I have never seen such an evocative description of this song. Not necessarily how I’d put it, but I understand what you mean.

I must have been about fourteen when I first heard this song. It was actually Cilla Black singing it on one of the US pop shows. (And, by the way, Cilla’s version isn’t half bad, if nonetheless tepid next to Dusty’s.) I remember my friends and I at school, discussing the next day what we felt was a really strange song. I think it somewhat scared me, but I couldn’t quite say why.

It wasn’t long after that I heard Dusty’s version. Chilling, even icy, strike me as the right adjectives to use. The distant-sounding piano–Beethoven? Chopin? Debussy? Satie?–creates a Gothic ambience. (Gothic in the sense of the literary genre, not kids with black nail polish.) The woman in the gloomy house lit by candles only hints at a long ago romantic tragedy–but she reveals only the most basic details of the story of love gone. The piano’s melody moves relentlessly through various key changes but still returns to the same place and begins again, just as, one might imagine, the woman’s story will as well.

In the end, there is no resolution, and the sorrow in Dusty’s voice suggests abnegation in the face of a new potential love, so great is the pain of the former.

I’ve never imagined this song being sung by light of day, but I hadn’t considered the season. But as you say, it’s cold outside. And inside as well.