Sally had been waiting at the kitchen table for at least a quarter of an hour, listening out for the creak of the noisy stairs to indicate that Jonathan was on his way down for their 4pm coffee ritual. That morning she'd tried to elicit some details of how the previous evening had gone, but Jonathan had been less than forthcoming and had avoided her questions by telling her he was busy with an illusion concept. He'd then holed himself away in his room for most of the day, sneaking down for some lunch when she was out seeing a friend.

She thought back to when Jonathan had started making occasional mention of this woman who was leading him into all sorts of dangerous situations to solve crimes and mysteries, and she hadn't quite known what to make of it; whether she should be happy he wasn't so cloistered in his little life between the windmill and the theatre, or whether she should be worried for him. Then the pair of them had helped to solve Elliot Strange's bizarre death, and through her grief Ingrid had told Sally just how good Maddy was for her son - bringing him out of his shell, challenging him, making him laugh, making him a part of something instead of being an 'other' like he'd so often been throughout his life.

Jonathan had, however, never been forthcoming about the details of his relationship with Maddy, which made Sally suspect his feelings were strong but either unconsummated or unreturned – normally she'd manage to get him to open up and let her in at least a little, but not with this particular woman. And on the couple of occasions Sally and David had been back to visit him in that time, he hadn't introduced them. She could tell from the way he spoke about Maddy that he cared deeply about her, but she was cautious of projecting anything of what Ingrid had told her on to the pair. As much as Ingrid was a sensible woman, Sally also knew that she too wanted to see Jonathan happy after the difficulties she'd seen him grow up with, so she couldn't discount the possibility that Ingrid had extrapolated a little too far.

Time had passed, more mysteries had been solved, Maddy's books had been released – which Sally had of course devoured for relationship clues as soon as she could get her hands on them, with no results – and then all of a sudden Maddy had moved to the States and didn't seem to figure in Jonathan's life any more. Then after a few years, along came Polly. In truth, Sally had hated seeing Jonathan put his own passions aside to 'fit in' with Polly's life. One of the things she had so admired about her son growing up was his determination to follow his heart and his dreams in spite of what anyone else thought, and with Polly that light seemed to have been extinguished. She was enjoying having a ringside seat while it slowly smouldered back into being.

Finally at five past four, she heard the telltale floorboard squeak and tried her best to look nonchalant as he came into the kitchen, wandered over to the kettle and started preparing their coffee.

Despite being desperate for information, she decided to start with an easy question, "How's the trick coming along?"

Jonathan grimaced. "Bit stuck today. The actual mechanics of it seem to make sense, but it's difficult to give it any flair if I don't know who I'm designing it for."

"I thought it was just for fun?"

"Well yes, but even so…"

"Then design it for Adam. That would be the easiest, wouldn't it?"

He nodded, placing a steaming mug in front of her and sitting down opposite her. "It would, but then I'd be tempted to give it to him – if I can make it work, that is – and I don't know if I want to get sucked into that vortex again."

"Would that be so bad?"

"I don't know," he sighed. "I'm not sure if it would feel like too much of a step backwards." He took a sip of coffee and looked off into the distance before talking again. "Speaking of which, I suppose I can't get out of telling you about last night before I head back upstairs?" he queried as he nursed his drink, both hands wrapped around the cup.

"No, you absolutely cannot!" said Sally, relieved she hadn't had to bring it up herself. She knew that Jonathan must want some advice or feedback if he was opening up the conversation himself, which made her feel slightly better because she could relabel her nosiness as concern.

"So…?" she continued.

"It was great to see her. It was…comfortable," he smiled to himself as he recalled his and Maddy's opening conversation.

"But?" responded Sally, sensing a hesitation.

"It was difficult too. Heavy." She stayed silent, watching him, waiting for him to say more. "There's a lot of history."

If Maddy had been as important to Jonathan as Sally had come to imagine, yet they hadn't actually been in a relationship, she couldn't fathom what had happened to make them lose contact with each other.

She wondered if Maddy following in her and David's footsteps of moving halfway across the world – to live not much further than a hundred miles apart, as it happened – had been a double blow to Jonathan and she asked herself for the umpteenth time in her life whether leaving him to fend for himself in England had been detrimental to him. He may have been an adult by the time they'd gone, but he'd still had a lot of growing up to do.

Sally bit the bullet and decided to ask the question she really wanted the answer to. "How close were you back then?"

"I was on my own and so was she." Jonathan didn't want to betray Maddy's trust by telling her family secrets, even after all this time, so he avoided the specifics. "She was brought up by a single mum who died when she was seventeen…" He saw his mum's surprised, sad face but didn't allow her the space to interject, knowing how much more distressed she'd be if she knew the full details "…and she didn't have brothers or sisters, so she was by herself. And with you and Dad over here, so was I. We became each other's family, I suppose." He trailed off as he realised the implications of what he'd said, insinuating they were a couple, and tried to backtrack. "Constant arguments and complaining and always ribbing each other," he said with an eye roll.

"Ingrid told me Maddy challenged you," Sally said lightly and received one of Jonathan's patented sharp eyebrow raises in return, "She meant it in a good way, of course. You'd be bored in five minutes with someone who didn't."

Jonathan had to concede on that point.

Sally decided to push her luck while he was being vaguely open with her. "But you weren't ever…?"

He sighed and thought he might as well come clean, in as abstract a way as he could get away with. "It wasn't that black and white. But were we ever actually in a relationship? Not quite."

"Well, that sounds…difficult." She prodded further. "So, what happened?"

Jonathan didn't have the guts to explain to his own mother how much of a horrible excuse for a human being he'd been and how he'd essentially driven Maddy away, so he peddled out the same line he'd given to many people when they'd asked him, not even bothering to mask his obvious fabrication. "She came over here for her book tour, loved it and decided to move. And then we grew apart."

Sally didn't buy it for a second, but she recognised that was as much as she was going to get, and didn't challenge him on it. She changed tack. "It must have been strange to see her again after all this time?"

He shook his head. "It was strangely normal actually. In some ways like no time had passed at all."

"She must have been a good friend."

"She was," he agreed, then realised, "She is."

Sally tried her best to gain some understanding of Jonathan's thoughts, but his face was inscrutable. "So you're going to see her again?"

"Mmmm. She emailed me this morning. She's got to go to some journalism awards thing in New York next week and she's got a plus one, so she wants to know if I'll go with her. Another opportunity to catch up before I go back home."

'Aha' thought Sally, realising this must be what he wanted to talk about. "Will you go?"

He huffed out a breath. "I don't know. It's one thing having dinner together, but it's another to go on a minibreak to New York City. For all I know there's a grisly impossible crime waiting to be solved in Brooklyn and she's asking me to go up there on false pretences."

Sally laughed. "I doubt that, Jonathan."

"You've obviously never met her," he retorted.

He looked squarely into his coffee mug before he spoke again. "But I did mean to take a trip up there while I was here, tour round the museums, that sort of thing. So this could be a chance for that. Tie it together?" He phrased it as a question, almost asking permission of his mother or, more likely, wanting her to make a decision for him.

Sally knew she couldn't tell him he must go, despite finding herself desperate for him to agree to Maddy's invitation. Instead, she decided to give him some threads to follow. "It would be a shame not to see The Met. And MOMA. And The Guggenheim. Not to mention…"

He ended the sentence for her with a half-smile, half-grimace, "…the Houdini museum."

"Exactly."

It would be good to get to Tannen's," he mused, referring to New York's oldest magic store.

It was clear then to Sally that he'd already made up his mind, he was simply anxious of appearing too eager, and likely a little scared. Just as she was about to urge him to go and let Maddy know he would join her, they both jumped as his mobile started ringing. Jonathan looked at it strangely, having rarely heard it ring for the past few weeks, and saw a name he didn't expect appear on the screen.

He gave his mum an apologetic look as he walked back up the stairs with his coffee. "Charlie?"

"JC? Oh, thank Christ. I wasn't sure you'd still be on this number over there in America."

He smiled as he adjusted his ear to the broad Glaswegian brogue of Adam's magical consultant. He'd often wondered how hard it was for Adam to maintain his American drawl whilst Charlie was around speaking the language of his childhood.

"Is everything ok?" he queried.

"Och, you know, the usual with Adam," she said with some frustration. "Anyway, before I get into that, how are you? How's life? It's been an age since I saw you."

"It has. There's been a lot going on, I'm sure you've heard. But I'm well, all things considered."

"Well, that's a relief," she said. "I'm happy to hear it."

"Thank you," he said sincerely. "What about you?"

"Mostly good, but work's a trial right now, I can't tell you."

"I think I have a fair idea," smiled Jonathan. "What's he done this time?"

He could hear her frustration on the other end of the line. "He's such a chancer. I don't know how you put up with him for so long. Honestly."

"For all the fame and fortune?" Jonathan replied sarcastically.

"Aye, right," she laughed, then got more serious. "So you know we're going to Vegas? Turns out Adam's told the owners at the Encore that he's got some massive stunt up his sleeve to help promote the show. Like a promotional thing to help sell tickets. And you know him," she put on an American drawl, "'It's going to be like nothing you've ever seen before. It's going to get headlines around the world,'" she imitated with frustration.

"And I'm assuming there's no stunt?"

"Course there isn't. And I've told him no danger; there's precisely zero chance of me coming up with something new. I'm already up to my eyeballs with the rest of the show and now he wants me to make the Kardashians disappear in the middle of Rodeo Drive or something."

"We'd all like to see that happen," said Jonathan drily.

"True. Fair do's. I'll work on it," she replied, making him laugh.

He then made the connection and asked straight up, "So Adam told you to call me for help?"

"Actually, no. He might be a numpty but even he knows that'd be crossing the line. But he told me you'd gone up to meet him at the IBM Convention and you were working on some new ideas. So I thought I'd call, just in case…?"

Jonathan immediately started to think about the machinations of setting his new idea in Las Vegas, and all the possibilities that could offer. It was true that giving the illusion a grounding in a specific space and with a specific conjurer made it much easier to picture.

"There is something I've been working on which might fit the bill," he admitted. "But I can't promise anything. Give me a day or two to see if I can solidify it."

"Really? Oh man, you'd be such a lifesaver."

"Like I said, no promises. You should still see if anyone else has anything. But I'll be in touch soon."

"Got it. No pressure. I'll make some other calls in the meantime. Thank you, JC," she said with sincerity.

As they said their goodbyes, Jonathan's brain was already in overdrive, looking at his concept with the new angle of a Las Vegas setting. It could just be perfect. He got straight to work.