Valerie is a young former typist and office worker married to an older university professor named Gil. Despite Gil's leftist ideals, he seems embarrassed by his lower-class mother and wants to live a wealthy life. Her husband's 9-year-child is visiting them, from his first marriage with a woman his age who he calls a "hippie" and a "whore" and loathes. Gil spends all his time at the office while the child is visiting and Valerie feels drained and can't wait for the child to go home. Then, on the day Gil is meant to take the child back, he has an important dinner and asks Valerie to return the child instead. Valerie takes the child on the train to Gil's ex-wife Marise's house. Marise's boyfriend Jamie answers the door. Valerie invites herself for tea. Valerie is disturbed by the state of the house, disheveled and disorganized, and feels the child isn't being adequately fed or cared for. They all drink bloody Marys. The child wants to show Valerie her room and Marise says no, upset that the child calls Valerie "Auntie," and tells the child Valerie is an evil stepmother. That night, Valerie stays at her mother's house. The next day, a snowstorm delays the trains. She travels through the snow back to Marise's house, where the child is waiting for her in the window. She goes into the child's room. The child sleeps on a bare bed with a sleeping bag. The room is a mess. The child wants to go back with her, to Gil's house. Marise accuses Valerie of trying to abduct her child and kicks her out, after Valerie accuses Marise of child abuse. Then, Jamie brings the child out in the sleeping bag in secret and tells Valerie to take her. He also throws a bag with the child's clothes out the window. Valerie telegrams Gil that she's coming back home with the child. In the taxi, she thinks that she "might need to summon all this effort of ingenuity one day for some escape of her own, dimly imagined, and that taking on the child made her less free." She tries to comfort the child, who realizes she forgot her dolls.