She is getting ready to leave, giving instructions to Millie, newly arrived in her snowy wraps; pulling out more decoy toys, pulling out the lunch things and leaving them on the table. Giving a lipstick kiss to Frieda, busy with her buggyful of zoo animals, and to Nicholas, in Millie’s arms. Putting on her coat, gathering her scarf and gloves and pocketbook. Millie agenting for Nicholas, perching on the edge of a wicker chair in the parlor, trying to jolly Frieda into sharing a zebra with her little brother. Palpable, beating, her life: the only life she’ll ever have. Taking a deep breath, taking heart as she leaves, closing the door of the flat behind her, listening for its muted catch and click, heading down the stairs, she carries with her the soft, unknowing faces of her children, hot against her own hot cheek as she kissed them; the image of their mild little faces welling her eyes.

Snow, still, is sifting her world, the sky dense with it, and morning bruised and smoky. It falls steadily through the fooled lamppost’s light, falls from somewhere so far away it can’t be seen, from a heaven she can hardly imagine. She’ll have to be patient.

She’d like to walk. Not the tube at Chalk Farm, or a bus or a taxi, nearly impossible anyway, she would guess, due to the weather—but to walk through the hush of falling snow, along the graceful sloping shoulders of Primrose Hill, past the zoo, through Regent’s Park, the snow new and unblemished, only her own feet marking a trail of moonstone blue over the buried pathways, buried again behind her, in a moment, after she passes.