“Would you like to bring the children in out of the rain?” Dido asks. “I’ve still never seen the baby.”

“No thank you,” Sylvia says. It’s no use. She pauses, just long enough to kick dirt over her composure. “Dido, I’ve only called because I need Ted’s number.”

Dido takes a long drag on her cigarette. “Well, Sylvia, I’m not at all sure I should risk giving it to you. He’s staying at my mother’s flat, you know, and I fear you may start badgering her housemaid as you did my cat-minder this fall when Ted was staying here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sylvia scoffs. She—the downright lies! She hardly called at all—the cat-minder hung up on her twice, and she could hear Ted’s voice in the background—

“If only it were so,” Dido replies. “And I can’t risk having her quit now, as I’ve only got until the end of the year to finish an inventory and get the rest of my mother’s furnishings off to the auction house.”

“So Ted will be moving again,” Sylvia interjects, careful to keep her voice hollow with indifference.

“I would guess so, unless he’d like to stay on in an utterly barren set of rooms,” Dido answers dispassionately. “Which might not sound unsatisfactory to him, come to think of it, after this fall.”

Nicholas is bawling into Sylvia’s sweater, rubbing his head into the lapels of her coat. She can hardly hear over his hiccuping sobs. “Whatever do you mean by that?” she asks raggedly, struggling with her voice, running her palm over the back of Frieda’s hair where she’s buried herself against her mother’s skirt.

Again Dido inhales deeply, her voice tight and adenoidal as she begins to speak. “I only mean that after the endless harangues and accusations you’ve been hurling at him the last few months, perhaps if you’d give him some peace he’d have a chance to think this through.”

“It’s already thought through,” Sylvia replies, holding her body as rigid as the phone. “I’m getting a divorce.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” Dido answers blandly, “you’ve nothing left to badger him over. Let your solicitor do it.”

“I’m calling him for the children, Dido,” Sylvia confides, convincing even herself, her attention diverted by the shock of Dido’s easy reference to a solicitor. Has Ted said something? What has he said? Everyone must know: they’re nothing but formalities to each other now. She feels suddenly chilled, the puddle in her overshoes leaching its way up her heavy knit tights. The morning marketers parade by, swinging their lumpy mesh bags and peering moonfaced through the distorting glass of the kiosk as they pass.