Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Part One: 21st October, 1940.

“And this is Charlotte. Charlotte, this is Mrs Scotlock, who’ll be looking after you.”

Alison wasn’t sure what was more unsettling. The beady eyes staring at her through slightly chipped and ill-fitting horn-rimmed glasses or the business-like tone of Frances’ voice as she read from the list of evacuated children and assigned them to their new homes.  

Well I can hardly pretend I didn’t bring it on myself.

The worst of it was the Frances hadn’t said a word to anyone – well, nearly anyone. In meetings Alison could hardly fail to miss the periodic glares being sent her way from Sarah whilst Joyce and Frances hashed out the particulars of their new regime – and the depths of the other woman’s decency was almost irritatingly vast. But she had known Frances long enough to know that it wasn’t pointed, it simply was and even if she was outside the circle looking in these days there was too much civility in Frances for her to ever give into spite.

Which meant that Charlotte’s inquisitively bright blue eyes and neat copper curls absolutely had to be a coincidence, even if they were perversely familiar and would soon be greeting her each morning. A few weeks in the late autumnal sunshine and she’d have the same freckles too.

“Charlotte’s come all the way from Guernsey, haven’t you dear?”

Thin pink lips stayed firmly together but the little girl tilted her head up towards Frances and gave a small, mournful nod.

Alison knew the sorrow to be well-deserved and she had been secretly hopeful she wouldn’t get one of these extreme cases. Evacuated from the islands without their parents. Hearing the news their home had been conquered. The initial heart-stopping reports of the harbour being bombed, loss of life, and loss of liberty. The unknown of what was happening there now. And then to make matters worse the south coast, which had at least been an obvious and convenient place to keep all of these children together, had been evacuated too and the youngsters scattered.

“And she’s been staying in Canterbury.”

“Ah,” Alison managed, wondering wildly, now that she was being faced with the actual child she had agreed to home, whether it was too late to swap and hope she got a blind woman instead. Over Frances’ shoulder she could see Steph crouched, half-kneeling, one hand holding a handkerchief as she gently wiped away the tears of a pair of tiny dark-haired girls with matching plaits, speaking to them in her soft, sensible voice. Beyond that Dr Campbell, more shaken than ever but not broken yet despite the loss of his house, had a steady hand on the shoulder of a stocky lad in a coat too big for him who was rubbing at his face with a twice turned-up sleeve. They, unsurprisingly, knew what they were doing. She on the other hand... “Lovely part of the country.”

Frances blinked at her and an old sense of bemusement settled on her features for a split-second, the sort of look that might once have led to a quip, a smile, an offer of help, but a second later it was gone, lost behind the Hadrian’s Wall between them that was entirely of her construction.

“Yes, well, I’ll leave the two of you to get acquainted shall I?” Frances smiled at Charlotte kindly and received a small smile back and Alison remembered that Frances already had two evacuees – she would likely take more because it was the sort of person Frances was – and she wished she could ask her how to do, well, any of it really. But Frances swept off and plunged immediately into a conversation with Sarah the two of them seemed to have stretched out for the whole morning and Alison felt a clench in her stomach at the thought that she had never in all her life been that at ease with another human being. Even George had been mildly tainted with the ongoing fear that they would be found out.

She smiled at the little girl in what she hoped was a fair imitation of Frances. It wasn’t. She received little more than a flicker of lashes long enough to sweep across the lenses of her glasses. Alison still had her hands in her pockets and she suddenly wished she had thought to bring something, anything would have done just to break the ice, rather than just standing here like a fool because she had absolutely no idea what to do next.

Had she ever even spoken to a child directly?

“Good journey was it?”

Oh dear lord woman.

Charlotte’s eyes lowered to the ground, cutting Alison out completely and she felt her stomach plummet. She had no idea what to do, nor what to say, and at this moment the only thing Alison thought she could possibly offer this child was a bedroom and adequate food: which was all she was really supposed to do but over Charlotte’s head she caught a glimpse of Mim and Bryn, cradling their child despite Bryn’s broken arm and walking behind a boy of about ten holding fiercely to the hand of a much smaller girl, David walking ahead like the Pied Piper leading the lot. Even Joyce, who had always seemed to find the young as incomprehensible as she did despite having produced one of her own in the distant past, was getting stuck in, albeit in a very Brown Owl-ish way. If she squinted she could even imagine Joyce’s silk scarf was a brown and yellow sash.

Her lips twitched at the observation and she opened her mouth, thinking to share it, but soon closed it when the top of Charlotte’s coppery head was all she could see as the girl blinked behind her glasses.

She was at a loss. Hers was the world of reliable figures, properly grown-up people who wanted her well-trained services and really the only person she spoke to regularly who was under the age of twenty-five was Boris. And even then dog years probably meant he was several years her senior by now.

Boris! She should have brought Boris. Dogs were always a reliable way to start a conversation weren’t they? And children responded well to Boris on their walks, wanting to stroke his coat and attempt to make the lazy article do a trick for them. But it was too late for Boris now. (At least she could store him away for later attempts at entertainment.)

What would Teresa do? She was always at ease with children – it would have been something of a handicap for her if she wasn’t really – she spoke to them every day and there had never seemed to be a great trick to it but Alison was suddenly convinced that there had to be and she had never been allowed in on the secret.

The moment stretched on. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Sarah produce a biscuit seemingly by magic from her pocket and break it in half to share with Noah. (It had not escaped her notice that the good vicar’s wife was one of the few who was not collecting an evacuee of her own, but without the vicarage to call home Alison supposed it was a moot point whether the children went to Sarah or Frances as the Bardens monstrous property would be the destination either way.)

It did spark an idea though.

“Erm...are you hungry at all? I think we could find you some tea and biscuits-no,” she pulled a hand from her pocket at long last and raised it to her face, rubbing her eyes as she covered her slip. “Milk. Biscuits and milk, if you’d like that?”

She was eleven after all. Did eleven year olds drink tea actually? Hadn’t she when she was a little girl? Solemnly sitting in her window seat even in the height of summer, getting through novel after novel, her older brother’s school dictionary never far so she could vigilantly learn any word she didn’t know.

Charlotte looked up; her glasses had slid down her nose and without the oversized lenses to guard her eyes Alison could see the unshod tears her long lashes were blinking away. The little girl nodded twice, sharp little movements as assent but her mouth stayed closed.

Well, it’s a start.

"When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen..."

It occurred to Alison, precisely one line into The Secret Garden , that all children’s books had apparently been designed to make this precise moment more difficult for her. She sent a disparaging glance to the small, mahogany bookshelf Teresa had left behind and now housed the few novels she owned that might be of interest to her new houseguest and immediately struck The Wizard of Oz and Anne of Green Gables from the list of bedtime reading material along with the novel currently in her hands.

Had there always been this many displaced children in literature?

“Actually I’m not overly fond of this one,” she closed it quickly and put the book down, an action she immediately regretted when she realised there was nothing now to distract either of them from the glaring awkwardness of the situation. She had never in all her life put a child to bed but then she had never really fed one or had one trail dutifully next to her while she walked Boris either so today was a firsts sort of day for Alison and, she suspected, a day of feeling mightily disappointed that she hadn’t gotten to go with literally any of the other women for Charlotte. She wasn’t sure of course. Perhaps Charlotte wasn’t miserable? It was quite impossible to tell as the child had yet to open her mouth to speak and Alison, despite her preference for quietness, was rather unnerved.

Children talked didn’t they? Babbling on and on about nonsense or asking questions or making observations they were ill-equipped to fully understand; at least that had been her expectation but thus far all she had received were nods and shakes of the head.

Had Frances forgotten to tell her something perhaps? Was she making a fool of herself attempting to engage in conversation with a child who didn’t possess the ability to speak?

“Is there another story you’d prefer?” She asked gently, wondering if there was a stray Beatrix Potter hiding in the shelves downstairs behind the Virginia Woolf and ancient accountancy texts from the postal bookkeeping course she had taken more than twenty years before.

Charlotte shook her head minutely, eyes bizarrely wide behind her spectacles and Alison wondered whether she might just as well leave the girl to it. She was safe and warm under the several layers of quilt she had dug out of the airing cupboard when it had occurred to her in a brief moment of useful clarity that Cheshire probably felt decidedly cooler than Charlotte would be used to in the south and that at least was something she could make better. She could not make better the loneliness or isolation of her home, features that had always appealed to her enormously, nor could she magically turn herself into somebody that might soothe the girl’s poor heart.          

“Can I fetch you anything at all?”

Blue eyes flickered to where the black-out curtain obscured any view of the world beyond and Alison sighed in understanding.

“Yes I know, it is rather horrid. I still can’t get used to it myself but we’re all at the mercy of the government these days.”

Charlotte, still sat up in her new bed and yet to relinquish her glasses, though looking rather less alert than she had earlier, didn’t utter a peep but there was a brief incline of her head that Alison thought might have been a nod of understanding. The last month had been brutal all round but Alison could well imagine how proximity to London might leave one with significantly more rattled nerves than they had up here – she was certainly more grateful than ever that Great Paxford had been the choice she and George had almost randomly decided upon for a home.

“I’ll be sure to leave a candle burning over here for you so you needn’t be in the dark,” Alison offered, mentally cataloguing the stock of candles she had in the house and how many nights they would last before she had to buy some more. Assuming Charlotte didn’t get used to the pitch black of a room without even moon or starlight to see by: she hadn’t managed it herself just yet so she saw no reason why someone a quarter of her age should. “You will be careful with it won’t you?”

Charlotte nodded and the mildest hint of a tug at the corner of her mouth caught Alison’s attention and made her feel ridiculously proud of herself. She got to her feet, arms folded tightly around herself as she looked between the curtains, the candle and Charlotte in the bed, looking blank and tiny and lost as she reached up and took off her glasses, folding them with excessive care and placing them on the bedside table at a perfect parallel to the edge of the bed.

“Yes, keep them close in case we need to run to the shelter in the night.”

Oh for goodness-

Wide blue eyes looked at her with high alarm and the small, promising curve of Charlotte’s mouth set into a hard, petrified line as she grabbed hold of her glasses and held them close to her chest as though they were a doll. All of which was quite understandable in Alison’s opinion and she was quite tempted to kick herself before going downstairs and immediately telephoning Frances to throw herself upon her mercy.

What on earth was the matter with her?!

“It’s quite alright Charlotte. There’s no need to worry, we don’t get them every night here,” carefully, quite sure she was about to make matter incrementally worse somehow, Alison measured her words. “We haven’t had a tragedy here-“ Do not say ‘yet’, you idiot. “ At all . In fact we seem to be rather blessed,” she smiled as reassuringly as she could manage, relieved when Charlotte looked marginally less like a statue of rigid terror.

“You are safe here, I promise you,” she added gently, unfolding her arms and resting a hand on the door handle. The odd silence that fell afterwards felt tense to Alison, as though there was an expectation of something else being said that neither of them knew the words for and Charlotte peered at her with those big blue eyes, hair falling freely around her skinny shoulders and without her glasses Alison thought she was probably what others would call a pretty child.

“I’ll say goodnight then.”

Charlotte’s response was to shuffle down into her covers and Alison opened her mouth again, thinking to say something else but unable to think of what. She cast a final glance at the candle burning steadily on the top of the chest of drawers, casting a poorer glow than a gaslamp would but at least not wasting a precious ration stamp.

“Goodnight,” she added pointlessly, finally opening the door and slipping out, closing it with a click and without looking back at Charlotte. She felt cowardly for that but at least out here she couldn’t make it any worse for the poor thing.

Trying to rub away the ache behind her eyes that had been increasing rapidly for the last few hours Alison walked down the stairs with heavy-feeling feet and found Boris waiting for her at the bottom.

“What do you want now?” She asked with fond exasperation, bending down with a concerning creak to her knees to scratch him behind the ear. Boris, true to form, immediately lapped up the attention, apparently forgiving her for the crime of bringing another outsider into their home and rolled over, offering his stomach. The display of trust after an afternoon of feeling useless at everything was a small thing but, pathetically, it made Alison feel better and she let herself fall back to sit on the bottom step, resigning herself to giving him everything that he wanted (and secretly glad of it because at least she knew what to do with this dependent).

“Yes, I know,” she cooed at him in a voice she would never have used in public even under threat of death as she increased her efforts and he wriggled across the floor on his back to direct her scratching to his middle. “You’re a very good boy, I am aware thank you.”

Boris’ fussy whine was her only response but it was more than she’d had all afternoon.

“And I’m very sorry your walk had to be earlier but it can’t be helped you see-”

Boris shot from the floor and was at the door before Alison had ever registered he was moving and a moment of puzzlement later there was a careful, clear knock and Alison pushed herself to her feet, scooting Boris to the side with her foot and closing him in the study in the event of an escape attempt. Glancing through the curtains she smiled – of course.

“You do realise your term of service walking Boris ended when you moved out?”

“Maybe, but he doesn’t know that does he?” Teresa replied with a bright smile, the joyously infectious lilt in her voice when she was being funny hitting Alison with a wonderful sense of familiarity. “He must think I’ve abandoned him.”

“I can assure you neither of us think that,” Alison stood to the side, silently inviting Teresa in. It felt odd to do so after everything but Alison accepted it as an inevitability of change – Teresa’s house key was still on the side table by the door, a useless lingering thing that she somehow couldn’t consign to her desk drawer to be lost with the broken watch straps and half-used mechanical pencils.

“I can’t stop,” Teresa said apologetically, even as she came over the threshold and grasped at the lapels of her coat without seeming to notice. “Nick had to work late so I went to sit with him and we were on our way back to the house – he’s just out there in the car actually but he’s got a crossword so he won’t mind for a bit – and I wanted to see how you and your evacuee were getting on-” Teresa tilted her head, peering through the doorframe to the sitting room. “Is she here? Frances did give you a girl didn’t she?”

“Yes, she did,” Alison had thought it the easier option all things considered. “She’s in bed.”

“Of course she is, poor thing must be exhausted.”

“I would assume so,” Alison said wryly, closing the front door and nudging open her study to free the dog scratching wildly, apparently desperate to get to Teresa given how quickly he shot to her feet and started pawing at her calves.

“You’d assume so? Hello Boris, no, I’m not ignoring you, you ridiculous thing, come on,” Teresa clicked her fingers and Boris followed her into the sitting room. Alison followed Boris, smiling to herself at how easily the useless article had been tamed after the initial bump. “What do you mean you assume…?”

“Well that’s the thing, she hasn’t said a word since she arrived. Not to me anyway.”

“What? Nothing?” Teresa furrowed her brow as she sat and Alison’s stomach sank. She had been consoling herself with the notion that somehow it might be normal for some children but if Teresa found it odd she was at a loss.

“No. I thought perhaps she was just in shock after all the travelling?”

“Probably,” Teresa agreed without much conviction, hand idly resting in Boris’ fur while she pondered. “Has she spoken to anyone else? She must have given her name to Frances when she first got here or spoken to the other children on the train.”

“I have no idea. Frances…well, she didn’t say a great deal.”

Teresa shuffled in her seat, letting Boris rest his paws on her knees and look up at her pathetically as she scratched behind his ears.

“That doesn’t sound like Frances,” Teresa quipped, half a smile on her lips but Alison could practically feel herself being unintentionally prodded to tell Teresa the truth. She hadn’t told anyone. She might have told Teresa once, during one of their long evenings spent making their tea ration stretch as far as possible and ignoring the terrible music on the wireless for the much more appealing sound of conversation, but Teresa didn’t live here anymore and it would be awkward to tell her outside the confines of this room. It was hardly the sort of secret one could tell in the queue at the post office.

“None of us are the people we used to be. Even Frances has been forced to change.”

“I’ve not noticed that much difference!”

“Yes, well, you haven’t known her for twenty-five years,” she half-snapped and immediately regretted saying.

“No I haven’t,” Teresa said in a soft, low voice that was quite different to the playful tones of before and Alison felt was definitely disappointed in something. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound like that-”

“It doesn’t matter, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to snap at you. I think having a child in the house is tiring me out already,” Alison said with a wry smile. “And I expect Frances is too busy to get too involved in each case.”

Teresa raised an eyebrow and Alison immediately knew she was thinking that no, that didn’t sound much like Frances either, but Teresa had the kindness to stop that line of questioning.

“I’m sure she’ll come around–” Alison’s body stiffened– “She’s only young and it must be frightening for her,” –and breathed a sigh of relief. “I get scared for my family sometimes and I’m a lot older than her.”

“You should invite them to stay. At least while it’s so bad in Liverpool, I’m sure Wing Commander Lucas wouldn’t mind.”

“He wouldn’t,” Teresa agreed, with a strange half-smile on her face as her eyes glazed over. She was staring through the window to where her husband presumably was still waiting with the Telegraph in hand, not especially filled with longing to return to him but neither quite as awkward about his presence as Alison remembered her being initially. “ I would though,” she snapped her gaze back to Alison and smiled broadly. “You’ve met my sister now so you understand my objections!”

“She’s not so bad,” Alison smiled as she remembered the woman, like Teresa in so many ways but so decidedly not her that it had made her almost objectionable to her eyes. Like somebody had been told the bare bones of who Teresa was and constructed a person from assumptions that wasn’t right at all.

“She’s written to me twice telling me to get a move on with having children,” Teresa rolled her eyes conspiratorially at Alison. “We’ve barely been married a month – Nick’s sister’s still here-”

“Really?” Alison frowned. The thought of overstaying one’s welcome to that extent was practically enough to bring her out in a rash but Alison would concede her feelings towards forcing her company on others were rather more sensitive than most.

“I know. She’s-Well, she’s a bit-” Outside a car horn sounded and Alison jumped, half-out of her seat to begin hurrying to the air-raid shelter before the noise stopped and she remembered the man who was likely eager for his supper. “Oh god, sorry Alison! I told him I wouldn’t be long.”

Alison checked her watch. Four minutes was hardly long was it? Men never seemed to have patience for anything.

“It’s alright. You’d best go though, if he does it again he might wake Charlotte up.”

“Charlotte?” Teresa’s smile grew incrementally and she acquired the soft look around her eyes at the thought of children that Alison found baffling. “I’m sure I’ll meet her soon at school – go on Boris, lie down like a good lad – oh, can you come by tomorrow lunchtime? It seems ages since we’ve caught up and I’m sure I could slip away for half an hour.”

“Of course I can. I’ll bring his lordship and we can walk him over the fields like we used to.”

“Great,” Teresa said through her smile, carefully edging around the prostrate dog and reaching up to rub Alison’s arm as she passed. “I’m sure she’ll be right as rain tomorrow. A good night’s sleep and a bit of normality’ll do her the world of good. Children adapt Alison.”

“Like we all do.”

“Of course we do,” Teresa’s hand seemed to grip harder for just a moment before she broke the contact and wrapped her coat around her body tighter. “How else would we cope?”

Outside Alison could see the outline of the Wing Commander’s car in the distance and she watched from her open door until Teresa was safely inside the vehicle and it had zoomed out of sight into the moonlit night. It was the sort of night for lovers, she thought idly, glancing at the stars moments before she closed the door and locked it tight.

The woman unexpected sitting in Teresa’s classroom, looking for all the world as though it was her own, made Alison lose all sense of the purpose she had come here for and immediately start floundering with her words.

Because if Frances’ final punishment for her was that they were to be agonisingly, blandly civil, as though their friendship was being forced to endure a long, final illness before it was finally put out of its misery, then Sarah’s was decidedly more upfront. Albeit thus far she had endured only sharp looks, the occasional comment at the WI meetings that visibly confused the other women but was never elaborated upon – largely to do with her competence as treasurer – and a deliberate, but ever-so-politely worded rebuttal of her offer to help set the church up for the harvest festival. Minor things really, nothing that could possibly lead the others to accuse Sarah of being petty.

Of course they hadn’t been alone yet.

Sarah lifted her head from the stack of books she was poring over and raised an eyebrow, the effect of which made her look simultaneously unamused and as though her cheekbones were in training to be assaulting weapons. Flint-sharp blue eyes flickered to the corridor beyond Alison and though she knew Sarah couldn’t see the empty space there were no convenient clicks of heels or thunder of children’s feet to make her think they were soon to be disturbed.

Alison swallowed heavily as Sarah sighed and carefully placed her pencil down.

“What can I do for you Alison?” Civil, colder than Frances’ version of the same, but more than she had expected.

“Is Teresa here?”

“Staff room. Offered to make me a cup of tea before she left with...well, I assumed Nick, but if you’re here…”

Nick . Alison still thought of him as being Wing Commander Lucas and even in her head referred to him as that despite his connection to Teresa. Possibly because of his connection to Teresa.

“Yes, it’s me.” Pride in her voice, pleasure almost, that she could claim that friendship still. But if Sarah was here now - what was she doing here anyway?! - in Teresa’s world, Teresa’s space, sitting at her desk, marking her books, being made tea, then how long would it be before she was out of favour with her too. She couldn’t bear the thought of that: Teresa’s eyes weren’t designed for the same coldness as Sarah’s, her manner not nearly reserved enough to be as distant as Frances.

And Teresa was her friend wasn’t she? Sarah hadn’t been able to find room for her when she’d first arrived but she had. Room in her house, in her quiet ordered life: but she wasn’t in either anymore, not like she had been before and Alison was not above admitting that she missed her more than she had thought she would. The flying visit the night before had been a startling reminder of the ease they’d had before and the companionship she had lost.

She consoled herself with the mildly depressing thought that if nothing else they were bound together by bone-deep secrets, things no other knew, things they couldn’t know if the two of them wanted to carry on living here and that would at least give them a bond forever. If the vicarage had just one more spare room she might have taken her secret to her grave. Teresa might not be married-

But no, Connie would still have come, she would still have died, Teresa would still have mourned and tried to move onto another kind of life.

Would Sarah Collingborne have given her the same advice? Would Teresa have trusted her in the same way?

The truculent part of her brain, the part that sometimes wanted to glare back in meetings or tell Sarah if she was so concerned about WI funds she could manage them herself and storm out, knocking over the festival cornucopia as she went, dearly hoped she wouldn’t have done. Teresa had been reluctant to tell her , and she was more or less a recluse who was a few decades and a losing battle with her shrubs away from being perceived as the village witch. Sarah Collingborne was the vicar’s wife and the sister of the closest thing Great Paxford had to a chatelaine and she was not, in Alison’s experience at least, especially forgiving of the sins of others.

“How’s your evacuee?”

“Quiet,” Alison scratched her nose as an excuse not to look Sarah directly in the eye.

“Oh,” Sarah folded her arms, leant on them and the table, eyes flashing. “You should watch that. You never know what the quiet ones are up to.”

Alison winced internally but tried not to show it on her face.

“No,” she bit her lip, tried to stop the words coming out but frustration could only be held in so long and whilst she would endure Frances’ displeasure till the end of time Sarah had never really been her friend, had treated her as an interloper when they’d all been young and Frances had propped her back up after George had died and...and, well, she was damn well tired and certainly didn’t need this!. “Nor the married ones sometimes.”

She was one of the few who had been here long enough to remember Peter as a much younger man and the likeness between him and Noah was so extraordinarily obvious that Alison did wonder at no one else noticing it. Of course they hadn’t been privy to the financial records as she had but the connection between Peter’s eleven year added stipend to his secretary and a small boy that made Frances look like she was battling between her better and worse angels didn’t take too much working out.

She didn’t know the exact truth of course – the likelihood of Frances trusting her now was precisely nothing – but she knew enough and would bet everything she owned that Sarah knew. She would also have gambled a fair amount on the rebuttal being brutal, and she was already regretting her underhand dig, somehow feeling guiltier about Frances despite her not even being here, but instead of biting her head off Sarah paled dramatically and seemed to turn to stone, sitting rigidly, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, as though she were struggling to take normal breaths into her lung.

“Alison!”

The quiet, terrible spell was broken. Sarah picked up her pencil and lowered her eyes to the books again, ignoring Alison entirely now. Teresa on the other hand smiled widely at her, all but bouncing on her feet as she carried a cup and saucer carefully in both hands, a precious biscuit perched on the side.

“Hello, I’m not early am I?”

“No, you’re fine,” Teresa said warmly, her easy manner making Alison feel like liquid. Like Teresa’s sun was thawing the ice Sarah had turned her insides to. “I’ll be back in half an hour Sarah, are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course not,” Sarah said with a smile for Teresa that Alison found bizarrely unnerving. “I’ll enjoy flexing old muscles.”

Teresa laughed as Alison felt the sensation of waiting for an axe to fall.

“Shall we go?” She asked in a voice pitched higher than she had intended that made Sarah smirk at the textbooks.

Teresa, ever-obliging, nodded as she looped her arm through her handbag and waved a farewell to Sarah as they left the classroom. Alison didn’t speak, didn’t dare to so much as breath, until they were outside and she could feel the cooler air on her skin.

“Are you alright?” Teresa asked, concern so clear in her eyes and voice that Alison felt her face flush with shame at behaving so poorly. She stumbled over her words, lies and honesty colliding in her mouth as she tried to express herself, tried to explain what had just occurred without sounding ridiculous, but she found she couldn’t. There wasn’t a single reason she could give that wouldn’t require another question and Alison wasn’t sure she knew the answers anyway.

“No,” she finally answered truthfully. “I…I feel like everywhere I go I’m not welcome anymore and it’s entirely my fault-”

“Alison, what’s going on?” Teresa had taken her hand so gently she had barely noticed but she curled her fingers tightly around the other woman’s all the same

“Not here,” she reluctantly pulled her hand away, meeting Teresa’s eye and hoping to impress upon her than it wasn’t her , she just needed to be much further away from the schoolhouse for this conversation. “Not this way either,” she added quickly, spotting a figure in the distance coming towards them.

“The fields then? Is Boris alright?”

“Hmm?” She glanced over her shoulder as they retraced their steps, glad they were already at the top of the slight incline for the sake of putting distance between them and Sarah’s inevitable visitor. “Oh yes, he’s fine. Just exhausted so I’ve left him to laze in the sitting room to his heart’s content for the afternoon.”

Teresa laughed but her eyes never left Alison, never lost their look of concern.

“Why’s he so tired?”

“Charlotte.” She said simply, taking another look down the path until, thankfully, they turned a corner and were hidden. “She woke up screaming in the night.”

“Oh my god, Alison, is she alright?”

“I think so. I think it was just a nightmare – she went back to sleep and seemed normal again this morning. Well, normal-ish, she’s still not talking.”

“But she screamed ?”

“It was more of a bellow really, but it woke us all up and…well, I suppose at least we know she’s not mute now.”

“Alison!”

“Sorry, I just-I don’t have the faintest idea what to do about it.”

“I don’t think there’s much you can do. Just keep being nice to her. Let her know she’s safe,” Teresa smiled warmly as their feet began to compress grass with each step. “You’re a more welcoming hostess than you give yourself credit for.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“You are Alison, really. Much better than I am. I keep forgetting there’s someone else in the house - I’ve forgotten Julia’s ration book when I’ve gone to do the shopping twice now.”

“Why is she still here? You didn’t say last night.”

“London’s terrible at the moment. Nick reckons the reports he’s seen are so much worse than what the papers are saying so he wants to keep her here out of danger as long as possible.”

“Surely she must be a tad in the way of newlyweds?”

“Oh, she’s not too bad. Just a bit...I don’t know.” Teresa sighed and fiddled with her fingers, handbag hanging loosely at her wrist as she rolled her wedding band idly. “Sometimes I feel like she thinks I’m a bit of a joke,” she admitted with a sardonic laugh. “Like I’m something Nick’s trying out to see how being married suits him.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

“I’m not so sure. The way she looks at me sometimes...like she knows something about me that I don’t ever know and she thinks it’s hilarious.”

“I know it’s not the more useful advice in the world but perhaps you could just ignore her? Presumably she has a life in London she needs to get back to so she won’t be around forever.”

“I suppose. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Without needing prompting from the other they sat on the oversized branch that Alison was sure had been here longer than she had and served as a decent ersatz bench for moments such as these, and she heaved a sigh, glad to finally be hidden away.

“I only wish I could offer better council but I’m afraid George never had a single relative bother us and my brothers all had families of their own to worry about by the time we got...well…But I’ve always assumed family members get rather bored of being an add on after a while and eventually go away.”

“I suppose,” Teresa repeated mournfully, face frozen in time for a long moment as birdsong marked the seconds. “Alison,” she began questioningly, voice gaining tone as she said her name, eyes becoming more focussed as she looked to Alison rather than the sky. “What was that back there?”

“What was what?”

“Alison…” She chastised mildly, head tilted and eyebrow raised in a manner that wasn’t remotely intimidating but still made Alison feel like she was being interrogated and her tongue could not remain still for much longer.

“Oh alright. Where to start…”

She started at the beginning. And told the whole story, warts and all, making no concessions for herself and fully anticipating that by the time she had stopped talking Teresa would have decided to be done with her for good. One big secret each had made them equal, her shame over the illegal bookkeeping had shown the strength of Teresa’s friendship but this was another idiotic decision that had spiralled and she expected nothing less than Teresa washing her hands of her. Perhaps she would become close with Sarah now and be drawn into their circle and then she might begin to hate her too?

“Oh Alison that’s awful -”

“I know, I know.”

“They made you drop Frances in it!”

“I’m not looking for sympathy Teresa, I knew what I was doing.”

“But they made you Alison! And they lied to you about what it would do to the business.”

“And I lied to Frances.”

“You didn’t have a choice though, did you? Not one that I can see anyway.”

“I could have never gotten involved in the first place.”

“But you didn’t know it’d lead to this?”

“No,” Alison admitted, feeling marginally lighter taking the offered mercy upon her character. Glancing up she met Teresa’s gaze and didn’t see a single spec of judgement looking back at her: now that she had told Teresa she couldn’t imagine why she had ever thought there would be. “I doubt Frances will ever see it like that though. She hates me and rightly so.”

“If she really hated you she would have told us all wouldn’t she?” Teresa asked rhetorically and not unreasonably.

“I don’t know to be honest. She knows the value of a threat and I’ve been living in fear of everybody finding out and thinking all manner of things.” She laughed hollowly, rubbing her knuckles against the cold. “Which isn’t exactly a new sensation for me I must admit.”

“You never have to live in fear of me thinking badly of you Alison,” Teresa’s hands wrapped over hers, warm and solidly present and more reassuring than any words might be. “I never, ever could.”

“Others would. You’ve seen how Sarah is.”

“Is that what that is?” Teresa asked with a furrow of her brow. “I thought it was me.”

“How on earth could it ever be you ?”

“I don’t know. Since we got married...god, I just don’t know.” She laughed suddenly, sounding brighter than Alison thought a person could in the midst of everything around them. “It’s as though I’m allowed in the secret club now.”

“Ah. The secret club,” she smiled wryly. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Believe me I wish I didn’t either,” Teresa said as she idly rubbed Alison’s fingers. “I liked our club more.”

“I can’t imagine why.” Alison drawled, already feeling lighter and even feeling a small laugh building. “I’m technically a spinster who bent the rules for the sake of my own happiness. Not really a club one would aspire to be in.”

“Well, I thought I’d have to bend the rules if I wanted to be happy,” Teresa said with meaning Alison alone could hear. “So I had plans to be a technical spinster too,” she added with a smile. “And you were an excellent club co-president.”

“Well we were certainly more harmonious than Joyce and Frances are pretending to be,” Alison quipped. Teresa laughed and squeezed her hand.

“We were. We still are I hope?”

“Of course we are.”

It occurred to Alison during the short walk back to her home, after she had dropped Teresa back at school and slunk away, that she hadn’t thought to ask why Mrs Collingborne was in Teresa’s classroom or whether Teresa owned any books about children whose lives weren’t incurably awful. Somehow the thought that she could ask both these things next time made her feel very happy indeed.

Chapter Text

Part Two: 11th November, 1940.

The effect of the bitterly cold rain that hammered against the church roof was twofold; on the one hand it was truly miserable to behold the greyish gloom cast across the whole congregation from the clouded windows but, mercifully as far as Alison was concerned, it did almost entirely drown out the crackling strains of Nimrod that were attempting to come through the wireless speakers. Everyone was as silent as they were obliged to be in the midst of the service but Alison could hear the shuffling of squeaking wellington boots against the stone floor, the coughs from people’s oncoming winter colds and the increased number of children in the village making the undercurrent of pushing and shoving considerably more pronounced.

Added on top of that the church had never exactly been her favourite place in the village and she was already hoping George wouldn’t mind her being half-hearted in her remembrance this year as really all she could think about were her slippers and a cup of tea.

“Why ain’t they usin’ the organ then?” She heard a boy ask behind her, quite reasonably in her opinion given that one could barely tell when Elgar ended and Purcell began. If indeed Elgar had ended. The service could be nearly over, or barely begun and the rain would have kept them from knowing and yet the interim vicar compelled them all to soldier on with the blasted wireless even Reverend Collingborne had been on the verge of losing his patience with last year.

“Because they’re broadcasting this all the way from London,” a patient voice she identified as Erica’s replied. “It would be a shame not to listen wouldn’t it?”

“We ain’t listenin’ though.”

Alison concurred wholeheartedly and next to her Charlotte turned her head slightly towards the whispered conversation and glanced up at Alison, a tiny smile on her face. Awkwardly Alison smiled back and almost immediately afterwards felt a gently nudge in her ribs from her other side and knew without needing to look – she looked anyway – that Teresa was grinning proudly at her for managing a successful interaction with Charlotte without needing her hand held. From anyone else it would have been mildly patronising but she had spent the last few weeks asking Teresa increasingly hopeless questions about children and had been met with infinite patience so smiling back was no hardship.

The service went on. The memories of the glorious dead of the first war were evoked and mourned and celebrated and the silence that descended at the exact minutes of the Armistice felt eerie in the church. For that few minutes no one shuffled, no one whispered, no one made the slightest peep and yet the rain hammered on relentlessly, almost deafeningly. Around the nave Alison doubted there was a single person not thinking about the men miles away but under the same sky, enduring this directly as they feared for their lives, rather than just being a bit nippy inside a church.

Although she would wager, based on the fidgeting, that she wasn’t the only one who was longing for the home comforts awaiting them.

Not everybody was so slapdash in their duty of course. On Teresa’s other side the Wing Commander stood with a straight back, his uniform pressed and starched expertly - Alison assumed not by Teresa given her usual habit of only ironing the clothes people would see - and she wondered what this weather meant to him. Was it a reprieve all round, both sides resting and biding their time as a slate wall of nimbostratus kept them grounded? Or was it business as usual? Was Teresa’s husband already calculating the cost of winter upon his men?

The murmur coming from the congregation became a song before Alison realised and she managed to catch on and join in with the national anthem before she could be accused of being unpatriotic but as she was reasonably sure her lips were turning blue she doubted they made much impact on the general din. The beauty of the Armistice service being the same year after year was that one knew the moments to join in and how much longer proceedings would go on for and sure enough, as the national anthem ended, people started to shuffle their feet from side to side, trying to get movement back in preparation for the walk. Behind her she heard Dr Campbell coughing into his handkerchief, having held it through the service as best he could and she was quite sure rain or no rain the moment he could get outside he would spark up a cigarette. She could hardly blame him.

This year the memorialisation of the dead - something that had always felt rather poignant and mystical to Alison - felt hollow and cold. Only one year ago it had been the same as ever but Alison didn’t think she had ever lived through such a long year and now she wanted nothing more than to go home and get warm.

“He’s not quite up to Reverend Collingborne’s standards is he?” Teresa whispered  in her ear and Alison instinctively moved her head to bend towards the other woman. “Not that I remember much of last year’s mind. I’ve never been one for churches.”

Considering that this perhaps wasn’t the place for this kind of talk Alison’s eyes flickered nervously around, half-sure that the sharp ears of the almighty would have taken umbrage - or the possibly sharper ears two rows in front of them.

“I doubt the departed will know the difference,” she muttered back, barely moving her lips for fear of being overheard but Teresa was close enough that the shell of her ear would encase the secret.

“True,” said Teresa with an incline of her head, leaning forwards slightly so she could better see Charlotte. “She looks perished.”

“She’s not the only one,” Alison replied, hesitating awkwardly with her arm half-cocked for a moment before Teresa reached across and nudged her arm towards Charlotte and Alison wove it around her shoulder, squeezing through the heavy fabric of her coat gently. “Not much longer now,” she said to the girl with a smile that was returned.

“See, told you you’d be alright eventually.”

Alison almost laughed. Charlotte still didn’t speak - at least not to her although Teresa assured her she occasionally spoke in her lessons, though she had that from Sarah and Alison felt mildly annoyed that Charlotte would speak for the vicar’s wife but not for her - and the nightmares hadn’t entirely ceased so Alison failed to see how any of this could be considered alright , but she didn’t have the heart to tell Teresa otherwise when she looked so proud of her. She didn’t deserve it and she felt rather pathetic, but she clung to that slither of praise like a woman holding desperately to the rigging of a ship in tumultuous waters, determined not to lose contact with her lone chance of survival.

In many ways she felt closer to George now than she ever had.

The vicar said his final words and whether they were poignant or read verbatim from the Beano Alison couldn’t claim to know as they were lost in the congregation preparing for it’s exodus. Together they pulled on gloves, if they had been brave enough to take them off in the first place, and wound scarves around clammy, cool necks, trying not to assault the person next to them in the pew. Next to her Teresa rubbed her fingers together in an attempt to generate warmth before she slipped supple leather on top and she expected half the men would be curling their fingers in the hats they had taken off earlier, fiddling aimlessly until it was appropriate to put them on.

The moment came jarringly and after a last murmur of ‘amen’ people were moving and Alison wished they’d had the sense to sit at the back of the room rather than having to join the throng of people waiting to get out. The mass of people was wider than the small church doors could accommodate so the progress was slower than she would have liked but she tried to cover her impatience and kept her hand on Charlotte’s shoulder in case she decided to slip through the smaller spaces.

“...don’t know what’s gotten into people, honestly, you’d think a few hours were an imposition.”

“People were never in such a rush when Adam was up there.”

Alison felt Teresa bump into her back and didn’t even realise she’d stopped moving.

“Sorry,” she said over her shoulder but Teresa didn’t seem to notice. She was staring at her feet, one hand holding her handbag, the other pressed lightly against the back of Alison’s coat, fingers twitching as though she wanted to take hold of the belt strap and fix them together. They had reached the aisle and become part of the crowd and Alison twisted her neck to glance behind her on the other side and immediately, inevitably , came face to face with Frances.

Nick and Sarah were behind them and it had been their conversation that had drawn her attention and now she realised why: though Frances had Noah with her she was rigidly silent and Teresa was looking at anyone but the people around her, her very being seemingly torn by something Alison couldn’t pinpoint.

“Hello Frances,” she attempted with as calm a voice as she could manage, shuffling aside so Charlotte was next to her and feeling ever-more pathetic at using a child as a shield.

“Hello Charlotte!” Noah interjected with a lightness and exuberance that Alison thought made him stand out starkly amongst all the gloomy faces surrounding his. “Are you alright?” He asked, his little face scrunching up in concern. “Would you like my scarf?”

Silently, but with a small smile, Charlotte nodded, her coppery curls bouncing and the glasses perched right on the end of her nose looking very precarious for a moment before she pushed them back up and Noah took off his scarf and looped it around her neck in a movement so smooth and effortlessly charming that Alison was reminded quite forcibly of Peter.

Her eyes flickered to Frances unbidden and she caught the brief swallowing of emotion and looked at Teresa instead before she could be caught staring, though she couldn’t stop her heart from landing somewhere in her throat as she wished she was still someone that could offer a friendly word without it sounding hollow to Frances’ ears.  

“I did offer her one,” she protested vaguely, well aware that she had just been shown up by an eleven year old boy. Teresa finally snapped her gaze back, a smile fixed to her face, though not the sort Alison was used to seeing.

“I suppose most girls just prefer a handsome boy to do the honours, don’t they Charlotte?” Sarah asked from behind her sister, not unkindly, but Alison wanted nothing more than to burn the words from the air. Charlotte, in a display of solidarity Alison knew she probably hadn’t earned, furrowed her brow and took a step closer to Alison’s side.

“I think we’re to assume that’s a no,” Alison replied for Charlotte, gently resting her hand on small shoulders again, considerably more at east this time. Noah looked moderately put out for a moment, and Alison worried that his displeasure might incur more wrath being directed at her but soon the storm clouds cleared from his face and he smiled brightly again.

“I have lots of them now,” he confided in Charlotte, taking a small step forwards into a space an adult couldn’t reach. “Mrs Collingborne makes them for me.”

Of course she does , Alison thought with an irrational stab of annoyance, walking with the crowd as they neared the exit and spotting Dr Campbell with a cigarette between his lips, match in hand, waiting impatiently to get outside, Erica smiling fondly at him as he stood on tiptoes to see over the head and ascertain how close he was. Close enough, Alison guessed, judging by the especially sharp wind she could feel on her face already. Reaching out she readjusted the scarf around Charlotte’s neck so it covered her better and risked a glance at Frances’ conflicted face.

“Would you…” she wet her lips, feeling them suddenly dry but Teresa touched her back again gently and she pushed on. “Like me to bring it back? It’s very generous of Noah but I wouldn’t like Sarah to get upset if he’s giving away her wo-”

“It’s fine,” Frances cut her off brusquely, though without the snap Alison had expected. Behind Frances’ head she could see a pair of gorgon’s eye boring into her, thankfully powerless as long as she had Frances between them being polite and reasonable. And Teresa, whose head snapped around and smiled with a gilded edge, breaking the spell again. “As Noah said, he has plenty.”

The boy smiled happily up at Frances, glad his actions had been approved by his guardian and Alison wondered suddenly whether Noah had the slightest notion of who Frances actually was to him.

“Thank you,” Alison said, ostensibly to Noah, but her eyes never leaving Frances and never being completely unaware of Teresa’s proximity. The first spray of rain reached her and she turned her attention back to the door, finally able to see the murky, angry sky they were about to walk into.

“Alison?” Teresa’s hand was on her shoulder, soft as a feather through her coat as she imagined hers must be on Charlotte’s. “Is it alright if I stop by, I could do with a chat-”

“Oh come on darling, it hardly seems fair to leave Julia alone all day,” the Wing Commander cut in and Alison anticipated the scowl on Frances’ face as he all but shouted in her ear before she even saw it.

“She could have come to the service,” Teresa intoned with dull resonance.

“She can’t abide services - sorry Sarah, you won’t tell the padre I come from a family of heathens will you? - I told you that earlier.” He said in his reasonable, amiable tones. It occurred to Alison that she had never noticed his height before and quite suddenly it was all she could think about as he loomed above all their heads. “Come on, I’ll drop you off home of my way to Tabley Wood. She’ll be climbing the walls without somebody to talk to.”

“Perhaps she should join us for the meeting this month?” Sarah offered distractedly, dodging out of the way of her sister’s elbows artfully as Frances hastily wrap her own scarf around Noah’s exposed throat. Reaching up Sarah’s hands flipped up Frances’ collar to save her the trouble.

“Or leave the house at some point,” Teresa muttered so only Alison could hear, though Frances’ lips twitched as she pretended not to have heard.

“She’s not one for joining in I’m afraid. Apparently the wartime spirit hasn’t made Londoners any more inclined to branch out of their usual circles yet.”

Outside they all ran, or at least adopted a hurried walk in Alison’s case, and before anymore could be said on the matter, or she could tell Teresa she was welcome to come home with her, of course she was, she always was, she saw Nick lift his coat over both their heads and hurry towards a car, taking Teresa with him as they vanished behind a sheet of rain.

Teresa inhaled deeply on her cigarette and swirled the remains of cooling tea around her cup, trying not to count the seconds as they ticked by on the mantelpiece.

There was more tea in the pot, but the pot was in the middle of the room and though laziness was far from her mind she was highly aware that crossing the room might mean drawing attention to herself from unwanted sources. Not that there seemed to be much she could do about that lately - if Julia wanted to say something she invariably would and no amount of trying to become invisible in the corner of the sitting room, pretending she preferred the window seat so she could listen to the rain better when all she wanted was to sit by the fire and not feel condensation seeping through her jumper, would alleviate her verbal ooze. Nothing ever seemed to deter her and Teresa would have easily believed her sister-in-law thoroughly disliked her if it weren’t for the fact that she barely left her alone.

Leaving her cigarette smouldering in the ashtray she got to her feet, feeling tenser than she knew she ought to in her own home. Of course she had to remind herself daily that it was her home - there was too much off for it to feel entirely comfortable: the mantlepiece was too low for her liking, the quiet echoed too much when she was alone and whenever others were present it felt too crowded, like in the church earlier when she’d been penned in on all sides and unable to reach the exit. Perhaps three was just too many when all of you were grown up? Perhaps she’d be alright once Julia went and it was Christmas - though Nick would likely want her to stay for that now they were in the midst of November, she thought with a sinking realisation – or perhaps she could talk Nick into getting a dog and she could have an excuse to go for walks instead?

She poured herself a fresh cup, deliberately not looking at the other woman as she sprawled across the sofa by the fire, looking like she was trying to emulate La Dame aux Camélias in her death throes. Unfortunately her indifference was immediately noticed and Teresa heard a rustling of hair against a throw pillow and felt as though a scorpion was about to strike her back; the anticipated blow didn’t immediately come though and, like a fool she realised a moment too late, she glanced over her shoulder and was more surprised to find she wasn’t being watched.

Had she imagined the feeling of eyes on her back?

“Would you like some?” She asked politely.  

“You teachers,” Julia said with a smirk as she turned her apathetic glance from the fireplace to Teresa, apparently equally unimpressed with both. “You’re hardly ever at work really, are you?”

Teresa resisted the urge to scream with all the alacrity of somebody that had done so many, many times before and instead set her face to the same neutrality she always used in these moments.

“I told you. It’s just today for the service. We’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

“Ah yes. Normal . You are all quite fond of that here aren’t you?” She asked lazily and, Teresa assumed given that she was troubling herself with lighting up another cigarette, probably rhetorically. Ignoring her Teresa returned to her seat and hoped Julia might fall asleep.

“It’s so depressingly bourgeois. Normal .”

Teresa bit her tongue to stifle the comment that it was a bit rich to complain about conformity if you’d spent time at a boarding school and now worked for the government but she refused to be riled. Instead she took up her cigarette again and tried to remember which chapter of Anne of Green Gables she was on. She’d told Alison it had a happy ending and she was quite sure it did but she had volunteered to check for Charlotte’s sake nevertheless.

“I don’t know how Nick can stomach it here. Not after being so used to London.”

“I never really like London that much.”

Julia laughed throatily, exhaling smoke like a steam engine into the air and glanced at her through heavily mascaraed eyelashes, eyebrow cocked and laughter pouring from her as though Teresa were the most ridiculous thing in the world.

“It’s not the centre of the known universe you know?” Teresa said snappily, flipping through pages at random and trying not to drop ash.  “And it can’t be much fun at the moment.”

“I don’t know,” Julia said contemplatively. “There’s something to be said for the cover of darkness. You’re free to be whomever you please in the shadows...all sorts go on when no one’s looking…” Teresa tensed, feeling the honey hazel eyes on her again and the terrible stirring in her chest rise up like a slow, deliberate snake.

She had felt it almost every day since Julia had been her; since she had been introduced to the mysterious and striking guest at her wedding that had turned out to be her sister-in-law and had been a fixture of her days ever since. It had been enough of an adjustment to live with Nick - somehow living with Alison had never felt like quite so much effort - but to find herself constantly in the company of his sister too had been a change of circumstance she had not anticipated at all.

“Of course I will admit that isn’t entirely exclusive to London,” Julia added with drippingly insincere philosophy. “I’m sure you got up to all sorts in Liverpool. ”

Stomach dropping from new and apparently loftier heights Teresa kept her breath steady and used her cigarette as a desperate crutch on calm.

“I was a bit busy training as a teacher,” she said tartly.

“Oh but all those free summer days must have been used for something?” Julia replied with a twist of her carmine painted lips. “Don’t tell me you wasted them on reading .”

“And what’s wrong with reading?”

Julia’s eyes flickered to the book in her hand and back up to her face with deliberate laziness.

“Nothing at all. At least not if it’s something worthwhile and not childish nonsense like that,” she flicked her cigarette towards Teresa’s borrowed book with disdain. “I suspect your profession has altered your sensibilities though...What did you read before? When you were training in Liverpool.”

“I honestly don’t remember every book I’ve ever read Julia,” she tried desperately to think of something that might placate Julia. Agatha Christie was probably far too bourgeois , Forster too light, Woolf too obvious. “I doubt anybody does.”

“On the contrary I’d say. I remember certain novels very well, what I was doing, where I was, how the air felt afterwards,” Julia turned onto her side, propped up by an elbow, cigarette still smouldering in her hand as she tilted her head towards it. “Radclyffe Hall for example,” she said offhandedly and Teresa felt as though every hackle she possessed was standing to attention and got the impression that was the intention. “I remember every word of that.”

The that Julia referred to was far from enigmatic and the allusion to it here in the sitting room of the cottage Nick had chosen for them sent sharp icicles down Teresa’s spine, though she wasn’t sure why she was overly surprised by the revelation. The sense of otherness about her sister-in-law had piqued her interest at first – she dressed in reds richer than Frances Barden would ever consider, wore more make-up than any woman in the village, was slovenly where they were active, sly where they were honest and good – but ultimately Teresa could have put those things down to the difference between village women and those from the city. She still noticed the difference in herself, and in one or two of the other women that still retained the vestiges of having lived in a place where no one knew the intimate details of their neighbours lives and secrets were less secret, more things you didn’t intend others to know rather than dangerous, volatile things that could slip from the shadowy cages in which they were hidden easily and never again be contained.

“I...” What was the right response? Did she feign ignorance? Julia wouldn’t believe her for a second. Could she compromise with the growing panic inside her and admit to having heard the name but never having read the book itself? Julia would probably see through that too.

And suddenly it became obvious that her sister-in-law had been dragging out this moment for weeks probably, needling her with her own company, standing a little bit too close in the kitchen when Nick wasn’t looking, sitting next to her at dinner, blowing smoke in her eyes literally and figuratively until she could have this moment. Julia was like her, that much was evident now, and clearly her sister-in-law was a mind-reader or…

Had she done something? Said something? Said anything that might have given her away? How could she – she had been so careful since the wedding, before that even! All her life she had been careful and broken her own heart over and over again so she could keep her secret buried deep and no one, apart from Alison, had ever pried it from her before.

But somehow Julia knew.

“I don’t know that one,” she said curtly, getting to her feet and jerkily stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray, barely pausing to let the last ember become extinguished before she shot into the kitchen. Hands grasping the edge of the sink she tried to focus on the cold, shiny surface underneath her curled fingers, tried to grip onto something but found her fingernails digging into nothingness. The air she breathed in seemed to reach the bottom of her throat and travel no further, making her feel sick and tense and as though her whole body were being rendered to stone.

“Oh god,” she muttered to herself, barely managing to breath it out before her whole body felt like it was trembling uncontrollably. The rain against the kitchen window might have been soothing but the density of it made the whole room dark and impenetrable, leaving Teresa feeling trapped and cornered. She leant forwards onto the edge of the sink, feeling it dig into her stomach and trying to let that sensation ground her, but her eyes caught sight of the glinting gold on her left hand and she felt no better.

Her stomach dropped as she heard the telling click of high heels coming closer until they stopped only a few feet behind her, the sharp clack being alien to her ears after so long of carpet slippers and Boris’ scratching paws on the ground, but the silence that followed being heavier than anything Teresa remembered feeling in recent memory.

The clicking came again. Three steps from her. Two.

She gripped the sink harder.

One.

Long, thin fingers touched her elbow-

(soft, so much softer than Nick, and gentler despite the spikes on the other woman’s soul)

There was warm breath on the side of her face and she could feel Julia’s body behind hers, pinning her against the sink-

(and she would not react to it, she would not )

“Liar,” Julia whispered.

“See? You’ve won again, you’re far too good at this for me.”

Glancing over the top of her spectacles Alison caught Charlotte’s eye and they shared a small smile. Frankly, she could have cheered.

She had done it. She had, as Teresa had wisely suggested, managed to find a point of common interest with Charlotte that she could use to engage the child in some kind of interaction at home, even if it was still largely done in silence. In fact Alison was quite startled to think that for the first time in her life she wasn’t the quiet one of a pairing but there was hardly a lot of conversation required for cards so at least it wasn’t overly obvious and Charlotte seemed happy enough counting out her points with the little pegs.

“Shall we play again? I am determined to prove that I can do this.”

Alison had been rather relieved to discover that Charlotte had a knack for numbers and mathematics – it was probably the first spark of luck she’d had where it came to her young guest – and she had purposefully retained the numerical puzzles from the newspaper for her, a gesture that was apparently appreciated. In fact things were getting considerably better, she thought, shuffling the cards as Charlotte reached for her warm milk and dealing again.

As she dealt she cautiously observed the girl, not at all sure how much scrutiny she could get away with before Charlotte withdrew behind her invisible portcullis again, but something very specific had been nagging upon Alison’s mind. And there it was again. Charlotte blinked heavily and unevenly behind the frames of her glasses, eyes looking tired and strained and Alison wondered once again whether it was worth taking her to Dr Campbell to get them checked.

The very last thing she wanted to do was neglect something that might have an adverse effect upon Charlotte’s well-being. Although she had considered that it might serve her right for preferring the idea of a blind woman when she had first met Charlotte. Still, Charlotte seemed happy enough, idly fiddling with the end of the scarf Noah Lakin had put around her neck earlier, apparently not inclined to part with it for the time begin despite her hat and coat hanging on the hook next to Alison’s in the hall.

“Right, there you go,” she said, laying down the rest of the deck. “Don’t let me see your hand.”

Charlotte tilted her head in a gesture that was much older than she was, a small wry smile on her lips and Alison laughed and decided in a few more games and she would start teaching her to deal too. She obviously possessed the sense.

“Enough of that, I was just making sure you remembered.”

Cribbage as it turned out had been amongst the most useful things her father had ever taught her. Without it the awkward silence would have been ever more drawn out and Alison might have still found herself pulling books from the shelf for something to fill Charlotte’s time now she had steadily made her way through all the ones on Teresa’s bookcase that Alison didn’t think would make her cry out in the night. Which hadn’t been many all things considered.

But with it things were immeasurably improved!

“Righto, your turn.”

The barking started first.

“Boris!” Alison called out, brow furrowed as she watched him all but skid across the floor of the sitting room, shooting straight for the front door and she was already sighing with frustration at the little twit obviously choosing this moment when the rain was at its height to answer the call of nature before a banging came at the front door.

Charlotte jumped, eyes so wide behind the glasses that she had the look of a startled owl and Alison reached out to pat her on the back gently, calming her down.

“I’m sure it’s just-”

Another bang. No, not a bang, a knock !

“It’s probably just the postman,” she began to say as reassuringly as she could, even as she glanced at the clock and marked the time and realised there wasn’t a chance in hell. “I’ll be right back.”

Feeling decidedly more cautious than she knew she ought to in her own home – it was, after all, just somebody at the door, albeit a clearly deranged person – but Alison couldn’t shake the sense of sudden foreboding that took over her as she walked towards the door. Whoever it was had braved the very worst of the weather to reach her door and the likelihood was if somebody had done that the reason would not be good.

“Teresa!” Her mouth fell open as she beheld the sight of her friend, sopping wet in the rain, coat unbuttoned and without a hat or scarf or anything to keep her warm in the middle of this terrible November. She immediately reached out and all but pulled Teresa inside the house, hands dampening immediately as she touched Teresa’s arm and realised the coat was soaked through too. Her hair was in disarray, she noticed once Teresa was inside and closer and after she had shut out the weather and turned back to her she could see that Teresa’s eyes were bloodshot and her breathing ragged.

“Good god, what happened?”

Receiving no reply at first her hand slipped from Teresa’s shoulder to her freezing cheek and lifted her head gently, concern seeping from her every expression.

“Teresa, what on earth happened?”

“I ran away.”

“Ran away-”

“I can’t do it Alison. I thought I could but I can’t and now…” her voice trailed off into a sob and Alison didn’t hesitate to pull her closer for a warm hug. A hug she was promptly denied when Teresa darted away. “Don’t.”

“Teresa.”

“Alison, I’m soaking wet,” Teresa said in her usual tone of patient amusement and Alison felt like the lead weight inside her was…well, not gone because she had no idea what was going on and it was still highly concerning, but at least a single balloon had been attached to the weight and lifted it slightly. “And I probably don’t deserve it anyway,” her face crumpled and Alison moved towards her again, only for Teresa to take a step towards the study.

“There’s no fire in there,” she said weakly, feeling a numbness seeping through her at the shock of it all. “I’m not working today.”

Alison heard a shuffling in the sitting room behind her and after a short patter of feet Charlotte was at her elbow, looking between the bedraggled Miss Fenchurch and her guardian with a gobsmacked expression. Boris ran from the open study door to the sitting room, nails clattering across the floorboards beneath their feet and Alison wondered what a bizarre vision the four of them must make to an outsider.

“See, he’s not so daft as you say Alison,” Teresa chattered, licking her lips to wet them despite being little more than as drip in a tweed coat. “ He knows better than to go out in this.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what in the seven hells Teresa was doing out in this – had she said she’d ran away? – but Charlotte’s presence prevented her and Alison immediately racked her brains for some way of sending her away without it sounding terrible. Nothing struck her.

“Charlotte,” she began, hoping the right words would somehow just fall from her lips but very much doubting it. “Would you mind going upstairs for a little while please? Perhaps you could read the next chapter of The School at the Chalet , then we can finish it later?”

Whatever other problems her evacuee might have come equipped with Alison was eternally grateful that tact was one of her gifts and after glancing between them a few times Charlotte nodded obediently and hurried up the stairs with her spider-quiet steps. Once the door was closed Alison immediately reached out her hand.

“Come on. Fire place now, before you perish.”

Just as obediently Teresa did as she was told and took her hand, being led across the hall – Alison ignored the quiet, chattering objections that she was dripping on the floor – and into the much warmer sitting room. When Alison turned around it was to find Teresa crying again.

“Oh my dear,” she whispered helplessly to herself. Closing the distance between them Alison reached up to grasp the heavy lapels of Teresa’s coat, beginning to ease it from her shoulders. It came away gradually, sticking to the clothes underneath and she expected it would smell heavily of damp by tomorrow morning but that was hardly worth her concern. Teresa was far too important.

Her hands hovered for a moment but Teresa was still shivering from her soaking clothes and Alison reached up to undo the buttons of her cardigan, peeling it away too. The collar of Teresa’s blouse was wet but, mercifully the rest wasn’t too bad and Alison had undone half the buttons of that before Teresa seemed to register what she was doing and jolted back several paces and neatly collided with the mantelpiece.

“Don’t.”

“Teresa, it’s alright.”

“No, I…”

“Teresa, it’s only me,” she said softly, the balloon on the lead weight popping and dropping the full cargo back into the pits of her stomach. “I’m just trying to get you out of those wet things.”

Teresa closed her eyes for a moment, before swallowing hand and nodding.

“I’m…I’m sorry, I just th- I just remembered I don’t have anything here anymore do I?” Teresa said with a thin smile.

“Of course you do,” Alison said emphatically, slowly picking up the throw from the back of the arm chair, carefully placing it around Teresa’s shoulders and wrapping it around her until she was swaddled and Alison could rub her arms underneath the fabric to generate some warmth. “You always had more here than clothes Teresa. I had hope you knew that.”

“I know,” she nodded, allowing herself to be sat down before immediately shooting back up.

“Sit. Your skirt isn’t that wet anyway.”

The second time, she did and Alison sat next to her

“Would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

“No,” Teresa wailed quietly, despair pouring from her and Alison would have given anything to make it go away.

“Alright then, I won’t pry,” Alison said mildly, reaching out to fiddle with the pegs on the cribbage board, still set up for her and Charlotte’s next game. Almost casually she reached up her other hand to rest on Teresa’s back and gently rubbed small circles, trying to ease the answers out of Teresa if need be.

“Alison, I can’t do it.”

“Do…?”

“Being married to Nick, being… married at all, I just can’t do it.

“Teresa-”

“I’d rather look over my shoulder all my life than spend it with somebody I know I’ll never love.”

And there is was again, Alison thought, just when she had begun to think it was going away the determined tendrils of her own guilt began to spread through her entire being, making her feel full and hollow all at once. She nodded, because she could think of nothing to say and doubted she could anyway with her sandpaper mouth. This was her doing. She had encouraged Teresa to pursue Nick. She had told her to have a normal life, to stop living in fear.

“I’m so sorry Teresa.”

“Why?” Teresa said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand and sniffling, eyes alert despite everything and looking at her curiously. And it struck Alison that it would never have ever occurred to Teresa to blame this mess on her, because Teresa hadn’t even blinked before excusing her cowardice in betraying Frances so obviously Teresa would never think to blame her for this because Teresa was so much better, so much more, and Teresa had never deserved her useless, useless friendship in the first place.

“This is my fault. If it weren’t for me you might never have married him in the first place.”

“You only said what you thought was right for me.”

“And I was wrong again,” Alison replied emphatically, fingers flexing on Teresa’s back.

“You weren’t the only one,” Teresa said with a sniff, leaning back into the touch. “I don’t know where to go,” she admitted in a small voice, the fire’s glow making the tears on her cheeks glisten. Alison frowned.

“To go ?”

“I can’t stay with him Alison, I told you-”

“No, I know,” she said softly. “I know you can’t. I see that now. What I meant is why would you need to go anywhere else ? Your home is here as long as you want it, you know that.”

“Are you sure, Alison?” Teresa asked with a glow in her eyes that Alison doubted she would have been able to extinguish with disappointment even if she had wanted to.

“Of course I am,” she replied, finally managing to coax Teresa into her arms for a much-needed hug. Whatever had gone on she would no doubt find out about later, until then Teresa was more important than details.

Alison realised belatedly that the minor detail of her not having a spare room any more was perhaps something she might have considered.

Chapter Text

Chapter Three: 29th November, 1940.

“They’re saying it might be well over a hundred.”

“Good god in heaven,” Alison mumbled, eyes fixed on the front page of the paper Joyce had spread out on the long table in the village hall. The new arrangements within the WI had effected Alison very little: she was still treasurer, though not with any great desire to be so on her part and largely because Frances could hardly relieve her of the role without explaining why and now Joyce was back and in Mrs Barden’s good graces there was somebody to act as a go-between and keep Frances from needing to speak to her too directly, so it wasn’t worth seeing if anyone else could balance books. Pat’s newfound job had freed up the secretary role – apparently it took up far too much time and Alison almost wished she had begged off in the name of accountancy – and without much discussion going on, at least as far as Alison was aware, Sarah had inevitably slipped into place as Frances’ right hand. Which was technically a change to the running of things but the difference in practice was entirely negligible.

In fact the only discernible difference for Alison was that she often found herself unexpectedly sat by Joyce these days and whilst that would once have led her to tear her own hair out or seek the conversation of whoever else happened to be nearby recently she had been finding Joyce’s humbled zen quite soothing.

“It scarcely seems possible that one blast could cause such destruction,” Joyce muttered quietly, age-worn fingers tracing over the inky and blurry photograph with quiet respect, as though she were too bowled over by the extent of the damage to dare look away from it. Alison understood the feeling - she had only managed to drag her own eyes away to confirm to herself that the seat next to hers was still tellingly empty, but the implications of the shadowy swirls of smoke and the debris that littered Durning Road could not be ignored.

“It must be like this every day in London,” Joyce continued, regaining some vigour to her voice as she took a deep breath through her nose, lips pressed too hard together to do the honours. “I know it’s a terrible thing to think, and I hope you won’t think less of me for it, but I am so grateful every single day that Douglas and his family are safely in Canada.”

“It must be comforting,” Alison said obligingly, thinking of her brothers dotted around the country and that they were mercifully too old to be called up. “One certainly feels the need to cherish others in times like these.”

“Indeed it is,” Joyce said quietly. “I also believe it casts a light on those that are most important to us – even if we may not realise it – and those that are not. And one cannot be blamed for those revelations.”

Alison nodded, lips pressed together and unable to look Joyce in the eye, but she did make a mental note to tell Teresa later – Teresa was the other noticeable difference in her WI life these days and it was the poorer for her absence – that she assumed Joyce was surreptitiously trying to show some kind of solidarity with another woman who had left her husband. It was rather sweet, in its own formal Joyce-like way.

“Is that today’s?” Erica said from opposite them, nodding towards the paper. “Isn’t it dreadful?”

There was a murmur of consent and Steph peered over at the picture. “I had to spend all morning telling the girls that it was Liverpool and not London. They couldn’t stop crying, said it looked exactly like their street.”

“I’ve always thought most streets in the city have a tendency to blur into one,” Alison said with irony as her eyes refused to leave the sight of a street that looked so monstrously grotesque that it didn’t seem possible it could look like any other. Of course they all knew the terrible fact was it did resemble far too many these days.

“At least none of our youngsters will have lost anybody in this ,” Mim added with determined insistence and there were a few nods around the table that Alison could guess were tinged with the same thoughts of next time as her own were. It was bad enough that the poor things were so far away from their loved ones – the thought of having to tell one of them that their family were dead …

A thought struck Alison like a jolt as the talk turned to the various habits of their southern visitors and her eyes flickered up to the clock on the wall.

“Has anybody heard from Frances and Sarah?” She asked carefully. “It isn’t like them to be this late.”

Nobody had. And when, fifteen minutes later there was no sign of either of them Joyce dissolved the meeting without much fanfare, promising to reschedule for the following week if possible and they disbanded for their homes. Alison, knowing Charlotte was safe with Teresa for the time being made a slight detour she had a terrible feeling she was going to regret, missing the turning for her own home and passing the war memorial as she walked briskly towards Frances’. The barren blackberry bushes that marked the way had lost the frost they had woken with this morning and though it might form again in the night, it would fall away again, sinking into the ground and being forgotten about entirely next spring when the sweet fruit bloomed again.

Perhaps Frances would rally them all in gathering again? It might tempt her to try just to see Joyce’s face when presented with a jam spoon and given instructions to stir.

Smiling to herself at the thought Alison pressed on down the long drive to Frances’ front door, glancing around her nervously despite her steady pace, as though she were waiting to be seen and stopped by the police at any moment. But she persevered – she needed to know one way or the other and Frances…she didn’t expect Frances to forgive her, but she felt the same compulsion to see her that had driven her to immediately invite Teresa back into her home without so much as a second thought. But both Frances’ anger and Teresa’s absence had cut her more deeply than she had ever thought they could and if a moment of reckless instinct had brought Teresa back – admittedly it was the same instinct that now had her sharing at bed for the first time in twenty five years and feeling distinctly awkward about it – then perhaps the same thing might help with Frances?

She had lain in a bed of her own making for too long.

Knocking on the door she waited with baited breath – if she got the wrong sister then this might be a disaster yet. Luckily Claire’s face greeted her and she was then at least guaranteed a smile. Today’s, much to her horror, was thin and sad.

“Hello Mrs Scotlock. Mrs Barden wasn’t expecting you was she?” Claire asked politely.

“No, I doubt it. I…That is, she missed the meeting and I wanted to make sure she was alright,” she realised belatedly that Claire had also been notably absent, though it hadn’t struck her at the time. “All three of you,” she added with a nod.

“That’s very kind of you,” Claire said softly, stepping aside to let her in and Alison realised that as far as Claire was concerned she was still welcome here without invitation. Frances, as she had suspected, had not spread the truth even as far as her own household and Alison felt like crying. “I’ll tell Mrs Barden you’re here.”

“Thank you Claire,” she said awkwardly, never having quite gotten used to the notion of a servant, even one that wasn’t hers and she had thrown confetti on in June. Good grief – had it only been June ?

Barely moving from the doorway Alison fiddled with the tie of her coat, listening carefully for Claire’s return, but the echoing corridors of Frances’ home did have a tendency to swallow sound and she couldn’t hear a thing. This house, such a marked contrast to her own, had always made her feel so very small – a feeling that had been balmed by its owner’s friendship but now it felt colder than ever before, oppressively large, like it might swallow her up whole and spit out the remains as ornaments on the grounds.

“Alison?”

Frances appeared from the sitting room looking pale and puzzled, eyebrows furrowed like she was trying to work out a difficult sum and Alison heard another set of footsteps before Frances gracefully turned out of the doorframe and closed the door behind herself with a decisive click.

“I’m sorry to arrive unannounced, but I’ve just come from the meeting and obviously when you didn’t turn up we were all rather concerned and we – that is I –”

“Alison, what is it?”

“I was worried about you,” she blurted, feeling immediately foolish.

“Were you?” Frances muttered with disbelief, the shadows underneath her eyes looking more pronounced than ever before. “You’ll appreciate that I find that hard to believe.”

The door to the sitting room began to swing open but Frances’ hand darted out to pull it back into the frame and Alison heard a brief murmur behind the door before it disappeared again. Alison swallowed and heaved a sigh. Frances was protecting her despite everything else, even if it was just from being glared at.

“I’m sorry,” she said weakly, fingers twisted in her coat tie so tightly they began to tingle. “I was worried. We all were.”

“And they sent you?”

“No. I just decided to check.”

“Well there was no need. I felt under the weather and forgot to telephone Joyce, that’s all. I trust she’s decided to reschedule already?”

Alison sighed again and wondered at what point this had seemed like a good idea.

“Alright then. I’ll let Joyce know,” she said dimly, turning to open the front door and escape.

“Alison.”

She twisted to look over her shoulder and found Frances rubbing her temples wearily.

“Noah has asked if Charlotte could come over for tea one afternoon.”

Alison frowned at the statement and saw the same puzzlement on Frances’ face, tempered only with a little more time to digest the request from one of their young charges. Noah was all of eleven and already Alison could see so clearly the streak of courtesy, of charm and kindness and ease with others that had so defined Peter in the eyes of the village. Indeed until his death Alison didn’t recall ever hearing anyone utter a bad word against him-

(Except once, what felt now like a hundred years ago but had been just after the rather intimidating sisters had first joined the WI and Joyce’s iron grip over the Christmas social had been forced to yield when Mrs Barden and her impressive wine cellar had offered to host and after a few large drinks – Frances had never done things by halves in her natural life – Alison had found herself in the garden with Sarah and been told in the tactless voice Sarah sometimes had that sounded like it came directly from Frances’ mouth that she had thought Peter a charming snake once and here he was letting Frances win over half the village on his behalf. A clever, charming snake – and she had never forgotten the venom in Sarah’s soft voice either.)

But now here he was in miniature, practically issuing invitations to the estate in his unassuming, childish way and Alison's fingers twitched as she beheld her oldest friend's unsettled face. She had never seen Frances look anything less than assured before this year – even the war hadn’t seemed to daunt her as much as the rest of them – but she had been cut asunder from all the things that had given her that surety, that clarity of belief in her own notions being the best was muddied, and for the first time ever Alison thought she looked frightened.

“Has he?” She asked pointlessly, but allowing Frances the time to re-sharpen.

“Yes, they’ve rather taken to each other at school according to Sarah – did you know she was working there again?” Frances asked, fingers entwining neatly before her in a habit Alison knew her mother had drilled into her to stop her fidgeting with them. She sounded almost conversational, almost like the Frances of old that wanted to tell her something witty but couldn’t reach through the layers of grief and hurt just yet.

“Yes Teresa did say.” Though the occupation of the vicar's wife had hardly been Teresa's chief concern of late.

Frances raised a casual eyebrow and caught the door when its occupant attempted to escape again, lips almost twitching this time at the tenacity.

“And how is Teresa? I don’t believe I’ve seen her since...”

“She’s fine. Settled back in. She’s wonderful with Charlotte – that’s not a problem is it? I know it was just me on the form you sent off but-”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, Alison. I hardly see how having a teacher in the house will effect things. I certainly haven’t told them that since Isobel came here quite a lot has... well, we’re not the same household we were.” Frances finished, the ambiguity needing no clarification.

“Right. Good. I’m sure she’d love to come over,” Charlotte did seem to be fond of Noah’s scarf at any rate and Alison doubted it was Sarah's command of knitting that was the appeal. “I’ll ask her shall I? And Teresa can tell Sarah at work and she can let you know.”

“Aren’t we all quite the domestic chain?” Frances said with a tight smile that Alison returned awkwardly though she did feel a bright spark of amusement. For four women who weren’t everything Joyce's old WI cronies would have thought right and proper in the domestic way - she had heard them whispering about her being reclusive ( such a shame she never had a child to console her) , Teresa might never live down leaving her handsome husband who would be elevated to heroic status if he was to be shot down or would linger as a reminder of what she had done if he was not; Frances, despite every expectation and Peter’s silently obvious disappointment, had failed to give him an heir to pass his overflow of success onto and Sarah, well frankly Alison had tasted her cooking and could only assume the vicar had a forgiving palette – but they didn’t seem to be doing too badly with the evacuees.

“I just thought...rather than me bothering you again...”

“ Alison ,” Frances said softly in her occasionally patient voice that resembled nothing if not Sarah's. “It’s still very...I’m not sure how-”

“It’s alright Frances, I understand.”

The door pulled again and Frances caught it a second later, her reflexes distracted, and Alison caught only the slightest hint of sharp eyebrows over a crimson cardigan before the vision was gone again.

“Alison-”

“Really, I do understand. I shouldn’t have come,” she muttered as she opened the door and stepped out into the chill.

“Alison,” Frances called to her, holding onto the doorframe with her delicately thin freckled hands that Alison had watched perform a million tasks but looked somehow amusingly like Charlotte's childish ones to her eyes now. “Next Monday Sarah is going to make an announcement about the nativity play so no doubt they’ll be excited – she can come after school so they can talk about it together.”

Afterwards Alison dwelled not on the thought of what kind of costume she would somehow have to make, or that she had heard the door to the sitting room open ominously without Frances to guard it and she had scurried away like a cowardly mouse escaping a sneering cat. No, afterwards she smiled at the thought that, however small, Frances had given her some foreknowledge for no other reason than she was wanted to.

“You shouldn’t have told her.”

“I can’t see why not,” Frances replied lightly, half-distracted by Alison's retreating figure. Everybody, it seemed sometimes, was moving further and further away from her all the time. First Peter, then Helen even – with whom she had shared a cordial friendship and had always, she recalled bitterly now, reminded her husband to be generous to at Christmas and upon her birthday – then the memory of what she’d thought her marriage to be. And now Alison...even if she had felt wounded enough at the time that her annexation of her friend from her immediate circle had felt justified. Now only Sarah remained. And Noah, she mentally added, still finding it difficult to accept the reality of him privately, even if she had come on strides on the outside.

Sarah loved him immensely though and that in itself was a blessing and a curse. It certainly had eased the transition but any thought of him returning to his grandparents, especially in light of the day’s news, seemed to drift as far away from her as any person she had lost.

“Because it was supposed to be a surprise for the children,” her sister replied, resting a hand on her shoulder in solidarity against anything Frances might need rallying against, as had become her habit. She allowed herself a small smile at the gesture, reaching up to wrap her fingers around Sarah’s as she closed the door slowly, feeling a perverse worry that closing it noisily would sound like a slam to Alison, even if she was half way down the drive by now.

“And it will be. Alison won’t telling anyone.”

Sarah let out a hollow, disbelieving laugh and folded her arms, eyebrow raised incredulously at the statement and Frances half-wished she had never told Sarah about Alison in the first place. The only fly in that particularly oily thought was the blunt fact that she told Sarah everything, from when they had been children and she had borrowed mother’s prized pearls – only for an afternoon, she’d had no intention of stealing them of course – and they had fallen in the pond and she had needed littler hands than hers to fish them from underneath the rockery, right up till a few months ago when she had sobbed angry tears in Sarah’s front step, still holding the revealing note from Peter to Helen in her shaking hands.

Of course she should have calculated that the long-standing wariness of Alison that Sarah possessed would have come roaring to the surface again, but it has been a trying time and Frances gave herself a concession. Because for reasons she had never fully grasped Sarah had always been a little standoffish with Alison – it really was the oddest thing though she had half-forgotten it over the years.

“She won’t. Alison’s hardly a chatterbox in company is she?” She asked with a similarly tart look, leading the way back into the sitting room.

Whatever the greater objection to Alison Scotlock was she had never fathomed – though Peter had once offered a few suggestions when he had been in a rare disagreeable mood and Sarah had been his loquacious subject – because she had taken to the quiet and unassuming Alison immediately. It had helped, all those many years ago, that it was before Mim and Erica and Pat had swelled their ranks, and before her sister had married, and she had immediately latched onto what felt like the only other young married woman in the village and they had bonded against the terminable harridans that had populated Great Paxford then. (The horrifying thought that she counted amongst them now had been considered, discussed with Sarah, and dismissed with laughter over sloshily poured cocktails two summers since.)

“You’re not thinking of trusting her again, surely?”

“It’s a school nativity Sarah, hardly the secrets of the Pharaoh’s.”

As her sister sulked for a moment Frances slumped into the sofa with a childish oomph she would have allowed no other to see. She didn’t feel like soothing hurt feelings over something so trivial – she barely felt like anything at all these days – but living with her sister again did mean that the wider village that she had tried to distance herself from so much did have a tendency to seep in. Thus it was that she had already agreed to contribute heavily to the church Christmas funds and even now Claire might be retrieving their mother’s good Singer from the attic in preparation for the costumes they would need for the nativity.

Really if she had known being the vicar’s wife included this amount of faff she would have changed her advice to Sarah in 1919 and told her to run for the hills from sympathetic, damaged Adam. The notion that Sarah might have had her pick had struck her many times over the years but she certainly didn’t feel in a position to throw stones at other people’s fragile glass houses.

“What are we going to tell Noah then?”

Frances took a deep breath as she considered the options. She also pondered distractedly when she and Sarah had become an entrenched we again – and if the reality was that despite their combined decades of marriage they had never actually stopped being a we at all. When she had thought of the future – and it was Frances' nature to do so frequently – she had imagined Peter retiring, perhaps selling the factory entirely, and the two of them spending their advancing years together, sometime abroad, sunning themselves like heathens and drinking cocktails on sun-drenched Spanish patios or strolling across picturesque Italian bridges, and sometimes here at home. They were already fond of entertaining but they might have become indulgently splendid at it – Peter might have gone into local politics. Or she might for that matter.

Of course none of that would happen now – the idea of local politics that extended beyond the WI was a notion she had not entirely abandoned, but she certainly didn’t have the energy to think about it right now – although oddly the real death knell for those plans had not been Peter’s actual death, but rather that they were the sort of adventures she had imagined as a girl and it had always been Sarah she meant to take. Peter had never possessed an enquiring bone in his body but at fourteen Sarah’s eyes and been full of wonder at the thought of the Arno, of the Alhambra, the palace of Knossos, the pyramids-

Oh dear lord the pyramids! She shouldn’t have mentioned Pharaoh’s. She had thought once that Sarah might never forgive her and Peter for honeymooning in Egypt and Adam’s resources had never been quite so abundant, especially just after they were married. But she had gone and Peter had talked about the future they would have ( and the children, she added bitterly) and it had felt jarringly at odds in this place of such history. She had brought Sarah more presents than Peter thought entirely reasonable but the sting had not been taken out of her accidental treachery, only enough of the poison sapped that Sarah had eventually gotten over it.

Secretly Frances was quite sure Sarah had never gotten over her decision to marry Peter although she considered it to her sister’s credit that any smug sense of being proven right about him had been utterly absent from their interactions of late.

“I’ll tell him that Charlotte is coming for tea on Monday and not to give away any more of your labour if you like?”

“Frances,” Sarah said with patient exasperation, falling equally gracelessly into the spot next to her and curling her legs under herself. “You know precisely what I mean.”

“I don’t see that there’s much we can tell him yet – not when we don’t actually know anything ourselves.”

“But the street-”

“Was bombed. The people who live there may have gotten to their shelters in time.”

“The papers are less optimistic than you.” Sarah muttered wryly, glancing at the built up fire on the other side of the room and blaming Peter, quite irrationally she knew, for the settee being so far away from its warmth. Mentally she added it to his list of crimes and momentarily moved on, shuffling closer to her sister in the hopes of getting warm. Frances was always warm. Even in the deepest pits of her despair sleeping next to her had always been like having a small furnace of your very own. Perhaps that explained Peter’s sitting room layout after all?

She wouldn’t give him the concession.

“Why wouldn’t you let me out of the room? I don’t want her to upset you again-”

“She won’t, she wouldn’t ,” Frances insisted, tilting her head where it rested on plush cushions towards Sarah, cutting her off before she could jump in with the head of steam Frances could practically see being bellowed to life. “And this is precisely why. You’ve been beastly you know? And she’s not me, she hasn’t had years to learn how to deflect your tongue when it strikes,” she smiled fondly despite her words, reaching blindly to find Sarah’s hand and threading their fingers together. “I know it’s only because you care.”

“I just...I wasn’t...” Sarah stumbled rarely, but when she did Frances could close her eyes and see her as a child who looked to her for every lead again and her heart swelled with affection. “She made you cry Frances,” she finally managed, aware even as she spoke how foolish it sounded.

“A great many things have made me cry lately Sarah, I don’t expect you’ve taken each and every one of them to task have you?”

I would, Sarah immediately and fiercely thought. One in particular who is bloody lucky he’s dead already.

Her tolerance for Peter had been a thin, fragile thing, held up almost entirely by the simple fact that he made Frances happy, a laughably easy task given Frances’ disposition in her opinion, but one she had thought him able to manage. There had even been a startling moment, about ten years ago now, when they had shared a conversation – albeit one at a party where spirits were already high and the drink flowed liberally – and she had afterwards realised that she didn’t entirely despise him. But now any softening had been stopped and aggressively solidified again.

(The fact that the conversation had been eleven years ago and had veered toward the charms of children and her fond anecdotes about their wonderful father had not escaped her newly clarified recollections.)

But even before Noah and the rest of Peter’s jackbooted secrets had emerged fully formed to trample on Frances' heart she had watched her proud, poised sister kneel in the dirt of his grave, like a humble supplicant, and Sarah had loathed him anew, wanted to dig him up, to make him live for Frances' sake.

“Some of them are a bit beyond my reach,” she said dryly, determined not to lie to Frances at all costs. She would not be like them and become the source of more sorrow.

“Do you mean Peter? Or Helen? Who is the mother, need I remind you, of the boy you are so very fond of.”

“Do you honestly think I’d ever say anything around Noah?” She asked aghast, pulling her hand away but not moving from her seat. “I am entitled to be angry on your behalf aren’t I? You would be, if it was me, you know you would.”

“You would never be the injured party,” Frances said fairly because under no circumstances could either of them imagine Adam seeking comfort with another woman. He already had an outlet after all.

Immediately Sarah’s insides froze with a chill that even Frances odd body heat wouldn’t have touched and she began to fret, not for the first time since Alison had alluded to it – she was sure that had been the intention of the sly dig but how on earth Alison knew she had no idea – that somehow Frances might find out about him . Joyce had her suspicions, as apparently did Steph though her looks might just as well be pity for a well-meaning stupid idea being put out to grass, Alison apparently had an idea and it was possible she had it from Joyce – but there was the other possibility of course. That Alison had it from Teresa and Nick had told his younger – much younger – new wife about the time had briefly flirted with the vicar’s wife.

She felt wretched and pathetic to think of it now. And it wasn’t even as though anything had happened had it? But Frances knew her better than anyone. Joyce might caution her for inadvertent moments of spontaneous laughter during a dance that may look unseemly to some parishioners but Frances knew the sort of men she used to look at, would know in an instant what the small part of her heart that was forever eighteen had wanted from Nick Lucas.

“The war changed him before,” she said in a small voice that she loathed the naturalness of. Frances took her hand again and she felt like a fraud. If Frances knew what she had entertained the thought of – however briefly, however much she had put it behind her now – she wasn’t sure she would blame her sister for being disgusted with her.

“It changes all of us whether we like it or not.”

Sarah smiled tightly and nodded at the frequently used sagacity. But the fact was it hadn’t changed her. Not really. Nick had just been the first person in decades to see her as the wife of a vicar, rather than a vicar’s wife – the distinction of which was a privately held certainty. She was fine with the former, but the latter she felt serviceable at best and yet people still said it. Her somehow holy goodness was entirely accidental: she organised church events because she had to, because it was required and she had inherited from their mother an eye for detail and was inadvertently good at it. But in maintaining Adam’s church she has also used it as a shelter for a deserter so what kind of caretaker was she? And when she had given her house to the Campbells so the village didn't lose them it had been seen as a self-sacrificial act of charity rather than the escape from memories it had actually been.

Frances’ house, despite everything, still held life and promise and she could breathe here.

“Not everything I hope?” She asked as she squeezed her sister’s hand tightly, wondering idly how many times they had sat like this in the last few months. How many more they would in the months to come.

“No, not everything,” Frances agreed emphatically, feeling another shaft of weak sunlight permeate the gloom that she had not been able to see a way through before. Now there were plenty of little partings were bright light shone through and Sarah took it as progress that perhaps there would come a time when Frances was the woman she had been again. Still, she opened her arms and was unsurprised when Frances immediately curled against her, eyes closed as she dwelled on sorrows Sarah would happily wrench from her and share if she could.

“Exactly how many costumes have I been drafted to make by the way?”

Not the worst sorrows though.

In the velvet dark of the bedroom she had spent twenty-five years being the lone inhabitant of Alison’s eyes were wide open as she contemplated the ceiling and consoled herself that she was likely not the only person in the village – or the country, for that matter – who was doing precisely the same thing. She only wished that she could blame her nocturnal wakefulness entirely upon the war.

It was partly that. She had lost many hours sleep in the last year lying awake listening for a siren to sound, riddled with the fear that she might not wake if it did ring out and she would be the only fool left in their beds when the bombs came, or full of anxiety simply waiting, ears straining to hear anything at all, jumping out of her skin whenever she heard foxes in the fields and their alarming shrieks put her on edge before they quieted, their tricks played. But lately it had not been the war at all and instead the unnerving sensation of having somebody else sleeping by her side again. Well again was something of an exaggeration really, given that she had been the only girl of a brood of older boys so had never been obliged to share when she was young and then when she’d eloped with George – at eighteen and without any experience to speak of she had, somehow, been less awkward than she had been the first night Teresa’s warm body had been conspicuously at her side – it had been barely a few months before he had gone to war and she’d lost him forever.

Four months, she reminded herself. Or at least just shy of four. Mid-April till early August. One hundred and fourteen nights. (Alison had tried, during her long nights of staring at the ceiling, to make the number sound somehow romantic. She had translated it into French and Latin and even worked out the number of hours spent lying next to him that it had amounted to, but one hundred and fourteen would never be a dramatic number, no matter how hard she tried.)

Teresa had been here eighteen nights. Not even three weeks yet but Alison knew without a shadow of a doubt that this woman would easily outlast George. To give him his dues he hadn’t been afforded a great deal of choice in the matter but still, Alison liked figures, drew comfort in them no matter their origin – even Frances’ questionable books had held their own morbid fascination for a time – and she had already mentally marked the fifth of March next year as being the milestone.

Would it be odd to tell Teresa? No doubt she would laugh, amused by the incidental detail and unsurprised that Alison’s brain had thought about it at all, but what would she say? Was there an appropriate response to realising you had shared a bed with your landlady more than your husband and vice versa?

“Alison?”

She jumped, startled out of her skin by the unexpected voice in the dark and her fingers dug into the covers as she tried not to show it. Dear lord, she was ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous .

“Alison?” Teresa said again, soft as summer rain to Alison’s ears. “Are you awake?”

She could say no. She should really, shouldn’t she? But why should she?

Before she could question her own impulses further – and drive herself deeper into the thorny depths of her sleep-deprived mind – Alison replied.

“Hmm.”

It was a silly question really. She was never asleep before Teresa was, something she reassured herself was due to the nature of their work. One became more physically tired standing before a classroom of children than they did doing nothing but sitting at a desk poring over ledgers all day after all, though if anybody had noticed the increasing dark circles under her eyes they had politely kept their observations to themselves and she felt rather irrationally worried that somebody might remember the layout of her house and deduce their arrangements. Which was likely the lack of sleep adding her mind.

“I forgot to tell you earlier,” Teresa said sleepily, as though they often had conversations about casual things in the middle of the night whilst so close Alison could still smell the faintest hint of toothpaste mingled with the lavender water Teresa used during the day. “They’re not hers.”

Alison frowned at the ceiling. Was she supposed to understand that? Had she missed something important earlier? Quickly accessing her mental catalogue she tried to recall the details of their conversations that evening but other than her desperately trying to hint over Charlotte’s head that she knew about the nativity play without giving it away – afterwards it had turned out Teresa did already know and had just thought she had some gossip from the WI meeting, although going from the look on her face Alison had assumed she thought she was having a fit – she could think of nothing specific.

“Erm…I beg your pardon?”

“Oh sorry,” Teresa yawned and turned onto her side and despite the dark Alison swore she could tell the exact moment eyes found her outline in the dark. “Charlotte’s glasses. She told me earlier on when you were out-” Alison tried not to take offence at that. “They’re her mother’s. She’s been wearing them to remember her by.”

“Remember her?” Alison whispered back, a hint of morbid curiousity seeping in. In her experience there was only one thing that necessitated having belongings to remember somebody by and it wasn’t good. “But there’s been no word from the islands, has there?”

“Alison!” Teresa exclaimed in almost comically hushed indignation. “I don’t think that really matters, does it?”

“I suppose not,” she said quietly. “At least it explains the squinting.”

“I don’t think she needs them at all. I told her I’ll find her a little case or something to carry them round in, one like yours, and then she won’t have to wear them but she can keep hold of them.”

Alison nodded at the proposition. It sounded a good one. It sounded like something she would not have handled with quite so much compassion or sense. She snickered.

“She’ll look even more like Frances without them.”

“I knew it wasn’t just me!” Teresa laughed, propped up on her elbow suddenly awake and despite the overwhelming dark Alison knew she was grinning. “I knew you were just pretending not to notice!”

Alison tried to smother a giggle, but gave up bothering when Teresa’s sweet gentle laughter suddenly seemed to fill the room, overwhelming the gloom and making Alison feel immediately lighter about everything. She had been rather precious about Frances of late, with good reason in her opinion, but perhaps it was time to take off that particular hair shirt? At least for one night, just to air her raw skin.

“I may have noticed a slight similarity.”

“Do you think Charlotte’ll be such a determined leader one day?” Teresa asked with mock-seriousness.

“She’ll need to cultivate a much more careless mouth first.”

Teresa giggled and Alison felt the press of long fingers against her arm, clutching to her bicep gently in admonishment.

“Stop it, you’re wicked.”

“You started it,” she replied, bending her arm to scratch an itch on her neck she hadn’t realised she had and accidentally trapping Teresa’s hand tight against her skin, where it warmed her chilly arm nicely.

“She’ll be lady of the manor one day I’m sure,” Teresa said merrily, no trace of malice in her voice but Alison remembered quite clearly, and with a sudden jolt of fond amusement, how wide Teresa’s eyes had been the first time Miss Fenchurch had been invited up to the estate with the rest of the WI ladies. She had huddled close to Alison, arms stiffly at her side as she glanced around as though worried she was going to break something simply by being there and she had confessed later with giddy amazement that she’d felt like she ought to have paid an entrance fee.

“Well, she’s already got a little Peter it seems.”

There was some irony, Alison thought in the bottomless aftermath of realising what she had said, and in the seconds before Teresa worked it out, that only moments ago she had been joking about somebody else’s big mouth. She wasn’t safe with trust - she knew that now and hoped to God Teresa wouldn’t hate her for knowing her secret - and this was why she had secluded herself away for so many years; she had never noticed it before now, how could she have done, but she really was hopeless.

“You mean Noah?”

Alison considered, idly and entirely pointlessly, trying to deny it but whispered revelations in the dark with Teresa didn’t feel like the same kind of betrayal, though the same twist in her gut told her that tomorrow she would probably think it had been and hate herself again.

“Yes,” she admitted in a quiet whisper, as though the damage could be alleviated by her lips barely passing the word.

“I did wonder,” Teresa said mildly, apparently without noticing that Alison felt like she was going to be sick at her own levels of idiotic treachery. “He looks like him.”

Alison nodded mutely, forgetting that she couldn’t be seen in the dark but Teresa felt her movements all the same. Her hand was still resting where it had lain.

“Was it that woman? The one that…in the car with him.”

“Yes,” Alison said. “At least I’d say so…”

And just as she had done before Alison let the story spill out. Except this one wasn’t hers to tell really, but she still felt the vile sensation of being the person that had unlocked the Pandora’s Box of heartbreak for Frances keenly enough, and Teresa was so understanding, hand finding hers in the dark, never letting go, just as she had promised.

“Crikey,” Teresa said afterwards, hand holding tight. “Do you think we’re all cursed maybe?”

“ Cursed? That’s a tad dramatic isn’t it?”

“An airplane crashed into my wedding day Alison, I think I’m entitled,” she replied, wry warmth in her voice that made Alison hold tighter to her hand. “Perhaps I should have taken it as an omen…”

“Teresa, if you ever wanted to tell me-”

“I might. Another night though,” Teresa’s hand moved in hers and Alison felt a curious stab of sorrow before long fingers laced through hers, only holding it tighter. “I will, I promise.”

She hadn’t asked. Not directly at any rate. Perhaps it would be better if Teresa didn’t tell her at all? Her record of secret-keeping wasn’t exactly going swimmingly.

Although everything of importance she had revealed, all the crannies of her locked away rooms with George and the still smarting deals with devils that had left her shame-faced and alone, had seemed less burdensome when she had told Teresa. And really she had only told Teresa so that barely counted did it? She would never shout her secrets from the rooftops of the church but had instead shared them with somebody with as many locks and barred windows as she had.

“I’d forgotten how much being here meant to me, y’know? In this house with you.”

Alison felt a curious sensation of prickling on the back of her neck and she lay still for a long moment as she tried to assess where a draught might be coming in. She tried to speak but it was harder than it had been a moment ago when they’d been giggling like girls or she had been relieving another burden, so instead she focussed on simply breathing.

Harder than it seemed – breathing.

Teresa’s confession felt like it was washing over her in waves, cresting in her stomach and chest but then troughing away as her brain insisted that she couldn’t acknowledge what Teresa had said - no matter how much she wanted to - because somehow it would be taken further away from her next time.

“Alison? Are you still with me?”

“Yes, sorry,” she snapped back, swallowing with difficulty given the dryness of her throat. “I am. Sorry, I was just…thinking about what you’d said. I’m glad you feel that way.”

“Good. I’m glad too.”

Soft dry lips touched the side of her cheek and were gone before Alison could breathe in enough air to do any of the five thousand things that were suddenly barrelling into her head, clamouring for attention, making old confusions suddenly line up like soldier ants – individually tiny things to be ignored and trampled on, but together an army of intent, a collective purpose behind every one – and like a puzzle she had finally fathomed the last clue of the answer was finally obvious to her.

“Goodnight Alison,” Teresa said as she shuffled down into the pillows again.

Oh bugger.

Chapter Text

Chapter Four: 23rd December, 1940.

Chaos did not even begin to cover it.

Everywhere Alison looked tinsel seemed to be moving at different speeds depending upon which child it was attached to, half-made baubles were bouncing around the room, some abandoned, some escaping, some simply part of a game; a cockney Mary and Joseph were already maritally divided by warrant of Joseph playing piggy in the middle with Herod and what appeared to be a half made Wiseman’s present, Mary’s lip wobbling in the middle precariously, whilst five sheep - or at least five small children in woolly gilets - were playing a game involving PVC glue and tissues and at the centre of it all Sarah and Frances were having an argument that, Alison quickly deduced, everyone from the smallest child to the most formidable adult, was wisely keeping out of.

Alison had arrived late but only, she checked her watch, by twenty minutes or so. Apparently a great deal could happen in that time.

“What’s going on?” She enquired of Joyce, who was calmly sitting on the side of the village hall with her knitting, overseeing proceedings like a twinkly-eyed Madame Defarge.

“Oh just children being children. I doubt it’s anything to concern ourselves unduly with,” Joyce said amiably, smiling quite bemusedly as she surveyed the room and Alison immediately knew that this was something Joyce was cataloguing away meticulously and every detail would likely be brought up again and again for years to come within their circle. Oddly, she found Joyce more comforting for her predictability. “In fact I think it’s rather heartening that they can still be quite so joyful even under the circumstances.”

“Hmmm,” Alison replied, wondering if Joyce was going to make her clarify the question, like a schoolteacher might, when it was quite clear which particular aspect required explaining. Children being excitable was hardly news though Alison was heartened to spot Charlotte sat with Noah, both behaving themselves admirably amongst the melee. “And Sarah and Frances?” She asked just to speed up proceedings.

“Ah, yes,” Joyce added with a blithe tone to her voice that conveyed her deep amusement at being proven right over a topic Alison was sure she had been nurturing for roughly three decades. “I have long thought that all children but two grow up.”

She shouldn’t laugh. But as though they had timed it Sarah threw a ball of wool at Frances’ back the moment it was turned and folded her arms petulantly as her sister took a long, quiet moment - the sort of eyes-closed, lips pressed together, fists-flexing moment that Alison recalled Frances having in the past when the former president had told her in no uncertain terms to sit down and shut up before she embarrassed herself - before Frances was all on again and stalking towards them gracefully.

Alison straightened her face just in time.

“Good evening Alison,” she said in a tight voice, hands clasped in front of her and Alison thought it best not to point out the pencil stored in her hair she had forgotten to remove or the pipe cleaner sticking to her sleeve.

“Good evening,” she said with a curious smile, eyes scanning the room. “Is everything going to plan?”

Joyce’s amused chortle and Frances’ silent sigh told her all she really needed to know.

“Sarah’s ability with organisation extends to floral arrangements with the verger and running the odd church bazaar-”

Personally Alison could think of one very obvious thing Sarah had been running all her life in one form or another but she wisely kept her mouth shut and tried not to catch Joyce’s eye.

“ And so I offered to take on a little more responsibility. Not take over exactly-”

“Perish the thought Mrs Barden,” Joyce quipped dryly as she concentrated on counting stitches, eyes studiously never leaving her work.

“But lighten the load and...well…”

Frances glanced back just in time to see Sarah plucking the wool from the ground and morosely rewrapping it as she dodged artfully through the hoard of children, coming to a stop by Noah and briefly pressing a hand to his shoulders, Charlotte peering up from the side with considerable more alertness now she was not encumbered by inappropriate lenses at all times. Noah offered only a miniscule, watery smile and Sarah moved back to the table, all but slumping over her own arms as she took a seat and picked at the fabric in front of her, glancing over to see if Frances was likely to come back soon.

“I suppose I might have been somewhat heavy-handed.”

“You, Mrs Barden?” Joyce said with the sort of inflection in her voice Alison thought should be reserved for people who had simultaneously received a fortune from an unknown uncle and been gifted three wishes from a jinn. “I’ve never heard such a thing in my life.”

Not leaving time for Frances’ rebuttal Joyce gathered up her knitting and got to her feet.

“If you’ll excuse me ladies. I do believe Mrs Wilson is having trouble with her bobbin.”

Bemused Alison watched her stride away purposefully, shaking her head in fond bafflement.

“She doesn’t disappoint, does she?”

Frances smiled idly as she too watched their former leader take a seat opposite Claire, who looked as though she was waiting to be struck by lightening any moment now. Alison stood awkwardly, arms folded tightly across her chest as she tried not to look too obviously at Frances.

“How’re things?”

“Things aren’t...there’s been a bit of a change in our circumstances.”

“Oh?” Alison asked, genuine concern marring her voice as she processed the jolt of surprise that Frances had confided in her anew.. She could assume it was to do with Noah, as the simple polite charm and eager infectious enthusiasm for life the boy exhibited in spades had been rather missing of late, and she had been quietly wondering if he was about to return home and simply miserable at the thought of leaving behind friends.

“Noah’s grandparents were caught in the blast last month. The one in Liverpool, you remember?”

“Oh god, how awful,” Alison replied with a grimace, all suspicions smashed, glancing towards where the now quite obviously morose boy sat quietly next to Charlotte. How on earth had she not noticed how withdrawn he was before? “That poor boy.”

“As if he hasn’t lost enough you mean?”

“Hasn’t he?” Alison asked mildly, eyes flickering between the children and Frances, treading carefully. Noah and Charlotte had become friends and visited each other occasionally, which was all very well and good when one was eleven but did rather force Alison and Frances into interactions that, thus far, had been perfectly cordial. But cordial was becoming tiresome - Frances, she knew, was only cordial with people that bored her but were necessary evils - and she would not remain one of those. “It’s curious how little you appreciate how much you have until it’s gone.”

“Quite.”

“Will he stay with you now?” She reached up to unpin her hat as they began to cross the room to where the long meeting table had been turned into an impromptu seamstresses; Alison had already resigned herself to at least being semi-useful for this event and was rather surprised her offer had been accepted given who was ruling over it all. “Permanently I mean.”

“I don’t know. It seems like years pass in months during wartime so perhaps Noah is more settled than I believe him to be.”

“Of course. I can’t begin to imagine-”

“Sarah thinks it’s fate,” Frances cut her off and Alison made a note not to bother with platitudes again.

“She never struck me as the sort to believe in such things before.”

“Oh she’s become quite the philosopher since Adam was imprisoned,” Frances said with a fond roll of her eyes and a smile as they took seats, Alison mildly surprised to see Frances had walked them to her own little station. “I suppose the beauty of being an agnostic vicar’s wife is you can put both arguments forth as they suit you.”

Alison laughed awkwardly, not wanting to push her luck, knowing Frances’ mirth was loving and deep and her own might come across as cutting.

“Are you coming along later by the way?” Frances asked casually, picking up a length of green felt that Alison suspected was either a Christmas tree or an off-colour crown. The question startled her out of the her wondering - it was a tree, it had to be, not even Frances would put that amount of orning on a crown - and Alison stumbled, blushing embarrassingly as she tried to recall whether there was something she ought to remember.

Of course she knew what was happening later - but she had hardly thought-

“Well, I’ve counted you and Teresa in all the same - I even had Claire search the cellar for the remains of that brandy you and I drank at that Beetle Drive? Do you remember?” Frances asked, entirely rhetorically because Alison was sure she still had the headache buried somewhere deep inside her so it was difficult to forget. “See if we can resurrect Joyce’s indignation.”

“I doubt she has the energy for it anymore,” Alison replied wryly, momentarily lost in reminiscence of Frances’ determination to rile the older woman yielding overwhelmingly successful results. She had oft suspected that Joyce had never quite forgiven her for her momentary lapse in decorum, though she at least had not constructed a beetle with an argyle pattern extremely reminiscent of Mrs Cameron’s preferred style at the time.

Frances’ amused laughter cut through her, both painful and joyous to her heart and she recalled, with the newfound clarity that had been her constant companion for the last month, the small battalion of insignificant moments with Frances that together formed an underlying whole that made a great deal more sense to her now than they had at the time. She smiled fondly, tentatively, waiting for Frances to lead the conversation as she usually did, half-wishing she could tell her about the peculiar discoveries she had made about herself recently but knowing she never would.

No, there was somebody much more pressing who needed to know first.

“I’m sure she’ll muster strength from somewhere if we give her enough cause. You will come won’t you?” Frances asked again, eyes down as she carefully smoothed her hands over the material, barely seeing it but clinging to it all the same as her voice went low but remained as practical as she always was. “I’d like you to come.”

Alison could have cried but instead she rested her arms on the table, fingers laced together as she leant forwards with hunched shoulders and nodded.

“Of course.”

“And Charlotte can stay over too if you’d like? She cheers Noah up so I’d appreciate it.”

“Well-” Alison stumbled, a sudden thrill shooting through her that had a better grasp on now, but still made her feel hot and cold inside at the same time, like the dam holding back her anticipation had finally been unleashed at all the half-thought confessions and stumbling words she had practiced in the last month were finally coming together and making her feel what they might mean. She clenched her fingers together to keep her hands from shaking. “Well, if it makes him feel better I suppose I can hardly object.”

“You don’t mind?”

“They’ll have separate rooms won’t they?”

“It depends where they fall asleep,” Frances said unconcerned. “I’ve found Noah in the shelter three or four times now.”

“But...together?”

Frances laughed again and the glass seemed to shatter before Alison’s very eyes as blue eyes found her amusingly absurd again and she noticed for the first time that Frances wasn’t wearing anything black at all.

“They’re eleven Alison, I don’t think we’ll need to call the banns just yet.”

“I didn’t know Erica could play the piano!”

“No, I could have done with a bit of warning myself.”

“Alison!”

“Shhh,” she insisted with a swift glance over her shoulders as they made their way down the lane away from Frances’ house, paying exceptionally careful attention to where they were stepping despite the entirely flat driveway and laughing like demons as they went. They were far from the only ones. Frances never disappointed when it came to hosting, even in wartime, and Alison could see the Campbells several dozen stumbles behind them, absolutely none the wiser that they were being spoken about given they were happily chatting with Spencer. “Oh nevermind.”

“She wasn’t that bad.”

Alison raised an eyebrow in exaggerated disbelief, an entirely unnecessary facial movement as Teresa was clinging to her arm so tightly they were practically joined at the hip and she would have been able to see even the slightest twitch of Alison’s features.

“She wasn’t!”

“I rather think she was though and you’re just too lovely to say so.”

Teresa grinned, laughter rumbling in her chest as she looked over her shoulder too before lowering her voice to almost cartoonish levels. “I think she’d have been a bit better if Will hadn’t been rubbing her shoulders quite so much.”

Alison laughed and had a brief, warm moment of enjoying the post-drinking haze where everybody was less formal with names. Even Joyce had yielded after a sherry or two.  

“Yes, I’m amazed they stayed as long as we did really,” she said wryly as they turned onto the main road, glancing over her shoulder again to check they were alone. “I rather suspect Frances was worried they might take over a spare room.”

Teresa guffawed loudly into the night and Alison knew she should shush her for the sake of Miss Fenchurch’s reputation with the rest of the village - the section that were not part of Mrs Barden’s inner circle, she mentally added with satisfied glee - but everyone was either tucked up in their beds or stuck into their own celebrations so it scarcely seemed to matter. The stillness of the cold night made her feel uncommonly bold and she reached up her hand to rub at the back of Teresa’s with electric idleness, sensing the moment that Teresa twisted her hand and letting their fingers twine together between them.

Neither of them spoke as Teresa’s giggles subsided; Alison felt as though every part of her body was shivering with flushed heat and she thought it would be a miracle if Teresa couldn’t feel her shaking. They walked silently for a few more paces as the quiet of the night suddenly felt strangely mystical to Alison, the black-out curtains shutting everybody else away and the absolute lack of light making it seem as though they were the only two in the world still awake, still with words that needed saying, though each time Alison thought she might have caught hold of the right thing to say it slipped away just as quickly, dying like a star on her lips.

“Teresa-”

“Goodnight, goodnight!”

Alison started for a second and replied to the calls from the doctor and his wife only from instinct, her voice sounded distant and distracted even to her own ears, before the quiet settled back over her and Teresa, rather less tense but still present after they were left alone again. Oh dear lord, she was getting this so very wrong! This wasn’t at all what she had wanted to do, how she had wanted any of this to come about - she knew now that it had to be said, for both their sakes - although she gave herself a slight concession that she hadn’t expected to have drunk several Snowballs and chased them away with a healthy dose of Frances’ long-stored favourite brandy.

It still tasted like summer and reminded her forcibly of Frances rolling her eyes at the ‘ boring bourgeois’ as she had dubbed them, entirely ignoring that her father was a councillor and Alison’s a lecturer, and getting them into the most entertaining trouble. She had...yes, Alison rather thought she might have...but Frances, and what she had felt once, were a locked off part of her now, not forgotten nor ignored or anything she wished to distance herself from, simply part of the past.

Teresa was not locked off. Teresa could never be shut up in her heart, a pleasant thought of once to be mulled over and brought out when she was feeling morose and lonely. Teresa’s hand was in hers and they were alone and Alison knew what she wanted to do, and simply that she wanted .

“We’re almost home,” she said, just to fill the silence.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am that this is home again,” Teresa said in a quiet, almost reverential voice. “I know I was only gone for a few months but it felt like forever.”

Alison didn’t disagree.

Once inside, and after a brief moment where they lapsed into giggles again trying to calm Boris back into his bed - Teresa achieved it and Alison watched mesmerised as long, deft fingers stroked his fur calmly and Teresa’s soft voice cooed to him - they blindly made their way in the dark upstairs, clinging to bannisters as they went for fear of falling.

“Candles or lights?”

“Candles,” Teresa said definitively, eyes not feeling up to adjusting to brighter light. There was also, Alison could feel too, the sense that the dim light of candles would be more appropriate for the quiet, still night that still engulfed them, though she had only a hazy idea of why. She struck the match and carefully paced around the room, creating a warm glow that turned her shabby but well-loved furniture into something vaguely gothic and certainly quite Victorian.

When she distractedly voiced the thought Teresa laughed sweetly from where she sat on her side of the bed taking her shoes off.

“ Victorian? ”

“Well, we all are really aren’t we? Technical Victorians.”

“Is that the second commandment for the ‘only technical’ club? “Thou must be a spinster Victorian”?”

“Well, technically that’s two ,” Alison replied playfully, taking off her cardigan and blouse in one economical maneuver.

“Well,   technically I’m neither am I? Spinster. Victorian.”

“Ah yes, well you get a special dispensation even if you are an twentieth century youth.”

Happily laughing, tensions temporarily lessened though still simmering, they prepared for bed and Alison thought an observer might think it a perfectly normal night - though in forty one nights she now couldn’t recall a single one where her heart hadn’t been beating somewhere in the region of her stomach as it was now - except she felt strangely like she was flowing through warm, soft water. A gentle tide was moving her towards Teresa and she felt simultaneously dream-like and starkly aware of every flutter of clothes being tossed haphazardly into a pile for tomorrow to deal with.

She slipped into her side of the bed and the cool sheets immediately made her come out in goosepimples...or had she already had them and not noticed?

“God, it’s freezing!” Teresa half-whispered and Alison felt an odd pang that Teresa might have forgotten Charlotte was not on the other side of the thin wall tonight.

“Get in quickly then.”

Doing as she was told Teresa slid between the covers with a brief waft of cold air and orange blossom perfume that made Alison’s head feel dizzy. She didn’t think she had ever felt quite so disorientated whilst lying down and as quickly as she could she found Teresa’s hand - it wasn’t a hard, drawn-out search, Teresa seemed to have been anticipating her. Turning onto her side Alison felt for a moment like the last remaining remnant of air in her lungs was being squeezed out and she spared a moment to silently congratulate her own instincts that had kept her from blowing the candles out. Teresa glowed, eyes wide and terrified, cheeks still flushed from the cold. Alison squeezed her hand.

“Alison, what are we doing?”

“Well,” she said deliberately, a lump in her throat that Alison knew would never go away unless she took a very particular kind of medicine. “I rather think we’re going to bed.”

“I meant-”

“I know what you meant Teresa. And I think...I…” she swallowed and it felt like her airway was the size of a button. “I hope ...that I still mean the same thing.”

“Alison-”

Clumsily Alison leaned forwards and pressed their lips together deliberately, feeling utterly incapable of expressing herself with words any more and instead letting a long-dormant impulse save them both from dancing around each other. Her instincts were dulled by the years but Teresa held tight to her hand, gently guiding her lips into a slow, indulgent rhythm that allowed Alison the time to lose herself in the smell of perfume and the taste of gin mixed with the tang of lemons.

The shadows of the world, as they rarely had for Alison, seemed overcome by a warmer glow and she knew it hadn’t happened suddenly. Teresa had been slowly making them edge away for longer than had realised until they were little more than distant things held at bay - all the horrors in the world, she knew, could not be solved by this uncompromising love, but they were more bearably managed and she felt as though she was finally emerging from her exile into the dark.

“Alison,” Teresa broke the kiss, lips swollen and eyes dark, hair wrapped around her jaw haphazardly. “You’re not drunk are you?”

“No,” she said with a small soft laugh. “Well, yes obviously, but not out of my senses just yet I can assure you.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel like you have to because I’m-”

“Teresa,” she cut her off with fondness coursing through her every vein. Except it wasn’t just fondness. She was fond of Agatha Christie novels and card games: she loved Teresa. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t want to.”

“Are you sure ?” Teresa replied emphatically, eyes sparkling with trembling hope. “You’ve got a track record…”

“Teresa!” She said indignantly, but immediately smiling when Teresa wrapped arms around her stomach, laughing happily.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I couldn’t resist,” Teresa dropped a gentle kiss onto her shoulder and Alison cursed the winter for putting a barrier of cotton between her skin and Teresa’s lips. “Sorry.”

“I should think so too.”

The tension, which had coiled and twisted in both of them and Alison felt giddy that they might one day laugh about, seemed to fade away and she felt lightheaded with happiness. And, to be honest, sheer bloody relief.

“I am sure Teresa. Truly.” Her brow furrowed slightly as a possibility occurred to her. “Are you?”

“Yes!” Teresa lifted her head, rolling her eyes with fond exasperation. “Of course I am.”

Alison breathed another, slightly lesser, sigh of relief. In the last few weeks, when she had thought about this over and over again, it had occurred to her that a stumbling block might be that Teresa might not feel the same. It was hardly set in stone that just because she preferred women she would want her , after all, although the thought that there might have been woman other than Connie hadn’t struck her until the early days of Teresa’s courtship with Nick when Teresa had said as much. But it had been another cloying thought that had played on her mind and led her to dissect their every interaction until she had been unable to ignore the truth of Teresa’s looks.

As if she could read her mind Teresa leaned in to kiss her again, leading this time and Alison was glad for it as her mind was altogether too full of drink, elation and a still lingering sense of fear of the unknown for her to think of what to do next. Teresa’s lips were knowing and perfect though, soft and subtle against hers and she barely thought of the comparison between this and George - George was a distant memory anyway, she remembered his death more than the man himself - and when she gently parted their lips Alison followed her lead willingly, if not gracefully.

“Teresa-”

“Hmm,” she replied, not bothering to move her lips away.

“I think we should stop.”

Before the panic in Teresa’s eyes could reach it’s full potential Alison wrapped her arms around her.

“No, I don’t mean…” she laughed self-deprecatingly. “I want to remember things and I suspect I might fall asleep if we carry on.”

It seemed a long moment between her speaking and Teresa blinking, a moment in which Alison cursed her own stupid mouth and body for being so knackered, but finally Teresa’s face broke into a joyous smile.

“Oh thank god,” she laughed gently, resting her forehead against Alison’s shoulder. “I thought I’d scared you off already.”

“Not likely,” Alison drawled, reaching up to stroke the stray hair from Teresa’s face. “I’m certainly not going to stop now.”

“Do you think you can hold onto your bravery till tomorrow?” Teresa murmured happily against her collar as she curled against her, breath soft and light and above all else warm against Alison’s skin. She felt a small tremor go through her body and wished brandy wasn’t making her lazy.

“I expect I’ll manage.”

“Shall I put out the candles?”

“No,” Alison said, eyes half-closed and full of amber glows and midnight hair. “Stay right here.”