The empty chair

What happens when we return?

We found the viewpoint before sunrise. Below us the city was waking: delivery vans, ferry crews, bakers, cleaners. An immense arrangement of lives beginning another ordinary day.

The man in the yellow coat was waiting on a bench. He looked older than he had in Dover. Or perhaps we had finally learned to look at him.

‘Did you find the answer?’ he asked. I handed him the notebook. It contained arguments, repairs, meals, a water ration and a drawing of a gate. Almost every page contradicted another.

He smiled. The notebook had belonged to several travellers. There had never been one hidden author laying a perfect trail. People had recognised the questions and added directions of their own.

The empty chair was for whoever came next.

We had left looking for the right arrangement: enough freedom, enough belonging, rules that were fair and help that did not become control. What we brought back was a responsibility to keep making those arrangements together—and to notice who had been left outside them.

I wrote one line beneath the first question: A strategy for life on Earth must leave room for the people who have to live it.

Then I left the notebook on the bench. For the first time, the gap in the circle looked deliberate.