jacket?

Coralie climbed over the fence, steadied herself, and jumped in.

The water was up to her waist. She scooped the girl up and laid her over the crook of her arm.

She gave the top of her back, right between the shoulder blades, one tremendous thump with her fist. The girl coughed, spluttered, and gave a quick, outraged shout. “Ahh!”

Coralie looked up toward the café. People had begun to spill out—silent, open-mouthed.

She waded the few steps to the edge, reached up, and tipped the girl over the fence.

Now she had no visible reason to be in waist-deep freezing water, and she could feel new people arriving at the scene and staring at her as if she were mad.

She realized with horror that her phone was in her pocket, submerged.

Oh well. She climbed up to the ledge, balanced herself, and stepped awkwardly onto dry land.

The girl’s face was white with shock. Coralie crouched and rubbed her back. “Did you want to see the ducks?”

The girl nodded. There was a graze under her fringe where she’d bumped her head on the way in. Tears filled her eyes. She began to cry.

People were surrounding them. A woman took off her coat and put it around the girl. There was an accusatory element to the crowd’s murmured remarks, as if someone, probably Coralie, had been remiss, and (now that the danger had passed) it was time to apportion blame.

“I’ll just get her dad,” Coralie said to no one, but as she struggled toward the café in her sodden jeans and boots, the man emerged with a big cup in one hand and a small one in the other. When he saw the crowd at the water’s edge, he dumped the cups on a bench and ran.

“Zora!” He crouched and heaved her up into his arms. In his embrace, water squeezed from her coat and dripped to the ground.

He talked closely into her ear. Her cheek rested against his.

For a moment, he locked eyes again with Coralie—the circle of onlookers drew closer, offering jumpers, scarves, lifts home.

The man and his daughter were cut off from view.

Walking as normally as possible so no one would notice her leaving, Coralie trudged home, shaking with cold and inwardly freaking about lake-borne parasites. But something had changed. She was no longer invisible. The man had really seen her, and she had definitely seen him.

···

“If you can’t write, you can work.” That had been the advice of an author she’d heard on an otherwise-forgotten podcast. A week after the lake incident, she spent all weekend organizing the notes she’d taken for her project, in emails to herself, on receipts and scrap paper, and in notebooks.

What actually was she writing? (Her childhood friend Elspeth asked delicately in her email.) It wasn’t that clear, even to herself.

Something about the distance between Coralie and home, her past so far away, decisively “the past”—her future here so blank and unknown—no one around to see her try, and probably fail, to get words on the page and keep them there.

There weren’t actual events from her life in her notes, or real people—it wasn’t memoir.

It was more like: feelings she’d had that she couldn’t explain.

Or: things she’d done that she couldn’t understand.

In the absence of fresh intel, she found herself starting to invent.

That was something new—that felt like proper writing.

By early afternoon on Sunday, it was so cold and so dark she couldn’t face going far for coffee.

She pulled the door of her flat shut and crossed the street to Climpsons, a small café with rough wooden bench seating and good coffee.

“Is that her?” she heard as she ordered. “That’s her!”

It was the man from the park. He stood up from his seat at the window. “It’s you!”

Coralie waved at the girl next to him. “It’s you!”

The girl waved back, her legs swinging.

The man came toward her. She wondered for a moment if he’d embrace her, shake her hand, or even, for a crazy second, kiss her—he seemed to be contemplating all three.

He stood with his arms open wide. He was her height (not tall).

They gazed at each other. “I can’t believe you ran away,” he finally said.