Anne cannot remember when her parents fell ill with scarlet fever, yet she knows that somehow it's a good thing they did. They tell her often that their recovery filled them with such joie de vivre and gladness to be alive that they indulged her with renewed vigour - they pored over books with her when she was just three, took her to the sea when she wanted, bought her ice cream, and they know that this was the best thing for all three of them.

Now five of them, little four year old Anne thinks, looking at her little brother and sister Alexander and Cordelia (her idea, mummy, daddy, I can't let you curse another child with such a dull name as Anne) lying swaddled in their tiny wicker cot on the worn and well loved carpet of their quaint Bolingbroke front room. The light gently stretches its warm fingers through the lace curtains hanging at the frost-tinted windows that are gloriously warped with age, so Anne turns to Katie Morris in them and tells her who these slumbering creatures are, hair red and curly as Anne's and Walter's.

It's the last time she talks to Katie - she's not starved for company her age anymore. Besides, Mummy and Daddy were the best friends she ever needed anyway, so she bids goodbye to Katie without a care in the world.

Later that day, Walter snatches Anne up from where she stares in raptures at the children - they left her with them for a few minutes so Bertha could rest, she's so talented with children - he tickles her, carrying her up the stairs, flung over his shoulder 'like a potato sack'. He unceremoniously yet carefully drops her on the bed, both giggling like mad, before leaving to pick up the twins. Anne crawls up to a pale but ecstatic Bertha and nuzzles her neck. Both grin. 'I love you, my darling. I love you like mad. I wanted you to know that you'll never be repla-'

Anne shuts her off with a mature look and a finger to her mother's lips, a surprisingly mature smile playing at her own. 'I know. I'm so happy too, mummy. I love everyone in this house so much!' She's suddenly shouting exuberantly, flinging her arms about as her father comes in the door, cradling the rest of their little family.

...

Before Anne starts school, Walter and Bertha make the decision to move somewhere a little more picturesque for their romantic minded child and for their twins to grow up. They're around 4 months old now; Anne will be starting school in 5 months, September time. She's 5 now, looking desperately forward to other children, rather than just her caterwauling siblings (though she loves them). They go out a lot to teach her about the world - but this has the side effect of her having no real attachments to the children near her.

It's about this time when Walter gets a job offer from a little town called Avonlea on PEI, a friend from Redmond having moved back home to work on the Carmody Board of Education. 'My friend,' he says in his latest letter, 'I think I have just the post you are looking for.'

Walter and Bertha Shirley, self-renowned explorers of this life given miraculously back to them, grab this opportunity with both hands.

Little Anne is ecstatic. 'Think, mummy, of all the trees growing out of that crimson soil and sprouting their silver branches over the mayflowers in the hollows!' Walter and Bertha have encouraged this imagination and precociousness, and share her joy deeply.

Two weeks later, they say farewell to their little house o'dreams, and board the ferry to Prince Edward Island.

...

The island shimmers like a beacon, rising up from the spangled horizon, water-twisted and beckoning. The sea is blue below the ship, the pathway cutting through the ebb and flow of the waves. As they dock and hurriedly board the train to Bright River, they barely have time to feel the warm red earth beneath their toes, and little Anne's frustration is palpable as they steam along the fields and canopies of trees. Walter knows his girl, however, and has read up on PEI so he can answer the burning questions that are inevitably held in her shimmering grey eyes.

'Daddy? Why is the soil red?'

'A higher presence of iron, darling.' He smiles gently at his wife, caught contentedly in the liminal zone between daydreaming and sleeping, a smile curling at her lips, a hand on the baby carriage. She smiles back, face bathed by the sun and dappled by the shade flashing jubilantly by the windows of the train. Anne quietens for a moment, and all three bask in the beauty of their new home, before Anne starts chattering quietly again.

...

The train draws in at Bright River; their things will arrive tomorrow in a cargo train, but there isn't much. Walter and Bertha aren't particularly materialistic - they have books, a few old heirlooms, but, 'poor as church mice', they sold most of their furniture to pay for the passage over here. They stay the night at the Bright River inn to wait for the crates, telling stories and singing each other to sleep in the breezy dusk of April. When they wake the next day, they find the crates already loaded for them by a kind old man who they had spoken to the night before; he says their love and their children were so beautiful he wanted to do something nice-he saw how tired they were. Anne says, 'am I beautiful even with my red hair?' and the man replies 'I never saw such intelligence shining from such fine eyes.' Walter and Bertha smile; being clever is better than being pretty, after all, but one comment from a particularly mean boy and Anne has never liked her hair. She doesn't seem to know, as her parents do, that he says her cleverness is imbuing her face with a glow that is rarely found in children.

The cart they have rented and the old man has loaded has a map placed inside a small box in the footwell; Bertha and Walter follow it quite well before Bertha becomes too effusive about the orchard she espies over a low, loose brick wall, where they stop off for lunch. The twins were still asleep, the rocking of the carriage lulling them into slumber, so Bertha lovingly wakes and feeds them as Walter teaches Anne more about the island.

Back on the road, there are very few scrapes as Anne has promised to be on her best behaviour, but the whoops of delight at seeing a gull or a chicken cause a few thrills of fear through her parents as she teeters on the edge of the cart. But that is just Anne-and she never makes the same mistake twice.

It is dusk when they arrive in Avonlea, what with their many stops and inquisitive detours, but when they arrive they find, in the square, a small welcome party for them, commandeered by a Mrs Rachel Lynde, who is generous to a fault but very prying, which the Shirleys write off as amusing. They came here to live, not to censure. Mrs Lynde guides them to the teacher's house, off from the main town by a little road, very near the woods. When they arrive, an austere, sharp, grey woman is waiting for them by the gate, with a little parcel clutched in her hands.

'That there is Miss Marilla Cuthbert. She lives with her brother Matthew at Green Gables, thataway.' Marilla turns to greet them with a smile. They notice that it is rarely used-but it transforms her face into something beautiful. A kindred spirit indeed, they think, as she thrusts her preserves and a small cake at them. 'I apologise for not being at the party. I...don't always like to participate in town events like these. I would prefer to get to know you more personally...if that is agreeable to you, of course...'

Walter and Bertha enthusiastically nod, catch a brief hint of a grin as she clears her throat, looks away. 'Right. Well. Best be off then...'

And with that they turn, cradling their children, and step over the threshold into their new home.