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Do you believe in angels? I do.

One morning, this week, three years ago, I was quietly working away at my desk when a name popped into my head.

The name of an old friend from university who has lived in the Persian Gulf for twenty years.

I immediately picked up my phone and messaged him spontaneous greetings. Moments later, he responded, telling me he was in London on business.

I told him an angel must have whispered his name in my ear. He agreed.

Likewise, the angel must then have inspired me to speak of my brother, a jetsetting diplomat stationed in Southeast Asia.

For by curious happenstance, my friend was at that very moment seeking diplomatic connections to facilitate his international law firm’s expansion into the same region.

On learning this, my old friend suggested we meet for tea that evening, to which I agreed, lest we miss each other for another several years.

That’s how I ended up on a Chiltern line train to Marylebone after work, watching London’s vast cityscape fly past.

I regret I did not present myself well when we met. He cuts the fine figure of a successful lawyer who has enjoyed a fruitful career with a top city law firm.

And me? I was just emerging from a dark period of gloomy melancholy, shaken by anxiety, self-doubt, and regret, yet to achieve anything of much significance in my life.

Still, we struck up conversation where we probably last left off many years ago. Our lives are incomparable now, if they ever were.

But there was a reason for our meeting. Through my brother, he made contact with the relevant trade and investment folk at the embassy in that Southeast Asian state.

And for me? That would be a wake-up call to shake me to my core.

For on the train into London that evening, witness to row upon row of houses, I concluded the chance of me ever again reacquainting myself with anyone I had known in my youth was zero.

Or so it seemed until the following afternoon, when another name popped into my head, revealing just how completely wrong I was, humbling me completely.

After all these experiences, I can’t really say I believe in coincidence or random chance anymore.

Well, you wouldn’t either, if you had seen all that I have seen.