A room full of people you are supposed to impress. You:

Do the duty. Speak to everybody. Enjoy none of it.Stand at the edge and learn more than anybody else there.Say something true and slightly too loud, and mean it.Are charming to everybody and reveal absolutely nothing.

What was decided for you before you had any say?

That you would be the one who sorts the family out.That you would take it on when he could not.That you would be charming, and that this would be enough.That you would marry well and quickly and be pleased about it.

How do you handle grief?

Work. Duty. Control everything that can still be controlled.Argue with somebody about something adjacent to it.Look after everybody else and postpone your own indefinitely.Go somewhere else, and write cheerful letters home.

What is your actual power?

You know everything about everybody and say almost none of it.People want your approval, and you know what that is worth.You can make something real out of very little, alone.You can arrange a room so the right two people end up in it.

What would you never admit?

That you resent the people you have been carrying.That the charm is the entire defence, and it is exhausting.That you wanted somebody to look after you, once.That you enjoy knowing things about people rather too much.

How do you deal with being overlooked?

Quietly, and you use it. Nobody watches the unwatched person.You make it impossible by saying something nobody can ignore.You get on with your own thing and stop competing for the room.It does not happen to you, which is its own kind of problem.

What do you want that you are not asking for?

To be allowed to stop being the responsible one.To be seen properly, by one person, without the disguise.To be chosen, rather than useful.To make something good enough to justify the freedom.

Somebody is about to make a mistake with their life. You:

Tell them, at length, whether or not they asked.Say nothing and disappear a while, which is its own message.Are extremely supportive, and privately worried.Arrange for them to find out themselves, without your name on it.

Pick the fear:

That you will do it exactly as it was done to you.That if somebody saw all of it, they would not stay.That the talent was never the point, and you wasted the time.That you are liked everywhere and known nowhere.

What would change everything for you?

Being loved by somebody who already knew the worst of it.Finding work that was actually yours.Being allowed to want something for yourself, out loud.Watching somebody you set up get it right.

Pick a compliment:

"You held it all together and nobody thanked you.""You notice everything. You always did.""You were never going to be talked into it.""You let somebody in, in the end."

How does it end for you?

Somebody finally puts you first, and you allow it.You make the thing, and it is good, and it is yours.You come home, and it turns out home is a person.You are still in the room, having arranged most of it.