“… on my way over there now,” Sylvia hears Dido responding, her voice not exactly friendly, but slackened, like her jaw-line before her face-lift, “just waiting for a mover to arrive to pick up a few trunks and old relics I’ve decided to ship off to the auction house as well. Winter cleaning, you might say. I’ll be staying at my mother’s as well until I leave for New York. We’ve leased this house through the spring. I’ll let Ted know.”

Success, such as it is. Sylvia tastes a sudden rusty flavor of doubt at the back of her throat. “Please tell him not to come until Monday,” she responds. “I’m busy with guests this weekend,” she adds, collecting herself.

“Of course,” Dido answers, inhaling. “If that’s all, then—”

“Yes. Oh—Dido—” Sylvia says with overdone breathlessness, a sloppy attempt to mask her secondary agenda, another favor, as spontaneous thought. She cringes at herself: why does she even bother? Dido will sniff her out like a dog. “Millie—” she continues, “—your old cleaner. Does she still work for you?”

“Then you do have bags of money in your pram—” Dido says, exhaling smoke through her nose.

“Don’t be ludicrous,” Sylvia answers irritably. “I’m working my fingers to the bone and I’ve got little to show for it, certainly not from Ted. But if I can get a mother’s helper, I will have bags of money. I absolutely must find a nanny right away. I hoped Millie might do some baby-minding for me as she did when Frieda was small.”

“Like everyone, Millie loves Frieda, and I’m sure she’ll love little Nicholas,” Dido says evenly. “No need for the hysterics. I’ll have her ring you.”

“My telephone hasn’t been connected,” Sylvia says, her face growing hot.

“Oh,” Dido says, the sound of her cigarette box tapping again on the countertop. “You do have bad luck with phones. Then give me your address. I’ll tell her to stop around.”

“I’m at number twenty-three Fitzroy Road,” Sylvia responds formally, “Yeats’s house.”

“Yeats’s house?” Dido repeats in disbelief. “You’ve come back to this district? More than that—you’ve moved right back into the neighborhood.”

“Of course I came back,” Sylvia answers. “This is my home—my other home. My doctor is here—”

“My doctor, you recall, to whom I recommended you as a patient—” Dido corrects.

“He delivered Frieda,” Sylvia responds, peremptory. “My favorite shops, my grocer, my parks, all that I love is here.”

There is a pause, broken only by the sound of Dido inhaling. “More than you know,” she says. “Perhaps too close for comfort.”

“There’s nothing I don’t know,” Sylvia snaps. Something, maybe her certitude, clatters in her chest.