She met him at Penn Station off the train from Lincoln. He led her to the Empire State Building, holding her small gloved hand in one of his and her little blue travelling case in the other.

She hadn’t seen him since he’d returned from the war. As he pulled her towards the elevator she tried not to think about going home alone in two days. Their good shoes clicked on the tile. She jumped as the door hissed. It’s okay, he said, it’s amazing up there, really the best way to see New York, especially, he added, since we don’t have much time.

Up high, the wind jostled her hat and her careful curls; he showed her the Hudson twisting to the north, then pointed uptown. ‘That’s where we’ll live when we marry.’ She smiled but couldn’t see what he was pointing at. On the way back down she crushed her hands together. ‘Chilly,’ she said.

From his suit pocket he pulled out a small blue box containing a palm-sized replica of the building. ‘So you’ll remember,’ he said. She tucked it into her suit pocket. ‘Thank you, I’ll never forget this.’ She anticipated its heft, the texture of the tiny dimples representing windows. But when she took it out, later, on the way home, she cried as she held it, cheap and plastic and weightless, so hollow, and so light.