Finding your voice…means finding a way to write that is comfortable for you. It’s finding the method to tell your story that seems natural.

—Maeve Binchy

Dusty’s Winter

She had been born in 1966, when Dusty Springfield was top of the pops, so that was what they called her. It was almost impossible to believe that her mother had once listened to pop records and cared enough about them to name her only daughter after a female vocalist. Especially since her mother was nearly forty at the time and had not expected a little Dusty, or a little anything, to join their nice, neat family of two boys who were eleven and ten. Nowadays the family was much too sensible to call their children after pop stars. She couldn’t imagine her brothers choosing names like Bono or Meat Loaf. Yet that was what it must have been like. A bit racy, really, not in step with their nice, safe, ordinary life. Dusty often wondered what she would fill in if she were asked to do a questionnaire about her childhood.

Happy? Yes. Or sort of happy. Not unhappy, let’s say, yes—that would be more like the truth. She would have to put “not unhappy,” and yet anyone who read that as an answer would say that poor child must have been wretched or frightened. That certainly was not the case. Her father had gone out every morning at ten past eight and had come home every evening at ten to seven. He worked in the office.

They weren’t poor but they weren’t rich.

Dusty’s mother worked mornings in a café nearby. It involved making the open sandwiches for lunch and piping whipped cream onto cakes, as well as serving. It was much more than just waiting tables. When Dusty was a baby she was wheeled there in her pram and put to sleep out in the back with Lionel, the son of the owner, and Sergio, the son of the Italian woman who did the washing up.

Dusty didn’t know she was sleeping beside Lionel and Sergio. They were in their own prams with their own mothers coming to coo over them.

During the school holidays she remembered her brothers, Daniel and Harold, coming into the café with their friends. But they didn’t come out to the back where Dusty, Sergio, and Lionel were growing up in a room that had become a nursery, with pictures on the walls and toys. In many ways Sergio and Lionel were really her brothers. Daniel and Harold were grown-ups.

By the time Dusty was five and in school, Daniel had a girlfriend. And a year later there was a terrible row at home. Dusty didn’t know what it was about, but it had something to do with her mother being at work and not being at home to keep an eye on things. They told her to go and play and not to interrupt them.

Dusty went down to the café. Sergio and Lionel were always glad to see her. She didn’t normally go there anymore. And it involved crossing two main roads. Her mother didn’t like her making the journey on her own. But that day nobody would have noticed if she had gone down the road in a parachute.

Her father had come home from the office in the middle of the day. He kept calling her mother “Jean” in a sharp, angry tone. Normally he called her “dear.” And Daniel had been crying, which was extraordinary. Grown-up men of seventeen didn’t cry.

She told it all to Sergio and Lionel, and they tried to guess what it might be. But they couldn’t think of anything, so they stopped guessing and played Happy Families. When her mother came to collect her, Lionel’s mother said that they were all playing Happy Families, and her mother had started to cry in the café in front of everyone.

And shortly after that, Mother stopped working in the café, and so Dusty’s mornings during the holidays were spent at home. Mother cleaned a lot and got cross if any mud came into the house. And if Sergio and Lionel came to play, there was always a bit of trouble about kicking up the grass.

Dusty would love to have played in Sergio’s house or down at the back of the café with Lionel, but her mother said she had learned one lesson, and the other children would not be let out of her sight.

At school, Dusty made other friends, proper friends, girls who told one another secrets and had plans and got ready for parties. And they had a marvelous teacher called Miss Howe whom they all loved. They made up stories about rescuing Miss Howe from a burning house or from a muddy river or from a savage dog. They dreamed of inviting Miss Howe back for tea. She lived not far from Dusty. Perhaps Dusty could ask her. But Dusty thought not.

Miss Howe was full of excitement and stories about history. Miss Howe could make you feel you were there when the wooden horse arrived in Troy, or when Hannibal came over the Alps. She would find it very dull at home, where people said, “Pass the salt, please,” and not much else. Meals were pretty silent. Miss Howe wouldn’t enjoy that.

Daniel and Harold sort of looked into the plates and wished for the meal to be over. Dusty chattered on and they all looked at her fondly, but nobody made any effort to keep the conversation going, so she began to be silent also, thinking about funny things at school, or Sergio and Lionel at the café.

If anyone had asked if she was a lonely child, Dusty would have said, “Heavens, no.” And then, “Well, not really lonely.”

There were plenty of people about. But there wasn’t anyone whom you could talk to fully. Friends went home to their own families and, as she grew up, she saw less of Sergio and Lionel, which was a pity, but it was the way things were.

—

Sergio’s father had done something bad. Sergio didn’t know what it was, but it involved his mother’s brothers coming over from Italy, and big arguments. Now his father was not allowed to come home.

Lionel knew all about it. He said Sergio’s father had been playing with another lady.

“Why shouldn’t he play with ladies?” Dusty asked.

“I don’t know,” Sergio said. “He doesn’t play much with me at home. Maybe he just likes to play with other ladies.”

Lionel shook his head. “No, that’s not the way it works. You’re not meant to play with other ladies, only one lady.”

“That’s a big dull,” said Sergio.

“It’s what they fight over,” Lionel said sagely.

“Nobody’s playing with ladies in our house, but they do seem to be fighting quite a bit. Especially with Daniel,” Dusty confided.

“Ah, that’s because of Daniel’s baby,” said Lionel.

“But he doesn’t have a baby,” Dusty said.

“He does, too.”

“Well, I’ve never seen it. It’s not in his room.”

“No, silly, he doesn’t have it. The girl has it.”

“I thought you had them only if you lived together.” Dusty was very confused.

“You have to live together only for a bit, a very short bit.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I’ll ask.”

“Don’t. I’ll get into trouble,” Lionel pleaded.

But Dusty asked anyway. “Does Daniel have a baby anywhere?” she asked, as they were setting the supper table. She remembered it for the rest of her life. Everyone seemed frozen where they were, like a game of statues.

Eventually her mother said in a strangled voice, “Where did you hear that, Dusty?”

Dusty decided to protect Lionel. “Everyone at school says it.”

Daniel’s face was white.

“Now, Daniel,” said their mother. “Now, do you believe me that she’s a tramp?”

“So much for all the promises of privacy.” Their father looked as if he had received a crushing blow.

“Oh, God, Daniel, it’s not the end of the world,” said Harold.

“Well, is there a baby?” asked Dusty. “If there is, I’d love to see it. Is it a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a little girl,” Daniel said. “Her name is Jean Marie. We called her after our mothers, you see. Hoping they’d come around. But some hope that was.”

“How old is she?” Dusty asked.

“Two and a bit,” Daniel said.

“Can I see her?” Dusty’s face was shining.

“I don’t see why not. I see her every Saturday. You could come along with me,” Daniel said.

Then there was another silence. But the world didn’t come to an end or anything. So they went on with their meal. Where nobody talked much, as usual. After supper, Daniel went into the sitting room with Father. Dusty listened at the door.

“You promised that you wouldn’t involve everyone else in this disgrace,” her father said.

“I didn’t and Molly didn’t…but since half of Dusty’s school knows already—”

“And how do they know, might I ask?”

“Molly and I didn’t tell anyone. Nobody knows she’s my child. That’s what we agreed. I go down on Saturdays and work in her father’s shop for the whole day for wages, and I get to see the baby for an hour. That’s my contribution to her life. Until I earn money. You don’t pay anything. You don’t lose anything, so why should I not take my little sister to see a baby who’s her niece?”

“Do as you will. You always have.” Dusty heard her father sigh a deep, heavy sigh.

On the way to see the baby, Dusty asked cheerfully, “Does she live in a tent or a dustbin or anything?”

“Heavens, no! What made you think that?”

“Mother said she was a tramp or that her mother was.”

“I remember.” He was grim.

“And I thought they might all be tramps in funny hats, like Charlie Chaplin.”

“No, it’s not like that at all. You know she’s only six years younger than you. If things had been different, you could have grown up together. She’d have been like a little sister.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Molly and I thought we could live over the garage, and Molly could mind you, too, when Mother went out to work. It would have been great.”

“And why was it not great?”

“Search me.” Daniel looked very unhappy.

—

If Dusty had been asked what the best day of her childhood was, she would have said it was the day she met Jean Marie. She was like a big doll who waddled around holding out her arms to everyone.

When Jean Marie heard Dusty’s name, she said, “Dussy,” and went straight into her arms. Dusty had never cuddled anything living before.

They didn’t have a cat or a dog at home. And her mother wasn’t very strong on hugs. There had never been anything as lovely as this baby with the huge dark eyes and the little dress with rosebuds on it. She smelled of talcum powder and soap. And she had little brown boots that laced up.

“Can’t you lend her to Daniel for a bit, so that we could play with her at home?” she asked the woman called Molly.

“I’d love to, Dusty,” Molly said. “But that’s something that can’t be done.”

Miss Howe at school used to say that there was no such word as “can’t.” Everyone could do everything if only they tried.

“Look, you’re a grown-up girl, Dusty,” said Molly. “I’ll say it to you straight. Your mother doesn’t like me. Not everyone likes everyone. But that’s why I can’t come to see you or lend Jean Marie to Daniel, which I’d love to do.”

“That’s because she thinks you’re a tramp,” Dusty said helpfully. “Maybe she didn’t want a tramp coming because of all the old clothes and everything, but once she knows you’re not, then it should be all right.”

Molly’s eyes met Daniel’s. They looked at each other as if deciding whether to laugh or cry and fortunately they decided to laugh. They laughed until tears came down their faces.

Dusty didn’t see what was causing everyone such delight. She laughed, too, and so did Jean Marie. And the toddler put her arms around Dusty’s neck and said, “I love you.”

All during tea Molly and Daniel talked and laughed and Jean Marie beat on the table with her spoon and sang. Imagine being in a house where people talked all the time at mealtimes. Of course, this wasn’t a real house. Dusty realized that straightaway. This wasn’t how people behaved in a real home.

On Monday she told everyone about the new niece she had found. Dusty’s friend Kate was a bit interested, but the others all had younger sisters and brothers at home. They didn’t think it was such great news.

Dusty told Miss Howe. Miss Howe was interested. “That’s great for you, Dusty. You can have a little friend always and you can tell her things, stories, and how to make a daisy chain, and how to keep a scrapbook. She’ll always love you and come to you when she needs things.”

“But she can’t come home. She’s not allowed to come to our house,” Dusty said.

“In a way that makes it a better friendship,” Miss Howe said, looking on the bright side. “You see, if she were at home all the time or always coming to visit, you might get tired of her, like all the other girls here get tired of their little sisters. This way she’ll be a treat to you and you’ll be a treat to her.”

Dusty never mentioned her visits there to Mother or Father, because she knew it would upset them. But they knew where she went on Saturdays.

Molly was very nice. Sometimes she let Dusty put on her makeup, and she said Dusty could bring Kate, too, and they could dress up in her clothes. It was much better than bringing Kate home, because Mother worried so much about the dirt. Daniel told Dusty secretly that he was going to marry Molly when he was twenty-one and she was twenty-one. Dusty thought that was a pity. She would be too young to be a bridesmaid, too old to be a little flower girl. She and Kate planned what she would wear. She thought she’d like a yellow taffeta skirt and a scarlet jacket.

But she never got to choose. By the time he was twenty-one, everything had changed. Daniel was offered a travel scholarship to America. It would mean two years’ study and visiting universities. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Molly would understand. And Jean Marie would understand. After all, there had been long periods apart already. This time, when Dusty took Jean Marie by the hand for a walk in the park, they saw Molly crying on a park bench and Daniel standing up with his hands in his pockets, saying the same thing over and over.

“I’m not running away from you and the baby. Can’t you see it’s for the best?”

“What is it?” Jean Marie looked up trustingly at Dusty.

“I don’t know, to tell you the truth, but I’ll tell you when I do,” Dusty said.

If anyone were to ask her how she became so successful in business deals, she would say, “I always tell people the truth, no matter whether it’s good news or bad.” She did that for the first time with the chubby toddler, who looked into her face for an answer. She promised that she would say what she found out. And she delivered on her promise.

Dusty found out that Daniel didn’t want to marry Molly. That since he had been to college, he no longer loved Molly. All the things his parents had said would happen. So he had searched high and low for this travel scholarship that would take him away. Far away. He said he would write postcards to Jean Marie, but it would probably be best if he and Molly considered themselves free agents.

Molly cried a lot when she heard this. “I don’t want to be a free agent,” she said.

Dusty discussed it with Kate. There were two kinds of agents they knew about. Ones like Kate’s mother were agents for some kind of mail-order firm. You ordered things and they came to Kate’s house and her mother got a commission on what she sold. And then there were agents in spy films, like James Bond.

Molly seemed an unlikely person whom anyone would force to become either kind.

“Can I go on being friendly with my niece when you’ve gone away?” Dusty asked.

“I’d love it if you would, and maybe you might take pictures of her and send them to me,” Daniel said. He had a very sad face.

“I’ll take one every year on her birthday,” Dusty said earnestly.

“Oh, well, that will be only two birthdays. That’s not going to be much photography,” Daniel said.

But Dusty knew somehow that he wouldn’t be coming back.

So when Jean Marie was four she took the first one, and then when she was five.

And by the time she was six Molly said to her, “Don’t bother, Dusty. He only throws them in the bin.”

But Dusty went on and on. Jean Marie was seven and wore a new red dress bought for her by Molly’s boyfriend, Ken, and then when she was eight she wore her flower girl’s dress, the one she had worn at her mother’s wedding. And when she was nine it was dungarees, and when she was ten it was jeans, and when she was eleven it was jeans again.

Dusty was seventeen now, of course, and very grown-up. She wrote to her brother Daniel only once a year. Once or twice he phoned home to ask her to write more often. He loved her long accounts of the life he’d left behind.

“You should be a writer, Dusty,” he said. “You have a great gift of making me see the world very clearly. When I was your age, I didn’t know what was going on around me.”

“When you were my age you and Molly conceived Jean Marie.”

“Well…I suppose that’s one way of putting it. What a thing to say!”

“I was just saying it to assure you that you did know what was going on around you when you were seventeen,” Dusty said.

“I wish you wrote more often,” he said again.

“You never write to me at all. It’s not easy to write to someone who doesn’t write back. And you don’t send Jean Marie postcards. That’s why she doesn’t make you cards anymore.”

“That sounds very calculating.”

“No, it’s not. It’s about life being a bargain, isn’t it? You give some things and other people give some things. That’s how the world works, isn’t it? I mean, you’re out there in America in the heart of all that.”

“Is that boy made of money that he can talk for hours and hours across the Atlantic?” Dusty’s father asked when he walked into the room.

Father was fifty-seven now and a little bit testy. He had only two years and seven months before he retired from the office. The retirement was spoken of a lot. And whether there would be part-time work, relief work, consultant’s work. It all seemed highly unlikely to Dusty, but her opinion was not asked, so she never gave it.

Mother was fussy, too, fussier than she used to be. The house was immaculate. Dusty got into the habit of leaving slippers just inside the door and putting them on the moment she came in.

She didn’t bring friends home from school. Instead she brought them to Molly’s. Molly and Ken were very easygoing; they were happy to see Dusty and her pals anytime, they said. And Jean Marie would make a great fuss over them.

“She’s much nicer than the awful younger sisters people have,” Kate said approvingly.

“Miss Howe was so right when she said that we like people much better if we don’t live with them,” Dusty said.

If Miss Howe was right, did it mean that you should leave home shortly after you were born in order to get on well with your family? It was a puzzle.

—

Jean Marie loved the way Dusty talked to her as if she were an equal.

“Do you think my father loves me much, much more because he’s so far away?”

Dusty was honest, as always. “I’d say when he thinks of you, he loves you to bits,” she said. “But he doesn’t think of you all the time because he has to work and drive big long distances from one place to another.”

Jean Marie nodded. It made sense.

“And if he were here living with Mum, would it be a different kind of love?”

“Yes, totally different—better in a way, because he’d be here all the time and you’d know him and he’d know you. But worse because it might mean that he and your mum weren’t getting on well and that would be upsetting. And, of course, there’d be no Ken, and that would be awful, wouldn’t it?”

They all loved Ken. That clinched it. Jean Marie was perfectly happy about it all and went off to make biscuits for them.

When Dusty left school, she told her parents her plans. “I’m going to do a very good, detailed course in office skills, word processing, office management, and, at the same time, I’m going to do a modeling course to give me confidence,” she said.

They were horrified.

“But look at the university places you were offered,” her father said.

“I’ve told everyone you were going to university,” said her mother.

Dusty was calm. “I’ve just postponed it, that’s all. I want to go to university when I know something about the world, not just rush in there when I’m silly and immature.” She didn’t say it, because it didn’t need to be said, but there was her brother Daniel, almost a remittance man out in America, unable to face up to any responsibilities. Unsure, moving from place to place, always saying this one was for keeps and then moving again.

There was her brother Harold, who had failed out of one university and had received a mediocre pass degree from another. Harold was meant to be “in publishing.” That was what their father said at the office, but, in fact, Harold was between jobs. He couldn’t decide whether to marry his girlfriend or not, and she had left him. Harold lived sometimes at home and sometimes in a place he rented. In Dusty’s view it wasn’t much to have achieved at the age of twenty-eight.

“And how will you support yourself while you take these courses?” Mother wanted to know.

“I’m going to live with Molly and Ken and mind Jean Marie for them, so that’s my bed and board, and I’m going to work in the café for Lionel’s mum—that’s my fees and clothes.”

They were aghast.

“But why won’t you live here? This is your home,” they said.

She looked at them, old before their years, frightened people. Her father feared what they would think at the office when he told them of the humble aspirations his only daughter held. As if anyone in the office could care in the slightest. Her mother feared a change in the way things were, unable to see that the way things were was cold in an empty, loveless home, a place where people cared more about putting a coaster on the table for fear of causing a ring than how everyone else was getting on with their lives. She felt very sorry for them, even though she was only eighteen.

She knew that her own life might not turn out to be great and warm and all-embracing, but she was going to have a go at it. She wasn’t going to resign herself to this kind of doomed caring about what other people might think…when she very deeply believed that most people were not thinking about you at all. And she also knew that at this particular point in her life, she would never abandon or ignore her parents the way her brothers had. She would make them glad that they had this late child who would love them much better from afar.

Dusty emptied her bedroom very carefully. She repapered it and lined all the drawers with scented paper. Then she chose some of her mother’s best bed linens and made it up, ready to receive a guest. They could rent out the room.

“Perhaps someone working locally?” she suggested.

“A stranger in the house.” Mother would hear nothing of it.

“You could give her a television and tea-making equipment in the room; then you wouldn’t be falling over one another.”

Father wondered what they would say in the office if they knew he was taking in paying guests.

“They wouldn’t have to know unless you told them,” Dusty said mildly. Her father agreed, surprised at the simplicity of it all.

“But where will you sleep when you come back to see us, Dusty?” her mother asked despondently.

“In one of the boys’ rooms. We won’t all be back at the same time, and if we are, someone can sleep on the sofa.” Dusty made it all sound exciting, a full house, everyone home together. Something that would never happen. She helped her mother find a very pleasant lodger, a quiet woman who had come to work in a local lawyer’s office.

“What a lovely house! I’m surprised you don’t have more than one lodger,” Miss King said.

So Dusty took the hint and helped her mother do up Daniel’s room. He would never be back. Not for any length of time.

They found a Mr. Morris, and soon a common interest in cards was discovered.

Dusty wrote to her brothers. Daniel was in Pittsburgh and Harold had moved to Canada. She wrote and told them how happily Mother and Father were settling down with Mr. Morris and Miss King. She wrote to say how she had moved in with little Jean Marie, who was now twelve and very beautiful, and how she was back in the café where she had slept as a baby. And she was taking courses.

She felt that they didn’t care very much. They sort of assumed that their mother and father would survive fine. Harold couldn’t care less about Jean Marie. Daniel felt guilty about her. Neither of them knew or recalled that Dusty had slept as a baby between Lionel and Sergio in a café. But Dusty didn’t mind. She was going to keep them informed of the situation at home as long as she lived. She was never going to lay any guilty feelings on them, making them feel they should be more involved. Just remind them of birthdays and tell them of various life events along the way.

So she wrote about Molly and Ken and how they ran a market stall together and were doing very well, and how bright Jean Marie had turned out to be, and how she did her homework every night in the café with Dusty to keep an eye on her. Sergio married a wild Italian girl who was very unfaithful to him, and Lionel had developed a wonderful little potbelly. She wrote about Mother and Father, who had been to a bridge weekend with Mr. Morris and Miss King, and how Father wasn’t dreading his retirement from the office anymore.

She did not write and tell them how Lionel had fallen in love with her and was not to be consoled when she told him that the love was not returned. She did tell them that she didn’t work at the café anymore. She did write when she finished school and discussed her future job. She didn’t write about how much she loved the whole business of office routine, because it sounded somehow a bit pathetic.

She did tell them all about her move from one firm to another and a little bit about her rapid progress in every job she had. And she did tell them all about little Jean Marie getting accepted by the ballet school. She did tell them that Father was coping with retirement magnificently and couldn’t understand how he’d ever found the time to work. She did not tell her brothers that this was almost entirely her own doing. From afar she organized her parents’ lives very well.

She did not tell them that she had fallen in love with a man at work. A man not only married, but married to the boss’s daughter. It was the ultimate cliché. If she had been writing a book on how not to organize your life, that was what she might have suggested. But it didn’t feel like that, of course, when she had met Simon. It felt as if they had been meant for each other.

Dusty met Simon on her twenty-first birthday. He was twenty-five. As she was getting dressed to go to a party at a friend’s, Jean Marie had asked whether she believed in love at first sight.

“Impossible,” Dusty had explained. “It could only be attraction or infatuation or desire. Not love.”

But that night Dusty fell in love with Simon—about five minutes after they met. It had something to do with his smile and the way he touched her on the arm and seemed at ease with himself. He wasn’t fearful of a hug or a clasp or engaging with anyone, like her father was, like her brothers had been. Dusty often wondered how Daniel had ever coupled sufficiently with Molly in order to conceive Jean Marie. Simon was a warm, loving person. He reached out to be loved, and Dusty loved him from that very first night.

When people asked Dusty, as they often did, what the influences were that made her such a successful businesswoman, she said that it was a matter of luck and being able to grasp the chances as they came. She never felt any need to elaborate that her own luck had involved meeting Simon so early in her career and joining her future to his forevermore.

Simon thought Dusty was enchanting. That was the word he used the first time they met. He said he was under her spell. He also told her that he was married, so that there would be no misunderstanding.

But Dusty went back to her tiny bedroom in Molly and Ken’s flat and stayed awake all night thinking about him. He was everything she had ever dreamed of or thought about in a man. Simon was like a great, bright star. She lay with her hands behind her head, wide awake, thinking how lucky she was to have met him. She never thought for one moment that it was a tragedy, a pity, or even a nuisance that he was married. She hadn’t gone that far down the road of loving him. She just knew he was going to be the most important person in her life from now on.

“You don’t need minding anymore,” she said to Jean Marie, next morning at breakfast. “You’re off to ballet school. I think I’ll get my own place.”

“Will you always be there for me?” Jean Marie asked. “I know it’s very selfish, but I never minded my father not taking any notice of me, because you did.”

“I’ll get a flat with a spare room for you to come and stay as often as you like,” she said.

And true to her word, she had found a place within a week. Lionel knew a good carpenter who worked nights, so Dusty got shelves and cupboards made. She had a kitchen created entirely to her own design and painted in warm colors.

Her mother and father’s house was crowded with knickknacks. She went back to find out if she could take some of the things that her mother had always described as clutter.

“Well, I don’t know,” her mother said.

“I mean, you’ll get them when we’re dead and gone,” her father said.

Dusty had wanted to cry.

Lionel, in the café, gave her a gleaming new coffee machine, some colored saucepans, and cutlery with scarlet handles. Molly and Ken gave her a bright patchwork quilt. Sergio gave her Italian plates for the wall and for the table. Jean Marie planted window boxes for her. Her friend Kate helped her to make curtains. And then she felt she was able to invite Simon to visit her.

They had met many times at work. Simon was in the marketing division of the big mail-order firm that his father-in-law had started. It sold everything you could ever want. Dusty was in charge of customer services. When she felt that her new home was worthy to receive Simon, Dusty went to his office.

“I wanted to talk to you about a new scheme I have that might combine market research with customer services,” she said.

“Sit down and tell me about it.” His face was full of admiration for her, and more. Simon found that he genuinely liked Dusty.

“It is quite detailed,” she said.

“Should we meet after work then, to give it the attention it deserves?” he wondered.

“That would be best, I think.” Her heart was pounding.

He suggested a wine bar.

Too crowded and noisy, she said.

“And not enough space,” he agreed.

“I don’t live far away from here.” She was tentative.

“That would give us space and time,” he said.

She took her documents home, and a bottle of wine, and she lit a little fire, even though it wasn’t a cold day. She didn’t prepare a meal, because that might look too eager. But she had eggs and a great bowl of fresh vegetables in her kitchen. She could make an omelet if he stayed late enough. He stayed late enough. He loved the place.

“It’s just the way I thought you’d live when I first met you,” he said.

They sat at her little dining table, bought with this in mind, bought by Dusty only for Simon and herself…to sit at, work at, talk at…and then to leave when the time came to go into the bedroom with the glorious patchwork quilt.

When it all happened according to her hopes, it was as natural as could be.

“I love you,” Simon said.

“Not as quickly as this, surely?” Dusty scarcely dared to hope.

“When you know, you know.” Simon kissed her again and again.

—

Dusty’s business plan had been a good one. She had invited subscriber customers to fill in a questionnaire about themselves, favorite colors, number of children, average spending power, hobbies. This went into the computer, first to build up a customer profile, but also as additional information beside each person’s name and address.

“I know it sounds corny,” Dusty said. “But I think if I were buying from a mail-order firm and someone in there remembered that I had a small apartment, no garden but three window boxes, a kitchen in gold and amber colors, and that I liked to listen to traditional jazz, I’d be pleased. It would be more personal than getting a lot of unsolicited advertisements for driving gloves or wheelbarrows. It would make me feel a bit special.”

Together they worked on this. He got most of the credit, but that didn’t matter, because Dusty got what she wanted, which was to have Simon at her side so much of the time, days and a lot of the evenings, too.

She asked no questions about his marriage. From the outset she had told him that he could look after that part of his life, and she never pleaded to see him on Sundays or at Christmas or at the times a married man might be expected to be in the marital home. She tried not to think about it too much.

She worked long hours and got a deserved promotion. She gave huge support to Jean Marie, turning up for every function at the ballet school and helping her save for a holiday abroad. She went back to working weekends in the café when they were busy and needed her. She found a cleaning woman for her mother, a window cleaner who came around four times a year. A grocer that delivered, to save her parents from standing for ages in long lines at the supermarket. And now they played bridge almost all afternoon and every night.

She didn’t tell her mother and father about Simon because they never asked anything at all about her private life. They came once to see her flat and pronounced it very nice. Her mother said, of course, that it must be costing a fortune, and many a girl would be happy to live at home. It was a mild reproach for Dusty’s having been bold enough to change things in a world like theirs, which resisted change even though it had improved their lives immeasurably.

And Dusty didn’t know where the years went. Once a journalist asked her for milestones in her career. But she literally couldn’t find any. She just worked longer hours, and was an even more devoted daughter than ever to her parents. She did their Christmas card lists; she organized social gatherings among their neighbors, sherry parties on the first Sunday of each month so that they would not become desert-island people with Miss King and Mr. Morris.

She stood proudly at the graduation ceremonies in Jean Marie’s ballet school. She wrote regularly to her brothers and told them about the life they had left behind them with such little regret. Harold had since gone to a place in Australia, so Dusty used e-mail to write. She was tempted to do one e-mail for both her brothers and just insert a separate paragraph in each to make it personal. But somehow it didn’t seem quite fair.

She had made a huge success of the mail-order firm and had built up the personal side of it, so that many customers used them almost as an agony aunt. They wrote about dinner dances coming up that were causing them anxiety. Dusty had arranged that each client was assigned to a personal adviser. These girls wrote sympathetic, encouraging letters suggesting, but never forcing, merchandise, counseling getting a dress slightly larger than one needed, and often advising dyeing shoes to match or getting their jewelry in a charity shop. Their clients felt these advisers were personal friends, and they were never tempted away by any other mail-order company whatsoever.

“I think I may be spoiling your life,” Simon said to her many times. “Without me you’d find someone else, have a real life, children, a home.”

“Without you I’d have no life,” Dusty said. “I have a home, and Jean Marie is better than a child to me. I’ve missed out on nothing.”

And so she believed. Shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday, she was made a senior partner, and then she was called into the office by the chief executive. He wanted a word, a confidential word. Dusty went in with an easy conscience. This man could be nothing but pleased with her. She had been responsible for huge profits, a high media image, and enormous customer satisfaction. Her discretion with his son-in-law had been absolute. They never appeared in public together.

Dusty went in, dressed as always in the smarter merchandise that the company sold. It looked well on her, because she had expensive Italian shoes, a real leather belt, and good jewelry. But it had been a stroke of genius to dress from the catalogs since she arrived. The photographers and journalists loved it, too.

“I can rely on you utterly,” Simon’s father-in-law said.

“Utterly,” she said truthfully.

“I’m going to sack Simon. He’s not trustworthy, Dusty,” said the man who had first founded this company.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not…that’s not the case.” Her voice sounded strange in her own ears.

“I’m afraid it’s true. He has been unfaithful to my daughter, and if he cannot be honorable in the home, it is extremely unlikely he can be so in the workplace.”

“Unfaithful?” Dusty waited.

Why had they made her a partner the previous week if they were going to drag her down now?

“Yes, and with an arrogance that is staggering. He took this girl to a trade fair in one of the major hotels in front of everyone.”

Dusty felt nausea rise in her throat. Simon had another girl.

“But he said he went with his wife to the trade fair,” she said.

She remembered it well. She had wanted to go. She had every right to go, but Simon had insisted it was one of the few occasions when he would have to be accompanied by his wife.

“Was it someone he’s having a regular relationship with?” Dusty asked.

“Yes, it’s been going on for about two years, apparently. They’ve been seen in restaurants and at discos and theaters. I did hear rumors, but I decided not to believe them. I was wrong.” He looked like an old, sad man.

“And your daughter…?”

“She’s heartbroken. She doesn’t want him sacked, but I will not work with him. I tell you that.”

“For two years,” Dusty said wonderingly.

For two whole years, Simon had been rushing away from her flat not to go home to his demanding and petulant wife, the spoiled daughter of the boss, but to another girl. A girl he took to dinners and discos and theaters.

“Yes, well, it’s all over now,” the old man said. “He goes today.”

Was there something in his voice? Some distant wish to be talked out of this very harsh response? Could Dusty save Simon by pleading his case? It was a position of extraordinary power.

“Two years,” she said again.

“Or thereabouts,” the affronted father-in-law said.

“I’m afraid it does mean that he is not trustworthy,” Dusty said—and ended Simon’s career. She didn’t care whether it ended his marriage or not. It was immaterial now. He had never loved her.

She changed the lock on her flat door that day. She sat inside alone, listening as he fumbled with the key trying to get in. She remained perfectly still as he called and begged to be allowed to explain. Eventually he went away. He tried to see her in the office, but she always had a meeting or was in a conference. She asked that his calls not be put through.

“I’m afraid he’s trying to use me as a go-between, and I want to stay completely out of it,” she explained.

And then Simon told his father-in-law that he had been having an affair with Dusty. He said it had been going on for years.

“Just so you know she is equally untrustworthy,” he cried.

Dusty had been there when the accusation was made. She just shook her head sadly.

“You know this is not so, Simon,” she said.

The old man had looked slowly from one to the other. It was not hard to see which one was the fantasist trying to destroy everyone else in sight.

“I’ve had her key for years and years.” He took the key she had given him on a heart-shaped key ring from his pocket.

“No, Simon,” she said calmly, producing her own key.

Now a totally different shape, a different lock.

She left the room and she knew that there were now going to be injunctions served on Simon. He must not visit the premises again; he must desist from these threats. The very fact that their love affair had been so secret, so hidden, was a bonus now. No one had seen them together.

Her father telephoned that night.

“I’ve had some disturbing news about your mother,” he said.

“Is she there? Can you talk?” Dusty asked.

“No, she’s in the hospital, actually.” He sounded bewildered.

“I’ll come around,” Dusty said.

Her father had been understating the disturbing news. It was very serious. Her mother had a tumor. They could not operate and there would be no treatment. They were talking about four months at the most.

“If I were still at the office I’d have some pattern to my days. I’d know better what to do,” he said sadly.

She felt a surge of total irritation with him. What did it matter whether there was a pattern to his days or not? Her mother had such a limited span of days left. But she hid her irritation, as she so often had to at work. She said instead, “Would you like Miss King and Mr. Morris to continue living here, Father?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what they would do about breakfasts and…things.”

Dusty paused. One of her principles at work had always been that you should never rush in to volunteer anything unless you were perfectly sure you could do it.

She was sure.

“I’ll come home for the winter,” she said.

“And then later?”

“We’ll think again then.”

Being Father, of course, he couldn’t say anything warm and generous. Tell her he loved her and thank her.

But Simon had been ready with the words, the assurances, and the smiles. Too ready and too generous. Maybe quick responses and fancy phrases were not the only currency that mattered.

“I’m coming home for the winter, Mother,” Dusty said the next day in the hospital. Her mother wasn’t really aware of the extent of her illness. “Why are you doing that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Well, for one thing, to keep an eye on you when you get out of the hospital, and for another I’ve had a romance that is over, and I’m feeling a bit lonely in the flat at the moment.”

“I always thought it was foolish of you to go and live in that place,” her mother said.

She arranged to give her flat to Jean Marie for six months.

“A flat of my own. Oh, Dusty, you’re so good, you’re so good. Can I do anything to thank you?”

“Yes. I’m spending the winter with my parents. If you could bear it, I’d like you to come and see them sometime.”

“I thought they didn’t want me.”

“They don’t know what they want,” Dusty said with a laugh.

—

“I suppose you’ll not work here anymore now that you’re promoted,” Lionel said in the café.

“I don’t know why you say that.”

“Well, you won’t need the money.” Lionel was defensive. He knew Dusty had done so well.

Sergio called in from the kitchen, “She never needed the money anyway, you great loon; she only comes because she loves us.”

“Quite right,” Dusty said briskly.

Mother came home and was pleased that nothing much had changed. Miss King and Mr. Morris were still part of the household, and nowadays everyone got their own breakfast from a plentiful supply of things in the kitchen. The café where Mother had worked so long ago provided fresh rolls every day: they were dropped on the doorstep by Sergio on his way home from work. Dusty had painted Harold’s old room and was living there happily, as if she had never moved out to the apartment.

If Mother remembered Dusty’s saying a romance was over, she never referred to it again.

They played a lot of bridge at night, and Dusty and Mother played together in case Mother was tired or forgot what trumps were. But Dusty said it was because she wasn’t experienced herself.

And Jean Marie came two or three times a week. Nobody called anyone Grandfather or Grandmother. No reference was made to Daniel in America. Or to Molly and Ken. She was just a friend, a young dancer. Everyone liked her and she made sandwiches and served them on bridge evenings.

At Christmas they invited Lionel, because he was on his own. He helped Dusty to cook the turkey. Miss King and Mr. Morris said they had never enjoyed a Christmas more. Jean Marie was there as well, because Molly and Ken had gone to an alternative health seminar in the north somewhere. After dinner, Daniel and Harold rang from America.

When Daniel was on the phone, Dusty asked him to have a word with Jean Marie.

“You sound so American,” Jean Marie said to him in wonder.

“You sound so grown-up,” he said in surprise.

“Will you send me a picture of yourself?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ll get a haircut. Buy a new jacket, hold my gut in, and have one taken,” he said.

“I’m sure you look fine,” Jean Marie said.

Dusty took the phone. A little emotion at a time was her rule these days.

Mother got weaker in January. She didn’t get up anymore.

Dusty arranged that her mother sleep downstairs in the dining room, which they rarely used. Lionel came and helped her to make it more suitable. He called in most days on his way home from the café. She looked forward to his visits and invited him for dinner more than once.

He told her Sergio was getting married again in the spring. He told her that he still had a picture of them all in prams, in the old days. He also told her his plans for the café when his father would retire next year.

Dusty’s father never cried. He just went on being methodical as always.

“I’m glad you came back for the winter,” he said.

Dusty’s heart beat faster. Father never said anything warm.

“I’m glad, too,” she said.

“It gives a pattern to my days, somehow,” he said.

“You loved the office, didn’t you?” Dusty said.

“No, I was afraid of it, in fact…but you knew where you were there, even in a lowly sort of way. You knew what was expected. I never quite knew that anywhere else,” he said.

There was a pause.

“Don’t get too fond of your office, Dusty,” he said.

“No, Father,” she said in a small, quiet voice.

She told Daniel to pretend that he had business in England.

“Do come over and see Mother,” she said.

“But won’t that alarm her? I was going to come for the funeral.”

“No, come while she’s here,” Dusty said. And she called the travel agent to get a ticket for him.

Dusty made sure that he met with Jean Marie. She didn’t leave them alone for too long.

“I’m sorry I was so out of touch,” he said, holding his twenty-one-year-old daughter in a bear hug.

“You were never really out of touch. Dusty told me everything I ever asked,” she said.

After she sent four frantic e-mails to Harold, he showed up, looking scruffy and unkempt. Dusty borrowed a shirt, jacket, and tie from Lionel.

“Just that Mother might think a bit better of him,” she apologized.

“You don’t have to say,” Lionel said, and gave his good gray flannel trousers as well. Harold had only jeans.

The night before her mother died, Dusty sat by the bed.

“You have no pain?” Dusty asked.

“None at all. These modern drugs are good. I think things get better really, not worse, like other people say.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re quite right,” said Dusty.

“Will you marry Lionel?” Mother asked.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I heard you, but I can’t believe you asked.”

“He will ask when I’ve gone. You’re normally prepared for things, always so organized and everything.”

“I’m not really.” Dusty’s eyes were full of tears; the casual way her mother referred to being gone was heartbreaking. But also calming in a strange sort of way.

“Do you like him?”

“Yes, of course, I like him, but…”

“But you think there’s something else, something more exciting.”

“I’ve had that.” Dusty was grim.

“Good. Then you’re probably ready for Lionel.”

She fell asleep then.

The next day, she thanked Dusty—in a brisk, matter-of-fact way, as if she were saying thank you to a friend for paying the bill in a tea shop.

And then she died—very quietly and without anxiety or any struggle.

—

The first crocuses were coming up when Lionel asked her to marry him.

He brought the picture of them all in their prams with him to help him make the proposal.

“I know I’m not very exciting…” he began.

“Yes, I’d love to,” Dusty said.

“What? You don’t know what I’m going to say,” he said.

“I do, and I’d love to,” she said.

He held her in his arms.

“I’ve always wanted to, and when you came home here for the winter, I thought…‘Well, Dusty might need me for this hard winter, when everything’s so sad, but then she won’t want me anymore. She’ll want to put the memory of the sad winter behind her and go off and live her life.’ ”

She was glad she had come home for the winter.

Suppose Simon had still been with her and with his wife and with another woman…none of this would ever have happened. She would not have gotten to know her mother, understood her father. And best of all, find the boy in the pram next door.

“When will we get married?” He could hardly believe it.

“As soon as we can,” she said.

It had been one of her great strengths, they said in the office, that when she made her mind up she did something straightaway.

She would work fewer hours in the office from now on. She would spend more time in the café.

“We’ll tell Sergio to hurry up and have a baby, so that we can set the prams up again in the yard,” she said.

If something was worth doing, it was worth doing well.