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Lily put on a performance in the upstairs drawing room for the rest of the family. She’d had only a handful of ballet lessons before her teacher had left, but it seemed her heart was set on a life on the stage, and perhaps to her this still seemed a possibility. She had also decided at some point that it was her job to keep everyone’s spirits up, and Evelyn was glad of it, since she was no performer herself.

It was winter, but the night was very warm and all the windows were open. Her father was sitting on the sill of the oriel window with his eyes closed. The moon fell across the fields outside their shrunken world, the ragged grass already brittle and bleached. There had been no sheep or cattle to crop it for a very long time. Within the garden wall the orchard was taller than Evelyn now, and this year’s fruit very nearly edible straight from the tree.

Lily had put two standing lamps on either side of the rug in the center of the room, the shades angled to flood the floor with light. She was hiding behind a screen that wobbled slightly as she readied herself. Evelyn sat on a sofa with her mother. The rug that was to be Lily’s stage depicted a hunting scene, a stag bounding through voluptuous greenery pursued by hounds and men with horns and bows and arrows. On the walls of the drawing room were portraits of men from a similar time, in similar dress, who Lily counted as the larger portion of her audience.

Ready, Papa, said Lily.

He didn’t move for a few moments, and then very quietly he stood up and came and sat on the opposite end of the sofa to their mother.

Right then, Lily-bear. Away you go.

There was the crackle of a record player and the strings of an orchestra burst into life, and before Lily even came out, their mother gasped. She put her fingers to her lips. Lily emerged from behind the screen wearing her swimming costume and a long, knitted scarf and began a series of leaps and pirouettes that Evelyn could see tired her out very quickly. Halfway through the routine she sat in an armchair to catch her breath and grinned at her audience. Evelyn laughed and looked at her father. He was smiling faintly. She looked at her mother. Her hand was still in front her mouth and Evelyn could not read her expression.

The orchestra began anew and Lily roused herself from the armchair.

Your outfit was never as good as that, Evelyn’s father said.

It was a moment before Evelyn realized he was talking to her mother.

You saw Mama dance?

Lots of times.

Evelyn knew Mama had been a dancer, though she’d mentioned it only a few times, and when she did, it was as if she were speaking of her dim and distant childhood.

Her mother watched Lily for a minute.

He met me at the stage door, she said, and there was an almost imperceptible roll of the eyes.

You should have seen the bouquet I got for her.

It was ridiculous. He could barely fit into my dressing room with it. Not that he should have been in my dressing room at all.

Evelyn kept watching her mother, trying to decipher whether she was speaking in anger or fondness or some mixture of the two.

He came to see me three times in the same run at the Palladium.

What’s a palladium?

It’s a big theater, her mother said. Did we never take you?

Evelyn shook her head.

Oh, it was gorgeous, Evelyn. All the carvings on the boxes, and the ceiling. All the gold leaf. It was like Versailles. Wasn’t it?

Her father nodded, and his gaze seemed to light on something far, far beyond their drawing room.

What’s verse eye? said Evelyn, but Lily shouted:

You’re not watching!

They dutifully stopped their conversation and continued to watch her unruly performance. Another minute or two passed. Evelyn looked at her mother again. She was blinking hard.

Can you still dance?

I don’t know. I haven’t tried.

Why did you stop?

I married your father, didn’t I?

You could have carried on.

Well. Life got in the way.

Evelyn looked at her mother a little longer and then went back to watching Lily, who was spinning furiously from one corner of the rug to the other. Her sister had just centered herself beneath the chandelier and was tentatively raising herself onto her tiptoes when the power went for the last time and darkness seemed to flood through the open windows. All four of them sat in complete silence as the last echoes of the orchestra drifted from the house and away over the barren pastures.