Infinite improbability

Coming home at an irregular hour on a train line I use only occasionally, I'm standing ready to get off the train when I hear my name spoken questioningly. A young woman of startling beauty is staring intently at me. "I'm Ilse's sister...!"

Certain people in my life I particularly regret having lost touch with. The clever, passionate, generous and talented Kelvin family is high on that list. For a brief while, fifteen years ago, Ilse Kelvin and I were lovers, the end of which I used as the excuse for a world-class fit of moping. Natasha is her younger sister, and it was she who had recognised me on the train.

But all this had happened in Australia... Ilse had moved to London to pursue her 'cello studies. Ilse and Natasha and their sister Elizabeth were all musicians, and Ilse and Natasha members of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Unless I leave Australia, I will never know how good I am. Well, that's a thing about Oz. Last I'd heard Ilse had been living in Hackney and playing accompaniment on her lover Jan's CDs.

Curiously, I wound up living not far from her last address, in Dalston, but her trail was well cold by then. Then Natasha, in Hampstead. Their parents moved to Ireland, where her mother grew up. Ilse is now married and raising a family there. They're all just outside Cork. Natasha and her boyfriend live in West Hampstead; she teaches dance, gave up the violin about 7 years ago, walks often on the Heath near my house.

In Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut writes that each of us belongs to a karass, a group of people with whom our lives are bound in ways we can neither predict nor fathom.

Some catching up to look forward to.