Alfred hears about Alice long before he meets her. Maureen's sister moves back to London at the end of September from Manchester, where she's been working since the war ended, and Maureen gives them all the details over dinner one Tuesday night, clearly thrilled at the news.

Aurora's first reaction to meeting Alice surprises Alfred somewhat, though. Aurora is prickly and bristling when she tells him that Alice joined them on their recent visit down to see Edith. A stranger, another new person, intruding on this group where Aurora has finally become comfortable. But Aurora is also clearly struggling with her own instinctive reaction to the other woman. She wants to be welcoming, but can't seem to work out how.

Alfred doesn't understand it fully until he meets Alice for himself. Maureen brings her to dinner a few weeks later, and she sits uncomfortably silent through most of it. Narrow and stiff and distant. But Alfred recognises the sour green undertone to her voice in the few words she does speak over the course of the evening. Somehow, Alice carries the same demons that Aurora does, that Neil does. Too much death, and too much loss, and too much guilt. And during that dinner, Neil is clearly just as uncomfortable with her as Aurora is, this woman who embodies what they might have been if they'd had to struggle on alone.

"I want to like her," Aurora says later, frustration laced through her voice. "But she's just so cold."

And Alfred hesitates to voice his comparison out loud, to point out what Aurora is trying so hard not to see.

"What did she do during the war?" he asks her finally.

And Aurora raises an eyebrow, taken aback by the seeming change of subject. "Maureen said she studied to be a nurse, but I don't know where she worked. I don't know anything about her at all. She won't talk."

"Try meeting her alone sometime," he suggests. "Without the other women. It might be easier for her. I think the war damaged her the same way it did us. She could probably use a friend who understands."

Aurora frowns, skeptical at best. "I'm hardly the person to help her with that. I can barely help myself."

"I think you're exactly the person. Try it and see. If you still don't get along, then you can walk away at least knowing you made the effort."

For Maureen's sake, and for Alfred, because he asked her to, Aurora makes the attempt, and it's exactly as awkward as she expected it would be. Aurora catches Alice alone at the end of a visit to May's house and invites her over for tea. Alice doesn't even try to hide the surprise on her face at being asked.

And during the whole painful afternoon of Alice's visit, Aurora finds herself falling back on her training for the first time in ages, just to manufacture enough charm to keep the conversation going in the face of such stilted silences.

But of course, Alfred is right. Now that she knows what she's looking for, Aurora can occasionally see the flare of hurt, of bitter anger under the cold, under the stiffness, but she can't figure out how to approach it. She knew Neil so well, his wounds, his past. More than well enough to bully him into a response. But she has no history, no trust with this woman. And not nearly as much incentive to put her heart on the line.

But still, she keeps trying. Because she promised Alfred she would. And because, buried under all the cold and the anger, Aurora begins to see flashes of wit, the spark of an intelligent mind. Even the barest hint of humour. It becomes something of a challenge to draw those moments out, and she finds she wants a chance to meet the woman who is hiding behind Alice's rigid facade. So at the end of the afternoon, she invites Alice back to do it again the following week. Is a little bit stunned when Alice actually accepts.

The second visit goes a little better. Aurora lets go of the forced charm and tries to allow some of her own broken edges show. Allows some of the silences to remain awkward, and eventually Alice begins to make her own efforts to fill them. Begins to show an interest in Aurora, too, clumsy as it is.

"What is it that brought you to England?" she asks eventually.

And Aurora smiles. "Work. Alfred and I found jobs with the Inter-Service Research Bureau."

"You both came all the way from Canada for that?"

"No, we were in France during most of the war. I was a journalist in Paris when war was declared, and I decided to stay. When the country was finally liberated, we got out, and ended up in London."

"You chose to stay?"

"I needed to do something. I couldn't just let it happen without a fight. Turn my back and let it be someone else's problem. So I stayed and wrote for an underground paper."

"I'm amazed you survived that choice."

Aurora takes a breath. "I'm the only one who did. All the others, all my friends, the man I loved, they all died."

Alice flinches at the words. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—" she shakes her head. "I'm sorry, I should go."

Aurora stands too, reaches out, but stops short of touching Alice, who is rigid with tension. "Please don't. Please stay."

Alice stops in her flight, but doesn't sit back down, doesn't turn back to face Aurora. Clearly trapped between a need to leave and a desire to stay.

"Why are you doing this?" she asks finally, her voice strained and thin. "You don't need to. I'm not good with. It can't be enjoyable for you. I know what I must sound like. I just."

"You can't talk to new people? You have to force yourself to care? You feel like there's a, a whole sea of horror, of misery, between you and everyone else?"

"Yes."

"You can talk to me if you want to. I understand, like the other women can't."

"Mrs. Graves, you have the perfect life. A husband who loves you. A child who worships the ground you walk on. A baby on the way. Even my own sister would rather spend time with you. What is it you think you can possibly understand about me?"

"It terrifies me," she says quietly. "All of it. It terrifies me to have it, because I know, I know, how easily I could lose it. Terrifies me to want it, because who am I to deserve any of this after the things I've done. Terrifies me to keep it, because I don't know how to be good at it, and when I destroy it all, I'll hurt them."

Alice finally turns back to face Aurora, and her voice is unsteady when she answers. "It doesn't change the fact that you do have it. It's the loneliness that you can't understand."

"Where is it that you served? Are you allowed to talk about it?"

"Mrs. Graves, you-"

"Aurora. Please."

Alice sighs. "Aurora, then. You don't have to do this. I don't need your pity."

"Maureen says you trained as a nurse, but it isn't just hospital work that did this to you. Were you in France? Did you end up in an aid station near the front?"

Alice goes silent again, but this time it's not icy reserve. She looks like a trapped animal, and Aurora takes a breath, softens her tone.

"It's not pity. Maureen is a part of my family, too, and she wants us to be friends. I'm not allowed to talk about my war, but I promise you I understand how you feel."

Alice struggles in silence for a long moment, a look on her face Aurora has seen on Neil time after time. An internal battle between bitter anger and a desperate need for comfort.

"I never left England," Alice says finally. "During the war. Never left London. I trained as a nurse, but hated hospital work. Drove ambulances for a while with the FANY. Ended up working with the ARP wardens in the East End. Digging people out of the rubble after the bombs hit. Survivors. Bodies. Children."

Aurora reaches out again, this time grips Alice's wrist in support. Alice doesn't acknowledge the contact, but nor does she draw away.

"I'm small enough I could crawl into spaces where the men didn't fit. Under all those tons of brick and stone. They tried to stop me, of course. One wrong move up top and I'd be crushed, too. But I'm trained as a nurse. I could get help to the wounded faster that way."

Aurora nods. "You chose to stay and fight, too."

"Sometimes all I could do was be there next to them while they died. Sometimes we just couldn't get them out fast enough." Alice's voice remains cold, detached, but Aurora can see all the suppressed horror in her eyes. "When I dream at night, I go right back there. With the smoke and the dust, rubble shifting all around me. And they all die."

"Stay for dinner," Aurora says quietly.

"What?"

"All of us in this house live with nightmares of the war. We're all… trying to re-learn how to live in the world with all these broken pieces inside us. You don't have to talk, if you don't want to. Just know that everyone here understands."

"Thank you. You're kind. But I couldn't. I can't."

"It would be a favour to me. Since Pauline and Giselle died, there hasn't been… Outside of my family, I haven't had a friend who understood, either."

But Alice shakes her head. "Another time, maybe."

Aurora nods, trying not to withdraw behind coldness of her own at the rejection. "Of course. Whenever you want to. You can just show up, no questions asked. I promise."

Alfred is both surprised and not at how quickly Aurora's reaction to Alice shifts. And he listens quietly while Aurora repeats the bare bones of Alice's story.

"It just. It makes me sad," she says. "To think of her alone."

He steps closer, squeezes her hand. "She's not alone. She has Maureen. It's why she came back to London."

But Aurora shakes her head. "I can't stop thinking. If I didn't have you. If it had been me in that hospital alone instead of Neil."

"Don't."

"I wouldn't have survived long enough for you to find me."

"Aurora. Stop. Please."

He slides his arms around her, and she leans into him.

"I'm sorry."

He takes a breath. "It was kind of you to invite her."

"What if she doesn't come?"

"Then she doesn't."

And Aurora sighs. "It just. It makes me sad, that's all."

There is no sign of Alice the following week. She keeps her distance, absent even from visits with the other women. But the following Tuesday, on Maureen's usual day to join them for dinner, Alice comes as well.

And it's not easy. Alice sits quiet, still cold and uncommunicative. Neil, too, gets gruff and short-tempered, clearly uncomfortable with Alice's presence. But Alfred, Aurora, and Maureen do their best to keep the conversation flowing, and eventually Mags joins in, too.

Alice's gaze flicks back to Neil throughout the meal, who is bristling with all of his own rough edges, and Aurora wonders briefly if that might not have been the better way to handle the evening. Remembers how isolated she herself had felt when she seemed to be the only one at the dinner table who was still broken.

Wonders again when Alice pauses in the doorway on her way out, clearly frustrated with herself.

"I'm sorry. I won't do that to you again. I wanted." She stops. Shakes her head. Turns to flee out into the dark of the street.

"You didn't do anything wrong. Please come again."

"I make the others uncomfortable. Your little girl, too. It's not fair."

"So come for tea on Thursday instead," Aurora says. "We'll leave the idea of dinner for a while."

"Maybe," Alice allows, but turns and disappears down the front steps without a further goodbye.

"I'm sorry," Maureen says, moving to hurry after her.

"There's no need. Neil and I behaved far worse when we first met you. We understand what she's going through."

"She never used to be like this, though. She always had friends."

"She's not the same person she was before the war. None of us are. You might just… need to get to know this new side of her."

Maureen looks stricken by the thought, and Aurora grips her arm in comfort, tries to explain.

"When I visited my parents at home in Montréal right after I left France, the hardest part was seeing the woman they expected me to be, the woman I used to be, and finding her a complete stranger. I tried to fit myself back into that life, and it nearly killed me."

"Alice is my sister. I can't just pretend I don't know her."

"You said yourself she's changed."

Maureen shakes her head, clearly unhappy. "I should go after her."

And Aurora forces herself to abandon the argument before she makes things worse. "You just. You never have to apologise to us, that's all."

To Aurora's great surprise, though, Alice does turn up for tea on Thursday. The visit is short, and they don't talk about much beyond the weather, the current state of rationing. But Alice keeps up her end of the conversation and manages a proper goodbye when she leaves. And Aurora takes it as a hopeful sign.

She comes back again the following week, and soon they fall into the habit of meeting twice a week, although Alice studiously avoids Tuesdays when Maureen will be present as well.

"It feels too much like I'm being torn in half," she explains. "Trying to be two people at once."

And as the weeks pass, Aurora and Alice slowly learn how to talk to each other. The awkwardness begins to fade, and Aurora finally starts to uncover the sharp wit, the fighting spirit she had caught glimpses of early on.

Their time together becomes surprisingly precious to Aurora. It's been so many years since she had a female friend who could possibly understand the effects of everything she has lived through. Doubly important because at the moment there is so little of her time, her attention that isn't rooted in the family somehow. She finds she's selfishly grateful for this one small piece of her life that is hers alone, and she clings to it through the final weeks of her pregnancy, knowing that she is on the precipice of having her world turned upside down all over again.