Saffron allowed herself a little grin as she studied the old photo of Jack and herself in New York City. He'd been so young — and so had she. The two of them really thought they'd had the world by the… well… as her mother would've said… the buggery bollocks.

Their good, sweet, loyal friend Akeem, the finest personal NYC cabbie anyone could dream of. The old Chinese lady at the store with her witticisms (and criticisms) and their three Chinese lanterns, purchased from her. Jack's special brand of cologne and after shave: Oriental Jade. Even Sanjay, Jack's best friend who Saff had, at the time, truly despised. But over the past decade, she and Jay — as Jack always called his buddy — had become friends. Saffron even recalled the girl she and Jack saw Jay chatting up as she waited for an elevator; the woman hadn't liked Jay at all. Now they had three children and had been happily married for almost 10 years.

Things changed. Life went on. Even after so much pain.

Babies, Saff thought, touching her index finger lightly to the image of Jack's smiling face. We were just babies.

If only we'd known…

Sometimes it was difficult for Saff to realize that Jack had been dead nearly a decade now. She'd begged him not to take the assignment in south Sudan. But Jack being Jack the intrepid photojournalist — the man who'd found himself in every war-torn outpost around the globe — he'd assured her everything would be all right. And he'd left.

Then he'd never come home.

Jack disappeared, like the squad of American soldiers he'd been embedded with, in the terrible explosion of the Humvee when it ran over the IED alongside the road. With him, Saffron's dreams of being a wife and mother — one with a career of her own, which Jack heartily endorsed and encouraged ("Hey, we need the income," he'd only half-joked) — likewise went up in a horrendous haze and hideous, dark plume of acrid, black smoke and flame. She'd been told about Jack's death by the editor in chief of the magazine Jack worked for back then. When the man started detailing the terrible events of the day Jack and the troops died, Saffron finally begged him tearfully to please just stop. She couldn't hear any more about it. It was all too grotesque to imagine.

She'd loved Jack so much. In fact, he was her first lover — the man who tenderly made her a woman, who'd given her a home in New York after a drunken romp, a misunderstanding between them. They'd grown up together during the couple of years they had. And then… nothing.

There was no body, no one to lay to rest.

He was just gone.

Now Saffron was in her early 30s, with 40 looming on the not-too-distant horizon. She'd given up on romance since Jack's death. What need was there for love, sex, intimacy, when the man you'd planned a life with was only a memory?

Patsy, for once, didn't blame her for what happened. The two of them, instead, quietly grieved together in their own way: Almost zero insults and snide remarks directed at one another. Patsy's son… Saffron's lover… No more. But they shared the memories of the funny, snarky, handsome, kind, tender and driven young man. It was strange — and yet they'd bonded, in a sense, over Jack's passing. Edina, Saff's mum and Patsy's best friend, didn't fully get it, although she kept silent, which for her was quite an achievement. Even Eddy seemed to know that nothing more needed to be said on the matter.

Saffron's reverie was broken by the rather harsh bleating of her colleague at the Labour Party's nascent Social Outreach office.

"Miss Monsoon," Clara said a bit testily, "your first appointment is here to see you. A Mister Anthony Draper."

Saff turned towards her, barely hearing the words.

"Oh, um… Yes. Thank you, Clara," Saffron said, forcing a smile. "Please tell him I'll be just a minute, will you?"

When Clara left the room, Saffron gave the old photo of Jack and herself one last look and carefully replaced it in a small wooden box she kept in the top right drawer of her desk. The box had been Jack's personal shaving kit. The lovers had spent many a night putting it to use when Saff carefully, sensually shaved Jack using his old straight edge razor — a blade that needed old-fashioned stropping on leather, a task Saffy relished. Jack loved being tended to in this way. And she cherished playing the role of personal barber. They'd enjoyed some epic nights of lovemaking after those tonsorials. Saffy never thought it could end.

But that was the past. Jack's life was over; Saffron's wasn't.

And now she had to entertain this Anthony Draper character, a man who, on the surface, was everything she disliked: wealthy, socially well-heeled, an incredibly stuffy conservative lawyer. Or so she'd heard.

"Miss Monsoon?" Clara said in a stage whisper as she cracked open Saffron's office door, peeping in. "Mister Draper is waiting!"

Shutting the top right desk drawer with an odd resolve she hadn't felt since Jack's death, Saffron stiffened herself, sniffing loudly as she took a deep breath.

"Clara," she answered confidently. "Let Mister Draper in, please."