After Christmas, the weather turned Arctic.  On New Year’s Eve, Hilary walked along the Thames Path, through biting wind, with Bryony and dating agency Pete.  Bryony and Pete held – very cold – hands and, that evening, she saw, on the television news, snow in the north.  When she awoke on New Year’s Day 1979, the snow had arrived in the south, not just flurries, but a foot deep, and she and other people from the flats had to sweep a path from the entrance hall to the car park, discussing, as they swept, the probable effect that the weather would have on the trains tomorrow.  Their concern was well-founded:  for several weeks, train timetables seemed to be totally irrelevant.  You caught a train if you could find one:  if you were exceptionally lucky, it was a train from your normal station to your normal destination.  On other occasions, you caught a train to somewhere in approximately the right direction, making up the shortfall by walking, with lifts from helpful fellow passengers, or by catching more trains, often waiting up to an hour on windy stations.  And the railway staff continued their industrial disputes.  Everybody was coasting into work hours late, their faces chapped with cold, their boots sodden with snow and their tempers frayed, and the boss (assuming the boss wasn’t held up too) was pathetically grateful that you were there at all.  Worse still was arriving home in the middle of the evening. 

After several weeks of this, Hilary was exhausted.  During the months prior to Christmas, she had become accustomed, when she missed her branch line connection, to walking round to Patty’s house in Wheaton and accepting Patty’s offer of a lift home.  Now, when her main line train hardly ever arrived on time, she tended to find Patty ensconced in her living room with Pam and a bottle of sherry.  The Shah of Iran and his family had fled in mid-January.  In February, Ayatollah Khomeini, cosseted by libertarian intellectuals on the Left Bank (and also by the French taxpayer) for many years, returned to Teheran and forced all Iranian women behind the veil.  Patty and Pam, old Teheran hands, talked and talked about the Iranian Revolution endlessly, tutting, shaking their heads and wondering about this person and that person and whether they were “still there”.  Patty, on her third glass, would be in no fit state to get into her car.  Hilary didn’t see much of Caroline either during those dark days, because, with the trains so uncertain, she was uneasy about spending the evening in London, and she wasn’t particularly keen about driving in the snow to Kingston to see Bryony either. 

For Hilary, winter 1979 was a miserable time.  Often still on a cold, dark, draughty platform until seven or 7.30 in the evening, Hilary spent a lot of time reading newspapers, her own, then the headlines of everybody else’s (as commuters do) – the De Lorean debacle, the Times dispute, the Scottish Devolution Debate, the Lib-Lab Pact.  And she would mull over and over in her mind her conversation with Patty on Christmas Day.  Bill McCready was her father.  She had spoken to him for just a few minutes but, yet, in that short space of time, she had connected with him – no wonder!  On the day of his death, she had spoken to him.  Bill had managed to meet his daughter only on the day of his death.  If only Bill and her mother had married, if Bill had not tied himself up in theological knots about celibacy.  If Margaret had not rushed into marrying Frank Bowles, they could have sorted things out in Ireland in November 1954.  There were so many questions unanswered and they would remain unanswered, it seemed, as even Patty seemed to have lost interest in her and Water Langley now.  And what did Frank know?  Did he realise?  Hilary hadn't spoken to Frank, even on the telephone, for a long time.  There didn’t seem to be any point.  It all went back to what the Pearces had said, in 1973, in a different world, the Water Langley world. Then Hilary's train arrived, and she didn’t have to think anymore.

The post, the trains and the weather permitting, Hilary and Caroline were getting responses from the dating agency:  Alice, the man-hater, read all the letters Hilary received.  Mike, aged thirty-five.  “Too old, for you, Hilary, and probably lying about his age.”  Tim, aged twenty-eight, who liked model railways.  “Write back and tell him you play with dolls!”  Mark, who wrote two sides about his ex.  “Not ready to move on, although at least he’s had an ex …..”   Unlike, Leo, who wrote three sides about his car …… “Phallic symbol, Hilary!”  Then, there was Paul, aged twenty-seven, who didn’t appear to play with trains or cars, or have an ex-, and who seemed quite promising, but he didn’t answer Hilary's letter.  Back to the drawing board!  Martin, Sagittarius.”  “Does he really believe star signs?  Next!”  Neil, aged twenty-nine, merchant banker.  “Probably works at Natwest!  Supports Tottenham Hotspur!  Are you up for romantic evenings on the terraces under floodlights?”  “Hilary?  A bloke called Hilary? …”

“Hilary can be a boys’ name,” Hilary replied, looking at male Hilary's letter.  “He’s an art historian.  He’s thirty and works for The Small Country Houses Association.  Says he loves his job, which is why he doesn’t get to meet women.  He lives with his mother and reads Jane Austen.”

Alice rolled her eyes.  “Sounds to me like he’s dying to come out the closet!  I think I should write and tell him about our gay and lesbian group.”

“He’s different, Alice,” Hilary replied.  “And someone called Hilary can't be all bad.”

She replied to Male Hilary.  He wrote back, enclosing several postcards of paintings, and his lyrical descriptions of them formed the largest part of his letter.  His office was near Regent’s Park, but he often toured what he termed “the provinces” to advise curators about conserving their pictures.  Hilary supposed he would be OK.  This was how it would be, a compromise.  She would look for someone she could respect, even like, but she would never love again.  Bryony had her Pete and, through the dating agency, Caroline had found someone called Hugh.  They were all ordering men, like Tupperware.  She supposed that this was how it had been for Margaret; rejected by Bill Macready at the age of thirty, and, knowing that she would never love again, she had hastily married Frank Bowles, to be able to progress into adult world.  Like Charlotte Lucas marrying Mr Collins, thought Hilary, remembering a conversation she had had with Margaret, not so long ago.

After exchanging several letters, Hilary and Male Hilary agreed to meet.  “Jeanette from the agency says you must meet in a public place,” said Caroline.  “And make it for drinks, not for dinner.”  It was now March and the weather had improved at last and she was able to meet Caroline for drinks after work again, always in the same chaotic, noisy pub, with loud and tipsy office workers, all terribly excited because it was Friday.

“He wants me to go with him to an exhibition of Impressionists at the Windmill Gallery, then go for a Chinese at the Golden Lantern in Wardour Street.”

“The Golden Lantern?  I know it.  We went there from work once.  But do you really think you can cope with Art and Art Man throughout a whole Chinese meal?”  Caroline pulled a face.  “I hope the service isn't too slow.”

“I suppose so.” 

Caroline drew in her breath.  “And I wish you weren’t going to Wardour Street, to Soho.  Will you promise to ring me when you get home, however late it is?  When are you going?”

“Next Thursday evening.”

“Thursday?  That’s when the Vote of Confidence is.  Oh shit!  I'll be at Central Office.  You realise that, if the Government lose this Vote of Confidence, there’s got to be an election?”

“How’s Hugh?” asked Hilary, changing the subject.

Caroline frowned.  “Don’t know.  There’s something not quite right about him.”

Hilary grew less and less confident as the week progressed.  How she wished she hadn't got into this!... Sunday, Monday, Tuesday… Wednesday evening and…  it would be tomorrow!  Caroline, she was the one who had wanted to join a dating agency.  Hilary didn’t like it at all.  She was going to go on a date with a stranger, spending an evening with a man she didn’t know.  Art exhibition…  well, yes, she could cope with that, lots of other people about, milling round pictures, saying the right thing.  Then the restaurant, sitting at a table opposite a man she didn’t know, facing him, wondering what to say next, hoping and praying for the next course to arrive.  It was going to be awful.  She didn’t care if she never went on a date again.  She would be a spinster, like Audrey in the Catalogue Room, who wore pilled cable-knit jumpers, baggy knee-length skirts and lace-up shoes, and wrote long articles for “The Professional Librarian”.

Hilary's hands shook as she hung her clothes for the evening on the peg behind the staffroom door on the Thursday morning.  “Are you going out this evening?” demanded Audrey, emitting the loud snort which counted as laughter.

“I'm going to an art exhibition,” Hilary replied.  “Impressionists, at the Windmill Gallery.”

“759.4,” Audrey replied, at once.  That was how they spoke in the Catalogue Room, in Dewey Decimal numbers.

By the middle of the afternoon, Hilary was longing to get the evening over with.  She went to Caroline's flat in to have a bath and change and Caroline sat with her as she did her make-up, her conversation alternating between the Vote of Confidence and Hugh.  “We’ve called it off, Hil.  I knew there was something not right.  Last night I found out - he’s a Liberal.”

“Oh, Caroline, I'm so sorry.”

“Don’t be.  With the Lib-Lab Pact and everything, I don’t want..”

“I really don’t want to go,” Hilary cried, interrupting her. 

“You’ll be fine!  And Art Man’ll be fine!  Look, you ring me at Central Office when you get home.  You’ve got the number, haven't you?”

At the Tube station, Hilary waited on the platform with girls and their boyfriends, normal girls who didn’t need a dating agency to find a man.  She got off at Tottenham Court Road, climbed up the two flights of long escalators, pale yellow paint peeling off the walls, adverts along the side, theatres and abortion agencies.  At the top of the escalator was a sign to West London Hospital and a group of pickets from NUPE tried to thrust pamphlets at her, something about a strike by hospital porters, but she kept her hands in her pockets.  West London Hospital was where Andy was working, struggling to do his job in spite of the striking porters.

As she walked into Oxford Street, in the rain, street lights streaking yellow on the wet pavements and old red Routemaster buses kicking up spray as they passed, it came to her all at once why she was so reluctant to go on this date.  And she was being quite ridiculous, because Andy had Arabella now.

With a firmer step, she crossed Oxford Street to the bank and took out £20 from the cash machine.  She then walked back to the newsstand by the Tube Station entrance and waited.