Weeks go by; people talk, they always will, but mostly they see a grieving widow (or near enough) and a woman whose ex-beau just married her best friend. Anyone could be expected to have difficulty adjusting, and so two friends comfort each other; those who will take pity do, and those who won't are admonished, Have a heart! If a small minority questions the propriety of two such friends sharing a bed—and every night—they are hushed; not convinced, but silenced.

Of course, Mrs. Corbett doesn't abide gossip among her girls. Gladys, for her part, has retained her rich girl sense that all is well in the world unless something terrible happens before her very eyes. And Betty... Betty worries. She can't help it. She has no end of reason to, and so she does, although these days float along as in a dream. It isn't enough to stop her enjoying what there is to enjoy, so it hardly matters anyhow.

Of a Sunday, Gladys proposes a drive, and Betty agrees readily. They take an unusual route, but Betty pays no mind until they are slowing and then Gladys pulls to a stop on a street of houses bunched close together, trees overhanging the scene. From her comfortable slouch in the passenger seat, Betty slides to sit up straight, confused.

"What's this, princess?"

"Oh, nothing much at all," Gladys says, opening her door and stepping out of the car, forcing Betty to do the same; and over the roof of the car, "Just a little house I wanted to have a look at."

Skeptical, Betty trails Gladys up the path to the door. A woman in a bright floral sundress opens the door and ushers them inside, after which Gladys sweetly asks that they might have a few moments alone to get a feel for the house. Rich girl confidence wins again, and the real estate agent smiles and tells them she'll return in half an hour.

"Make yourselves at home," she says, and Betty makes a face at the wall.

Then they're alone, and Gladys starts to wander through the empty rooms—not many of them; looks like two above and three below, with a small powder room on the first and (Betty assumes) a full bath upstairs. Betty trails Gladys again, her curiosity pulling her along. Gladys drifts through the rooms, eyes wide, and grins at Betty before mounting the staircase to the second floor. One bedroom is large, the other small; the bathroom is quite narrrow but fully equipped.

In the master bedroom, Gladys stops by the window—taking up most of the rear wall, it looks over the back yard, a small square of land that is fenced but thoroughly overgrown—and takes a deep breath, before turning to Betty and saying, "Well?"

Betty joins her at the window; the view is underwhelming, but after more than one year (she's lost count) in a small, stuffy, closed-in room at the boarding house, it feels palatial. She feels the nip of beginning envy in her gut, but knows she'll likely be spending half her time here if Gladys moves anyway, and pushes it away.

She angles a half-smile Gladys's way and says, "When did you decide to look at houses?"

Gladys walks across the room to open the closet door, and says over her shoulder, "I simply can't stay in that hotel room any longer. They're not really designed for the long term, you know?" Satisfied with the closet, she moves to the centre of the room, studying each wall in turn. "It costs a fortune, anyway, and to what end? I can put my trust to better use as a down payment; the monthly payments are less than the hotel fees; I'm mostly paying for the maid service at this point, and..." She trails off.

"You can do that yourself?" Betty says, cheeky.

Gladys turns back to her and smirks, eyes sparkling. "You never know. If all else fails, there must be a maid service I can hire. People in small houses can't all be domestic goddesses."

Betty scoffs at, well, that whole sentence, really, but she's smiling now: seeing Gladys happy always does her heart so good.

At that, and reasonably satisfied with her inspection, Gladys walks over and wraps her arms around Betty's waist. Betty protests, half-heartedly, at their proximity to the window, but Gladys ignores her and rests her chin on Betty's shoulder.

"I had an idea," Gladys says, low, and Betty sighs and softens in her arms.

"Oh yeah?"

Gladys wraps one hand around one of Betty's and steps back, pulling Betty with her. They sit in the centre of the floor, legs crossed, knees touching, and Gladys keeps hold of Betty's hand.

"I know it's not perfect," she says, and her voice stays low; rich girl bravado won't serve her here and she knows it. "But I thought that, if you wanted, you could…" She hesitates, takes a deep breath, then says all in a rush: "move in here with me and pay the same rent you would at the rooming house and if you wanted your name on the deed we could do that too and this could be your home."

There's a long pause while Betty looks at their hands and Gladys can't tell if she's breathing. When she looks up, she says, "You mean, our home?" and Gladys's face breaks open in a way she can't control. She gathers Betty's hands into her lap, pulling her forward and trying to kiss her with the biggest grin on her mouth.

"Yeah," she says, laughing against Betty's lips. "Our home."

They hear the front door open then, and the agent's cheery voice calling, singing out, "Hello, I'm back!"

Gladys can hardly bring herself to let Betty go, can't for the life of her wipe the grin off her face. She can't look away from Betty, either, and if real estate agents were given to suspicion it would have been written all over their faces; but real estate agents sell houses, and theirs is very happy to sell one to such charming young women, gainfully employed (and rich). Gladys puts her name on a dotted line and the agent leaves them with the keys.

(They know, don't they, that the war must, inevitably, end? Those able-bodied men that remain will flood back into the country and into the jobs they left behind. And what of the jobs that didn't exist before the war? It's impossible to believe of something so real, something so everyday, but the munitions factories will vanish—pop—as if they never existed, and women, proven so capable, proven strong, will return to their sovereign place: the home. Women too young will wait for husbands; women wed will wait to bear children; women fully realized will keep house and rear children and all will be as God has planned.

Do they know this? Now, in their euphoria, they simply wish for life to rise up to meet them. Life itself is briefly, ever so briefly, ignoring their existence. It won't last. It cannot last.)

The agent has left paper cups in the kitchen; Gladys fills one, hands it to Betty, fills another, and steps carefully up the stairs. In the master, the sun is beginning to set; they stand before the window and mime the clink of their glasses, drink. Betty watches the sky begin to light up with colour and Gladys watches the light dance in her eyes.

As she turns back to Gladys, Betty crushes the paper cone in her hand and says, "I feel as if I'm in a dream."

Tipping her head forward, a smile painted on her face with no will behind it, Gladys replies, "Me too."

They lie on the carpet in the centre of the room, staring at the ceiling and holding hands, talking about what they can do with a little house all their own. Betty doesn't own anything, really; but neither does Gladys. They speak, giggling, of stealing the bedroom set out of Gladys's room in her parents' house. Picturing sneaking into the house, possibly armed with friends, and then somehow sneaking out a king-size bed has them in fits of laughter. More seriously, Gladys says that she wouldn't want her own house to resemble the Estate in any way; Betty agrees.

As dusk falls, they get up again, peering over the backyards to the house behind, where one light nestles in darkness. They run, holding hands, to the front room; crouch at the window; peek up over the bottom sill to see the street, streetlights coming on one by one, cars wooshing slowly past, packs of girls making their way home along the city sidewalks.

They lie down on the floor in that room, watching the headlights come through the window and play over the walls and ceiling. Curling up on their sides, they face each other, legs intertwined and hands clasped together. It gets darker and darker and their eyes adjust; seeing the reflections of eyeballs, the highlight on the bridge of a nose, a flash when someone's tongue darts out to wet her lips.

Eventually they fall serenely into sleep; too happy now to consider the consequences, the conditions, the give and take that will be necessary for this to work. Instead they feel at rest—at home in a place they've only just seen for the first time. Together, they think, this is the beginning. A place they can be alone, together.

For now.