Here's the next instalment, which is sort of Chapter 15, Part 2. [It also goes on a bit - sorry. As with Chapter 15, I'm nervous about posting these two chapters.] As always, thank you to everyone: the people who've reviewed and kept on reviewing time and again, the people who are following it, the people who have 'favourited' [OK - not a word, I know!] it and to everyone who is reading it. I know it's been months since Series Two finished here in Australia and even longer elsewhere and the fact that people are still reading this, when it is taking months to get finished, is really amazing. Thank you! x

"Morning."

"Greetings, Dr. Turner."

He was already smiling, lounging back in his office chair, before she finished the distinctive roll at the start of the first syllable. "Hello, Shelagh."

"Fred's finished it."

"Really?"

"Yes." Her voice was low and excited, the wellspring of fun which had been thwarted for the previous three days bubbling once more. "He just showed me."

"And it will do, you think?"

"I think it'll be perfect. It's a wee bit big at the moment."

"He'll grow into it."

"That's what I thought." He imagined her, nodding with her eyes widening and her lips set. "Patrick, about how to get it to yours without Timothy finding out – could I take it there? Then there'd be no worry about it being in the car when you might have to rush from a call to picking him up."

"You can't possibly," he said hastily. "I can collect it this evening when Timothy's at Cubs."

"What if he saw it? I don't mind delivering it. I'd like to."

Patrick started fiddling with the cord of the telephone, frowning as he processed the suggestion. "But how would – " he began, before suddenly chuckling. "You mean ride it home, don't you?"

"Well, yes," she replied begrudgingly.

"You're a bit big, aren't you?" The comment slipped from his lips before he realised the insult which could be construed and scrambled to retract it. "I don't mean to suggest – "

There was something liberating in her laughter. "It's rather nice to be told I'm too big for something, even if it is a child's bicycle! It doesn't happen much! I'm sure I'll be fine, Patrick."

It was instinct to say 'no', dreading the thought of her rattling over cobbles and gulping in the grubby air; trying not to imagine that air solidifying into the same filthy blanket which had hung over them for the past three days, in which she would be hidden and obscured, so easy to smash. He heard her bright confidence and behind the wheedling, a note in the voice made him certain she had already tried the bicycle, that while Fred was showing her repairs, she had checked them by cycling in neat circles around the entrance to Nonnatus House. Braving the crush, though, would be different. Yet she was not his to command; it was unease, not logic, motivating him. With a small sigh, he conceded. "Is there a particular time you had in mind?"

"This afternoon? I could easily get there and still be back in time for Timothy coming for tea."

"No!" It was more abrupt than he had intended and he paused awkwardly, twisting the cord more tightly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound like that, but would you mind very much not going then?" he asked.

"Of course." Despite the crackling line, he heard her muted confusion.

"It's just there's something being delivered this afternoon and I'm not sure when."

"I see," she said quietly. "No, I understand. Mrs. Harrison'll be busy. She won't want anyone else bothering round. Perhaps later on."

"It's not that, Shelagh, not at all," he interrupted, secrecy less important than that she understood. "What's being delivered is for you. From me. The groom's present to the bride."

"Oh," she said, less a word than an exhalation.

"I'd just like to be able to show it to you myself first, if you don't mind."

"I'd prefer you to, Patrick." The bewilderment now was a modest disbelief. "Maybe I could go to yours this evening after Timothy's gone to Cubs and you've finished your calls, rather than you coming to visit me. It would be nice to be there."

The greatest eloquence was what she did not say. They had had their lunch on Tuesday, snatched between rounds and the clinic, yet as they shared the mundane gems of their day and planned to meet that evening, the low clouds of the long expected smog began their toxic roll into every corner of Poplar. From then until it started to disperse this morning, she had been trapped within Nonnatus House, their short trysts amid its structured disarray and constantly watching eyes. An evening, an hour, with no fear of interruption was a glorious prospect; and while he would have preferred to pick her up, albeit to whisk her away immediately, bypassing the danger of being drawn into an earnest professional discussion with colleagues there while time drifted away made it more lovely. Suppressing his last misgivings, he agreed, even to her cycling there, wondering how long it might take until she thought of 'ours', not 'yours' and if he could ever make her speak of 'home'.

It had barely registered against the nightmare smogs of earlier years, yet the cloud had pervaded every street, drenching houses, pavements, side streets and thoroughfares with filth and lethargy. People themselves seemed to stick in the air, tethered by the enervating haze; children long accustomed to playing and babbling in the streets were crammed into tiny rooms to antagonise and fight; living itself became tougher in the battle through the murk.

For Shelagh, uncalled for by patients and begged to stay indoors, its cool disorder was felt in uneasy undercurrents. Throughout Nonnatus House a breathing exhaustion sucked goodwill from nurses fighting worry and fatigue to make the longer, more precarious journeys to bedsides. It heightened nerves and sharpened words. As though infected by the weather, every aspect of life was tarnished. A cutting remark from Trixie to Jenny erupted into an argument. Rachel Simpson followed up a case which concerned her, only to find something even more putrid than she had anticipated at its heart. Chummy received a letter which disturbed her, but which she would only discuss with Peter.

Her solace was Patrick and Timothy, Timothy appearing every afternoon, more than happy to obey his father by waiting at Nonnatus House until he could be picked up or go straight to pantomime rehearsals rather than venturing home then out once more. He quickly adapted, enlisting the assistance of any and all in revising for his tests, repaying them with accounts of school or by announcing that he thought he had got a merit in his violin exam, as he had taken a surreptitious upside down peek at the marks sheet while he chattered to the examiner at the end. Patrick visited every evening, often tense and always tired, but grateful, loving and assiduous that these short period were theirs, not the practice's or the community's. But when they were absent, anxiety was her commonest companion and she fretted whenever she knew his car was prowling uncertainly through the gloom.

Of all the residents, however, it was Sister Monica Joan who felt the sickness of the weather the most, finding something invisible to the others in its brutal whimsy. Like the confusion of mist, her mind clouded and unclouded, cruel and pitiful in her capriciousness. She needled her sisters, at first too clever to be unconscious, then in pockets of oblivious absence. Grasping at fragments, she demanded to visit a patient in a street which had obliterated by the first wave of the Blitz, haughty in her insistence that an appointment was booked and she had delivered an older child the previous year, petulant when Sister Julienne remonstrated with her; then, minutes later, lucid when Cynthia spoke of a case which needed referring for surgery; finally, lost and blank, staring at the knitting placed in her hands by Jane as though it was incomprehensible. Again and again she returned to the topic of the demolition. "They're turning me from my home, you know! They are throwing me among the wolves!" she whined. "'I wander thro' each charter'd street Near where the charter'd Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.'" Again and again they tried to reassure her, attempting to distract her with oddments and petting, then hearing the bitter recrimination of a mind momentarily reconstructed, weary in the knowledge of one who feared she had lived too long, "Do not mock me with trinkets for children."

She took to wandering the house by night, a troubled, beautiful ghost in her pale nightgown with the silver hair loose. On the Wednesday night, Shelagh, returning from washing her own hair, found her at the top of the stairs, fingering the leaves of a budding hyacinth.

"Sister? You must be perishing, Sister! Let's be getting you back to bed."

As Shelagh touched her, Sister Monica Joan stared. A white towel was wound around Shelagh's head and in the shadowy light of the corridor, the dark dressing gown she wore over her winceyette nightie could so easily appear the same colour as the navy blue ones belonging to the Order. It was these that the old lady's eyes searched, then moving to Shelagh's face uncertainly. "You are someone who was, are you not?"

Although she tried not to show it, Shelagh's distress was bitter. Since she had returned from Scotland, Sister Monica Joan had often called her 'Sister', but sometimes nothing, smiling vaguely as at an acquaintance. She suspected she did not always know her. The next day left no question. When Shelagh leant towards her to comfort the old lady in her querulousness and terror, she shrank back, snatching her hand away. "Why are you talking to me? Who are you?"

"I'm Shelagh," she replied, feeling the comment as though she had been struck, certain that who she was and what she had been was too complex for the fraying mind. "Dr. Turner's fiancée," she added. Sister Monica Joan recognised him, beaming when he visited and scolding him for his love of rotting matter, and accepted that connection as sufficient to explain Shelagh's presence while Shelagh disguised her hurt.

Yet a darker truth unsettled her more: she did not know herself what 'Shelagh' meant any longer. She had found a role in the days of the smog: the practical, smiling voice of concord, comforting and advising as desired. Calming Jenny and Trixie was not new to her, while she was accustomed to counselling colleagues and quietly listened as Rachel Simpson struggled with the horrors she had outlined to the police, all she had seen and what it might mean. She did not pry into Chummy's uneasiness, instead simply cared for Freddie so Chummy could rest or unobtrusively completed ironing while she did. But the role had stultified her. It was with a desperate need to unleash pent up energy that she pushed down the pedals of the little bicycle shortly after six o'clock, feeling it gathering in speed as she rode down the slope towards All Saints Road. In previous years she had found private release from domestic disharmony in her work and its bursts of adrenalin, heady instances where her brain was a fine membrane flexed by her to master professional puzzles, and her exercised body knew itself alive in its vigour; or in slow breathed meditations where she wrapped herself in silence, finding peace in communion with God alongside her kin. With neither comfort, sitting and waiting in Nonnatus House had been like a great weight heavily dragging her back to the weeks in the sanatorium. Passing the hall where Timothy was starting to rehearse, unaware his Christmas present was being displayed to the world, she felt the quickening of her blood as it drove into muscles and tendons roused again from torpor.

It was dark and cold, the grey gabardine she was wearing not wholly adequate to keep the chill at bay, but each pedal stroke or deeply drawn breath warmed her with her own vitality and freedom while the foetid stink of oil, sweat and water suddenly slapping at her nostrils as she took a particular short-cut had the abrasiveness of smelling salts. They blew away mustiness so she saw all the elements which defined her: the coat was a nurse's, loaned from the supplies of the religious order which she loved and honoured as family, strapped on the back of the bicycle was a bag borrowed from Cynthia, containing her smarter, prettier shoes, her handbag and a neatly wrapped parcel for the man she was travelling to see, her fiancé, and at his house they would listen and share, confide and be confided in as they held one another. Each part was a part of her, cautiously moving towards each other, but at the moment borrowed, loaned, patched and impermanent; and even together still so much less than 'Shelagh', unless bound up with something else, something intangible outside of herself.

As she arrived at the house, light was spilling into the driveway from an open front door and Shelagh wondered if Patrick was waiting for her, calculating when she might have left. It was Mrs. Harrison, however, who was silhouetted in the door frame putting out the milk bottles and who gave a cheerful wave, admired the bicycle, then cordially welcomed her inside. She did not wait, but discretely melted away and Shelagh was standing alone in the hallway, unobtrusively taking off her coat and wondering what to do with it, fumbling with the buckle of the bag in front of the shut doors.

Neatly leaving them on a chair by the telephone, she listened. There was music playing. Crossing the hallway to Patrick's study it became louder and she tapped on the door.

"Yes?"

His voice sounded hoarse Shelagh thought as she pushed the door open, spotting a radio she had not noticed before. Patrick was sat rather awkwardly at his desk, an empty knife, fork and plate forlornly beside him and a cigarette dwindling in his hand, absorbed by the stack of paper in front of him. Even from the door she saw an unmistakable look of disgust on his face. It was only when she spoke that he looked around.

"Hello."

Like leisurely, blinking sunshine, his smile appeared. "Hello!" Stubbing out the cigarette, he came to greet her. "Is it that time already? I'd completely lost track. You're a sight for sore eyes."

"Tired eyes too, perhaps?" she asked lightly, watching him closely.

Patrick wrinkled his nose. "A little. Paperwork. A report I have to write up."

"Nurse Simpson's neglect case?"

His eyes were suddenly alert. "She told you?" She nodded. "Thank God," he muttered, in relief, knowing there was no confidentiality to be broken. "I think neglect's a rather generous choice of word, Shelagh." His tone was acidic, without the slightest strain of humour. "It takes a lot to break even one bone when they are that young, let alone several."

She had seldom seen the kindling fury in his eyes, maybe only when they faced the board and his passion and sarcasm ripped down the wall she had been so determined to keep between them. In place of words, she touched his arm, waiting until the lines on his face smoothed into different contours to lay her head softly against his shoulder and let him sigh and lean his head against hers.

When he bounced a kiss against her temple a minute later, she knew she had been successful before he spoke. "Alright, let's see it then. Where did you put it?"

"Outside. Against the wall." He smiled and together they went to bring in the bicycle, Patrick carrying it into the hall. "What do you think?"

"No problems with it on the way here?" he asked, crouching down to take an appreciative look.

"No, none. Very smooth and responsive. Fred's done a wonderful job repairing it for us."

"Agreed!" he said, with one last check of the brakes, then looked appraisingly at both the bicycle and Shelagh, a puckish expression on his face. "You know, it really isn't actually that small for you, is it? His old one might suit you rather well." He smirked across the bicycle, as her eyes narrowed, unaware of how close she had come to sticking her tongue out at him. "Do you want a cup of tea?"

"That would be lovely. Shall I make it?"

He shook his head. "Let me stick this in the study and I'll do it. I need to take my plate down anyway."

"Are you sure that's wise?" He looked at her quizzically, failing to follow her train of thought. "It would involve a complex procedure in the kitchen, after all, Patrick," she explained straight-faced.

"I deserved that, didn't I?" he chuckled. "I will endeavour not to burn the water! Go and put your feet up, sweetheart. Find a record to stick on."

He was gone less time than she had expected and she had only just selected the record from Patrick's eclectic collection by the time he returned, the prettiness of the china on the tray and the neat slices of cake a giveaway. "Had Mrs. Harrison already made it?"

He grinned, peering over her shoulder. "Nat King Cole?" It was not what he expected, although he was not sure exactly what that would have been. He smiled to himself as walked towards the table listening for the machine's familiar crackle and the chocolate voice, although it turned to a grimace as he set down the tray.

"Are you quite well, Patrick? You look as though you're in pain."

"Yes, I'm fine," he said briefly. "I had something arrive today from the department," he continued, as he poured out the tea, a strange, indefinable note in his voice.

"What was it?"

Handing her her cup first, he produced a parcel, wrapped in pale paper, and an envelope. The merriment in the eyes was less guarded than the voice. "A wedding present, if you'll believe it."

She started to giggle. "From whom?"

"I think you should read the accompanying letter!"

Intrigued she opened it, scanning its typed lines until she saw the signature and burst out laughing. "Mr. Hurst? Oh Patrick, I hope you feel guilty for all those things you've said about him when he, what does it say, wishes 'every happiness for your forthcoming happy day to you and your delightful fiancée on behalf of the National Health Service.'"

"Unctuous twerp. Can we smash it, whatever it is?"

"It might be useful."

"So is a nuclear deterrent. It doesn't mean I want one in my house."

She hooted and sipped her tea before unwrapping what proved to be a fruit bowl, entirely inoffensive and devoid of thought in its selection.

"There's another one arrived too, Shelagh," said Patrick. The second parcel, collected from the alcove on the left on the fireplace, was far smaller and the handwriting on the envelope shaky, but as he joined her on the settee, Patrick handed it to her with a fond, nostalgic smile.

"Who?"

"Dr. Calvert. Donald Calvert. I really ought to call him Donald now."

She knew the name from stories he had told: the kindly man, near the end of his career even twenty years ago, who mentored Patrick in his first job and helped him to find work after he was demobbed. She suspected from his face why the parcel had been sent. "He can't come to the wedding, can he?"

"It was always a long shot. He's very frail physically now. The letter's lovely." Seeing her hesitate, he encouraged her. "Read it. It's for you too."

The writing wobbled over the page in a painful struggle, but it made the letter sweeter. In a few phrases he wished them the joy he had formerly known with his own adored wife and she caught the scent of memories precious to Patrick of a couple who adopted the newly qualified doctors he mentored in lieu of the children they had never had. Reading it for the second time, she curled up against Patrick, within the arm he placed around her as they opened the gift – a set of linen napkins - together.

"I'm sorry you can't meet him. You would like him. He's a dear man."

"Perhaps we can visit him in his nursing home. I'm so sorry, Patrick."

He shook his head and sighed. "It would've been too much of a strain for him simply to get to Poplar, so it's just as well. I've spent my whole career pondering what would be worse: to be as sharp as a needle and barely able to move like Donald Calvert or robustly spry with a mind that's falling apart like Eric, and I'm no closer to an answer." Against him, Patrick felt Shelagh shiver. He did not know why, nor did he inquire; but he drained his tea and put the cup down to draw her closer and rest his chin on her head. "Joan telephoned me a couple of days ago, I can't remember if I told you. Did I?"

"No. How is she?"

"She's well. She sends you her very warm regards. She's worked out a way she can manage to come next week without disrupting Eric. James will come down for the day and take care of his father and Joan will come to the wedding with Anna and Tom."

"I'm sorry to put them to so much bother." Even with her face against his pullover, the voice was unnaturally muffled.

"She wanted to come. She liked you very much when she met you. But Eric wouldn't cope. He'd get too confused. Half the time he can't remember that Elizabeth's dead. He complains to Joan on a regular basis that she hasn't been to visit recently. Often he doesn't recognise Timothy anymore." Although she smothered the sound, he heard a tiny sob. Clasping her by her shoulders so she could not hide her face, Patrick twisted away from her. "Shelagh? Sweetheart, what is it?"

"She doesn't know me."

Initially he frowned and then he guessed, "Sister Monica Joan?"

"Yes."

For some seconds he only watched her, tenderly stroking her soft hair, before letting his hand rest at the base of her neck. "What did she say?"

"She asked me why I was talking to her and who I was."

"And what did you say?"

"That I was 'Shelagh'. It meant nothing until I told her that I was your fiancée. She knows you, she remembers you."

"And tomorrow morning over breakfast she may start recounting every detail of the things you did as a novice and not know me." His tone was practical, but he slowly ran a soothing hand over her hair again. "Or she'll know both of us and start quoting embarrassing snatches of love poetry. Or she may not know either of us. You know how the illness goes."

"Yes, I know. It was a shock, that was all." She wanted to add more yet it was impossible to say, something felt not expressible.

"I can imagine. She knows you. She just can't find her way around the blocks into the memory."

She smiled weakly. "She's taken to wandering again. On Wednesday night I caught her and she had a good stare at me and asked me wasn't I 'someone who was'?"

"'Someone who was'?" They both briefly laughed. "What a wonderfully Sister Monica Joan phrase. Only she could come up with something like that. She's in there still." Leaning forward he lightly kissed her, first her brow, then her lips. "Aren't we all people who 'were', really? Bumbling along from what we've been into something else we're going to be? It's getting from A to B that's complicated."

Was it instinct, Shelagh wondered, how he pinpointed the anxiety she could not verbalise, the mildly roundabout way he commented on it delicacy, or the end of long ruminations of his own? She could not know, but the heaviness felt easier, the tunnel brighter, and she relaxed against his left arm and was moving towards him when his face distorted.

"Patrick, what is it? And don't say you're fine. You're obviously in pain."

"It really isn't anything."

"Patrick."

"My shoulder's giving me jip. It's a bit stiff," he confessed.

"Rheumatism?" she teased.

He snorted, then winced as the movement of his snigger snapped against his shoulder. "Thanks," he commented darkly. "I'm not that old! It's just tight, a combination of things. Too much paperwork? I grip the steering wheel tighter in smog in case I have to react suddenly. I think I slept awkwardly last night too. There's a draft somewhere in the spare room, I'm certain of it, though I can't work out where it is coming from."

Had it been one of the sisters or a colleague, she would have offered to look at the shoulder, sitting them down until she had found a way to relieve them of pain. In Scotland, she had examined a troublesome ankle of Alistair, Rob's brother, unembarrassed to sit in front of him flexing the strained muscles and ligaments. But suddenly she felt shy of asking Patrick's permission to help him. Instead, she pursued the distracting final comment. "Why were you sleeping in the spare room? I thought Mr. Warren had finished?"

"He has," replied Patrick. "He finished a week ago. I haven't put the furniture back yet, because I didn't know where you'd want everything to go." His eyes wandered, not fully meeting hers, while he slowly continued. "And now that it's decorated, I didn't want to move into it until it was both of us moving in, together." Once more his eyes rose to hers.

"I see," she said, the voice emboldened. "Patrick, let me check your shoulder."

"Don't be silly, it's only a twinge."

"Just to check it's not something more serious."

"It's not."

"Please, Patrick." Her eyes had not moved from his face.

That face distorted again, in a different way, the lips puckering, and he swallowed. "It doesn't need a proper examination."

It was only half a concession, but when she stood up, he accepted it and turned his back towards her. Still she was hesitant and paused before she reached out to feel his shoulder blades through the cotton shirt and dark green pullover.

She gasped as she touched him; a line of gnarled roots snarled at her. "Patrick, you're all knots! You must be in terrible discomfort." Little by little she moved along the line of his shoulders, feeling each wave of tautness, finally coming to a spot, two inches below his neck, where the flesh had fossilised. As she reached it, the tendons in his neck emerged like knives, but he made no sound.

"There?"

"Yes."

His diagnosis was correct; it was only tightness in the muscles holding together a body wearing years of strain. But it was angry. Slipping her thumb below the pullover, through the thin shirt she felt the shudder underneath her hand as she pressed and over the music continuing to croon from the gramophone, she heard his sharp breath.

"Can you raise your arm?"

She did not cease the pressure as he followed the request, raising his arm until the angle changed and the muscle contracted and the tightly wound coil suddenly subsided with a vicious click.

"That's it," said Patrick, letting his arm fall again.

"Better?" she asked.

"Much."

Shelagh did not move away, however. She placed both of her hands on top of the pullover again, its wool scratching at her palms, but stretched her fingers up the top of his shoulder, her index fingers leaning against his collar, almost at the top, so close to his neck that she would have grazed it if he raised his head by the smallest degree, while her thumbs manipulated the area which had caused such pain. Gradually her pressure lessened, but still she continued, watching his head curl into his chest and a sluggish pink burn spread over his neck and the line of his jaw, moving away from the neck and along the line of his shoulders. What objective cool she had started with had long evaporated, brushed away by the strange intimacy of what they both knew was now no examination but a caress.

Suddenly the music vanished, replaced by a static scratch, and his hand covered one of hers. "I think it's fine now," he said, the voice not entirely steady. "Thank you." She ceased, stilled. Then Patrick pulled the hand to his lips, kissing the back of it not with reverence, but fervency, once, twice, then holding it there, their fingers weaving and tightening around each other, while Shelagh realised the unevenness of her own fevered breathing.

She had wanted to respond, when he let go. She saw him flex and stretch his fingers before looking back at her, self-consciousness still traced upon his face. She tried to smile, but she could not fully compose herself. "I'll change it over to the other side," she said quickly, sensing his eyes follow her to the corner where she fumbled with the record, before turning back to him. He was standing now, the flush receded, as she began her too cheerful attempt to return the room to normalcy. "Did the delivery arrive this afternoon which you were going to show me?"

A short, high noise escaped from him. He swallowed and his eyes flickered to the ceiling, but he answered calmly, if slowly. "Yes. But it's actually upstairs, in our room. I don't know if you want to go up and see it. You ought to see the room to check you are happy with the decorating. Do you want to see it now?"

"Yes," she said quietly, taking his hand as they left the room and started to walk together up the stairs.