We have finally had word, writes Persis to Nina one grey afternoon in February, to expect the retired messenger dog in the autumn. The report Carl's had says she would have arrived earlier, only they have had all the usual trouble with quarantine. Coincidences being what they are, she is coming to us from Canada. Kitchener I think, though don't take my word for it. It may well be somewhere more in keeping with your Strathroy.

You'd better hope it's Kitchener after all, comes Nina's answer, written by candlelight on the window seat of her London home in the aftermath of a performance. I am reliably assured nothing comes out of Strathroy except expectations of grandeur and a wish to have the earth laid at one's feet.

Persis pauses long enough in her reading to wonder whether it was Stuart or someone more fluent with Nina's character that had the nerve to make this assertion about her first home. Curiosity gives way to amusement though as she reads on.

Having met Symp though, and knowing what Carl is like with animals, I'm confident both those expectations will be met as a matter of course. In any event, my love to her when she does arrive, if I can't manage a visit, which looks increasingly likely. This year is a full one –there are costs to grandeur and having the earth handed to you.

She has enclosed, in light of this, a precipitate birthday gift for Scilla, while I think of it, the justification she offers, and an apology should she not be able to get away in April. Tell Scilla, she says, that I am, as ever, thinking of her, and that I trust Mia will more than make up for my having been held up at Covent Garden.

In the event, Nina does manage an afternoon away, though her faith in the others to make a suitable occasion of it is far from unjustified and Scilla's first birthday passes with all the ceremony believed befitting of the occasion by her devoted retainers. Fr. Cameron showers her with unlikely and improbable –though beautiful –gifts, Mia seizes upon the excuse to bake, and Victor finds the first of the Scilla-flowers nestled in some corner of the Blenheim Wood and brings them to the house bound in blue ribbon, where they are set in state on the maple wood table.

It is shortly after this that Mia says one morning towards the end of April, 'I ought to do something about that garden' as she looks towards what had been her mother's house. She has twisted round on the sofa so that she is facing towards the window, her arms pillowed on the sofa back. The yew hedges of Silver Moon and the garden beyond them are just visible. The lawn is beginning to grow long, with the odd dauntless yellow dandelion for colour. Along the borders the perennials Mia has planted in bygone years, the speedwell, lavender, and salvia, are gamely beginning to come into bud, looking perhaps a bit ragged round the edges.

'It's all going to go to wilderness otherwise. I'm not convinced it hasn't already.'

Carl joins her by the window and squints at the remains of the Glover garden.

'Not yet,' is his verdict. 'Still definitely a garden. I'll have a go at it if you like though.'

'No,' says Mia, 'I need to sort the house out anyway. I might as well do both at once.'

'You may as well have help with it,' says Persis. 'We'll make a day of it, shall we?'

'You mustn't,' Mia says, 'you've done more than enough for me. I ought to get the place in hand and give you back your home.'

Persis and Carl though, will not be dissuaded. There is only the prospect of line edits for an article on varieties of English dragonfly on Carl's side and letter-writing on Persis's to be contended with, and neither objects to shunting these things to one side in favour of a day at the Glover house.

It has the cool, stale smell of an unoccupied house when they arrive. The door, which was always stiff, protests more than ever after its protracted disuse and when Mia draws the curtains to bring in the light they send little eddies of dust swirling off the neglected windowsills.

For the most part, the boxing away of the possessions in the Glover house is straightforward, Mia's inclination is to salvage very little of it. The first time she stumbles it is over the unwieldy furniture.

'It would be easier,' she says to Persis as they drape protective sheets over the furniture, 'if I knew definitely where I'd be. I can't live here again –aside from anything else it would make no sense. It was too big a house even when I shared it with mother, and yet if I don't –there's nowhere else to go.'

'You know you needn't hurry away from us,' says Persis, and Mia hums appreciatively. Once she says as she wrestles with enshrouding the chaise-lounge her mother had been used to occupy, 'I had hoped…'before stopping short. It does not matter, any hopes Mia is cherishing are discernable in the sudden colouring of her face, in the cautious and quick glances she shoots out the window as if half-expecting company that won't come.

Mia stumbles the second time over an oasis of papers in what was once her father's study. She is peering at a stack of leather copybooks, their pages covered in minute and spidery handwriting when Persis joins her.

Hilary Term 19—says the topmost book when it is spread open. Underneath, gently sloping across the page is carefully transcribed,

A land of waters green and clear,

Of willow and of poplars tall,

And, in the spring-time of the year,

The white may breaking over all,

And Pleasure quick to come at call.

'An accurate summation?' asks Persis, reading over Mia's shoulder.

'Oh yes –I should say so,' says Mia, and laughs. Then she closes her eyes against some abstract and apparently incommunicable memory, more wistful and reverent than Persis has ever known her.

'I thought I'd go back, you know,' Mia says, her voice almost prayerful. She is speaking more to herself than for her friend's benefit.

'After the war…when mother was ill the first time…I thought she'd get over it –or not –and I'd go back. I thought –I suppose I thought a lot of things. I thought I might earn a degree that counted for something, to start with…that I could go back to that life without effort. I'd have done it too, might even have been good at it. I know I'd not have minded the retreat into research and college life always –I think I even wanted it, once.' Her hands trace paths across the tightly curled handwriting, a smile coming into flower on her lips.

'And now?' asks Persis.

'Sometimes I think I'd still like it. St. Hilda's was safe, and I was at home there.'

Mia opens her eyes, surfacing abruptly from this recollection, as she does so and closing the copybook. She sets it and its fellows safely on the desk, relics of an almost obliterated dream.

'It didn't happen like that, of course. Mother never recovered enough afterwards for me to justify leaving. Even if she had, she'd forgiven me going once, but she wouldn't have done it a second time, and I wouldn't have wanted that. Her world was always such a small one –I couldn't make it smaller, even at the cost of comfort. Besides,' says Mia, with an upward glance at the copybooks, 'even if I could have done, I never expected I would fall in love.'

The third time she stumbles it is over the Royal Albert china. She opens the kitchen cupboard to it and makes a tight and strangled noise far in the back of her throat.

'What is it?' asks Persis, looking up from boxing silverware. She has to wait on an answer though because the Royal Albert has succeeded where the rest of the house has failed and reduced Mia to tears. Quietly Persis abandons her efforts with the silverware and crosses the kitchen to close the cupboard door for Mia, who is left standing silently in front of the unforgiving panelling of the kitchen cupboards. Mutely she lets Persis lead her by the elbow to the kitchen worktable, an old, scarred affair of indeterminate softwood. She is turning a piece of the Royal Albert old country rose between her fingers, a delicately crafted milk jug that Persis has failed to notice in her hands.

'It was never mine you know.'

'How do you mean?' Persis asks.

'I mean it belongs here. At St. Hilda's I had a mixture of china –oddments of patterns that competed to form a set. It was imperfect, and certainly not so grand as this but it was mine and if it comes to that I'm not so grand as mother's old country rose pattern either.' Mia looks critically at the milk jug with its fine fluted spout, a finger tracing the wishbone-thinness of the handle.

'I used to think if I ever had cause to leave home, I could rescue it. Now I can't help feeling I ought to save some of mother's china–a teacup or the sugar bowl, something. It's not that I want it especially, only that there isn't anyone else left to remember her. Her taste in food, the way she angled a book at the end for ease of reading, the way she said my name. That must sound remarkably silly.'

'Not at all,' says Victor Cross from the kitchen door.

Whatever Mia's plans for the salvation of the Royal Albert, the milk jug rapidly becomes a lost cause. Startled, she lets it go and it shatters against the kitchen floor, dissolving into fragments of white shot through with gold leaf and roses.

It is later, the shards of the milk jug swept away, and tea spread out on the kitchen table, the Royal Albert a beacon of order and civility among the chaos of the disassembled house, that Mia notices the blisters on Victor's hands. They flare to red and angry life as he accepts one of Mrs. Glover's teacups, irritated by the heat of the china.

'What were you doing?' asks Mia.

Sucking air in between his teeth, Victor sets the teacup down and holds his hands out for scrutiny, seemingly only just noticing the presence of the blisters.

'Well I…' but he changes his mind and instead reaches into his coat and extracts a cluster of nettles. Uncertain what to do with them he sets them on the table, where they lie like fiery and unlit tapers among the rookery of the Royal Albert.

'They're a strange offering, I know' says Victor, 'only I thought –'

'I remember.'

'I'm afraid I'm no less imperfect.'

'I hope you don't think I am.'

As noiselessly as she can manage, Persis withdraws from the kitchen with a mug of tea for Carl which she sets with her own on a tea tray. Carl is wrestling with the yew hedge when Persis finds him. The tray clatters gently against the stone of the steps as she sets it down and Carl abandons his effort with the hedge to say needlessly, 'I wasn't expecting you.'

'No, well, I thought I'd be less in the way here. The crackle of electricity hasn't extended this far, anyway.'

'Hm?' Carl crosses the lawn to accept the proffered mug of tea with gratitude coloured with confusion.

Persis recounts the story of Victor's arrival and Carl nods, then rubs the back of his neck meditatively. It leaves his collar askew, the corners sticking out at crooked angles.

'I thought I saw him walk past,' says Carl. 'I supposed he was headed towards whatever that parish north of here is. You know the one, Cranford or…'he gives a half-shrug at the elusiveness of the name.

'Crampton Hodnet?'

Carl nods appreciatively. 'That's the one. Not that it matters if he's presently in the kitchen having tea. What brought that about?'

'The tea? It's temporarily solved the problem of the Royal Albert, I think.'

'Problem? What's it done?' confusion recrosses Carl's face and he squints again at the ragged yew hedge. It has overgrown the fence, sprouting branches that encroach on the Glover yard and producing stalks that creep up through the lawn and fence slats, their roots enmeshed with the rest of the hedge on the Silver Moon property.

'It's what to do with it,' says Persis, elaborating and sipping at her tea.

'I see, does Mia not want the stuff then?'

'I don't know. Some things have ghosts, I think, does that make sense? There's a reason those glass teacups of Nina's aunt haven't gone with Nina to London.'

'Yes,' says Carl heavily, 'yes, that makes lots of sense. But,' he looks with sudden curiosity at Persis, 'I hadn't realised you knew.'

It is Persis's turn to shrug and peer closely at the overgrown yew hedge.

'Sussex Ave had its share,' she says. 'And Ingleside after the war was crawling with them. You must have noticed.' The sun has begun to slip towards the earth and the shadows shooting out from the yew hedge look more ungainly than ever.

'Can I help?' Persis offers after a moment, setting her mug down carefully on the tea tray.

'I think you'd better,' says Carl. 'I lost my line of symmetry somewhere in France –oh a while ago now.'

They exchange smiles and work until the thrushes startle into full-throated evensong and the air has cooled with the chill of an April evening coming to ground. Persis pauses to gather the tea tray and braces herself against reentry into the house with its heavy and carefully observed silences. She is unsure how the last three-quarters of an hour have passed for Mia and Victor and finds unexpectedly that she hasn't the nerve to ask.

She doesn't have to; Mia's face gives her away. The Royal Albert has long since been enshrouded with tissue paper, two rinsed teacups set aside in memoriam on the kitchen counter. The rest is buried in cardboard, and the silverware likewise. Neither is the sort of task calculated to leave a person glowing, and Mia is. So is a flicker like an ember on Mia's hand.

'Will you tell me about it?' says Persis.

Mia cannot. 'Why,' she wants to know as she comes out of her dream, 'can't everyone be as happy as I am?'

'Because unlike you' says Persis affectionately, 'we haven't all earned the luxury.'

Mia looks away and then down at the ruby glowing warm and dark against her hands, white still from a winter indoors, and declines to answer.

'It's not nearly good enough, of course,' says Victor as he joins them, and not, if Mia's response is a augur, for the first time.

'But then nothing was ever going to be.'

Persis is inclined to agree.