Thanks always to those of you reading and/or reviewing. But an especial thanks to the guest of chapter 20 I managed to overlook previously. Mea culpa! Very glad to hear you enjoyed Anne on happiness. She was terrific fun to write.

Kingsport, 1929

Mara and Iain were ensconced in the sunroom, weaving rush mats when Pilgrim, old cat of Swallowgate days gave the alarm. Not a known quantity, then, Mara thought; the cat would never have bothered about Jem and Faith, Geordie, Judith, or even the assorted gremlins. And while he wasn't much taken with Kitty and Teddy, neither was Pilgrim liable to hiss at them. A stranger then.

Or so she supposed, mired among the rush mats that warranted that afternoon's effort at engaging Iain's attention. They were supposed to be something to occupy Iain while she ran lines for A Cup of Kindness, only Iain insisted on echoing her, trying impossibly hard to shape adult words with little lips. He was aiming to deliver them with earnestness and solemnity, but having entirely too much fun to cary this off. His eyes crinkled and he ended by shrieking in laughter that was contagious. This was how they missed the click of the door as it came free of the latch, and the faint rustling of leaves it let into the house. Mara did catch the newly green smell of the garden, and the hot-earth scent of after-the-rain but supposed they drifted in on some open window. She was wholly startled by the voice from the hall when it made itself known.

'Sorry,' it said, 'I saw the door was open and I thought it was probably better to come in than risk waking the baby.'

The baby in question, hearing a voice he couldn't place, gave a tremor of indignation and suffered himself to be gathered into maternal arms. Impossible to guess that moments before he had been a veritable parrot as he buried his suntanned face in Mara's shoulder. There followed a clatter of doors as the interloper attempted to navigate the geography of Fox Corner uninstructed, before a slight person, gangly in the way of young girls, tired from travelling and with eyes like wide blue planets, materialised in the doorway. You're yourself only the oldest of the babies, Mara thought, seeing her, in spite of herself. Instead, she shifted Iain to her hip and demanded of the sister presently occupying the sunroom doorway, 'What on earth are you doing here?'

'Hello to you too,' said Mharie McNeilly, stepping forward to envelop sister and nephew in a hug. This close Mara could better register the rings under those wide blue eyes, the smell of outside, coal and ever-present fish that even now was synonymous with Halifax to Mara. At least the fish were a natural hazard of harbour life. It got into skin and under fingers like nothing else. Mara had almost forgotten. Iain, who had never had cause to learn it in the first place, began to fuss.

'Sorry,' said Mharie again, 'Shall I…' she stepped away, reaching uncertainly for the baby.

'You're all right, a leannan,' said Mara. 'You're not home now.'

Obviously, said the look Mharie gave her. Mara watched as opposite her, Mharie uncertainly crossed her arms over her chest, fingers tapping a tattoo against her elbows.

'You never did say,' said Mara, 'what the crisis was that brought you here.'

'Who says there's a crisis?' But Mharie's eyes went, if possible, still wider, and her nails plucked at the sleeves of her blouse.

'There generally is when family come calling,' said Mara. 'It was – Alec – last time.'

This was not quite, Mara thought, what she had brought everything from murder mysteries to babies in need of minding, to surplus Ceylon tea - 'because you like it better than I do,' Faith had said in the face of Mara's protestation that Una never meant it for Fox Corner. Relatives though - relatives in Kingsport almost invariably came because of a crisis. Alec dead, or else the Spanish Flu going round Swallowgate, or...She could not say this, with Mharie opposite her, thin and tired, her fingers plucking at her blouse. So Mara spoke of family in the dictionary sense and retreated, of necessity, to the sofa.

Mharie followed her, folding herself into the far section of the settle, knees tucked carefully under her torso, Alec's ghost a palpable thing between them, heavy and leaden. They sat there mute, not knowing what to say or how to say it, so that when Mara hazarded a look at her sister, she was struck by how strikingly small Mharie was, limbs compressed among the depths of the cushions, more the child that had attended her wedding, all limbs and scabbed knees, than the young woman who had let herself into the house minutes ago. And she still hadn't said what the trouble was.

'It will be easier over tea maybe,' said Mara, making no question of this. Instead, she handed Iain off to his girl-aunt, who took him gratefully, babies having ever featured in what the McNeilly girls had called normalcy.

Looking through from the kitchen, Mara could just see them, Mharie curved faintly around the shape of wee Iain, his downy, talc-scented head pillowed on her chest. Somewhere in the minutiae of the Halifax house's attic – or perhaps in what was left of Mara's hope chest – was a photo of Mara holding Mharie in not dissimilar fashion, taken shortly before she had gone for Redmond. It had been one of Alec's snaps, of course. Hard to say what had become of it, between the war, the loss of Anchorage and the new house.

The kettle began to hiss and Mara lingered over it, warming the teapot and fussing with leaves, savouring the smooth, floral notes of Ceylon. You like it better than I do, Faith had said, and Mara found now as she stood and lingered over the preparation, that it smelled as much of family as it did of spice. The tea began to steep and Mara hunted out the last of that week's scones. From the look of her, Mharie hadn't eaten that day; she was disinclined to inquire into the other night. What was it Judith sometimes said, talking of the gremlins – If I ask, I'll get an answer?

'I couldn't stay,' said Mharie, not looking at her, when Mara returned with the tea tray. She flung this out into the sunroom, apparently confident it would be dismissed out of hand, because she then burrowed into the corner of the sofa in anticipation of some predetermined backlash.

'No?' said Mara, handing over a piece of Mull pottery, full of golden Ceylon spice. Scent of family. Experimentally Mara held out the milk jug. Mharie took it awkwardly because of Iain still cocooned in the crook of her arm. The sun shifted overhead and came seeping through the window, warm for the season and heavy against the autumnal twill of Mara's skirt. Mharie squinted against it and said, 'They won't let me carry on with school.'

'No,' said Mara again, 'they wouldn't.'

'You did,' said Mharie, sipping at her tea prematurely and then sucking a breath between her teeth when it scalded the roof of her throat. In spite of herself Mara smiled; Helen and Kitty were always doing that, too.

'And they won't tell me how you did it,' said Mharie, apparently as an afterthought. Mara laughed.

'No,' Mara said. 'Well, Mam wouldn't. The rows we had over it – ask Senga. She'll maybe remember.' So would the others hung heavy and unspoken between them, their dead weighty and surely immeasurable in their vastness. Rab, Tam, Jeanie, Jessie, Duncan…it was a long list, their unnamed dead. But Mharie wasn't on it. She was sitting here in the sunroom looking not a day over twelve, so that Mara had to wonder how she'd ever purchased a train ticket out of Halifax in the first place. Or perhaps it was just that Mara could still remember her knobby-kneed and scabbed with climbing over the lobster traps and swimming out past the pier – younger still, as the cherubic baby in the photo' Alec had snapped all those years ago.

But at least, Mara thought, they were feeling their way into how to hold a conversation.

Now Mharie worried a seam in the sofa and said with conviction, 'But you did convince her. Mam, I mean.'

Mara pressed her fingers to her temples and found they smelled of the rushes she and Iain had plaited earlier. She said from behind them, 'I'd not call it that, exactly.' But Mharie was still looking at her, blue eyes unflinching as Alec's had ever been, so Mara went on, 'What I refused to do was marry Callum Inness. And it wasn't that that won her over, were you curious.'

That got a laugh from Mharie, a thready, tired sounding thing, but it sent a flash of colour into her cheeks and she looked better for it. More like the golden girl Mara remembered, less the harried traveller who had appeared in the sunroom so lately. More like family, too, though that might have been the sun in Mara's eyes.

Mharie said, 'I don't suppose you'd tell me what did?'

'A bad combination of Tam, Alec and Da taking my part over it - insisting I be allowed to try for the scholarship.'

'Right,' said Mharie. And Alec and Tam are dead went unsaid. Besides which, neither had ever been much in the way of championing Mharie – God, had Tam even had cause to meet her? Possibly, Mara thought, but she had been so young in those days, such a slip of a baby... Much more likely, Mara thought that Tam had forgot this slip of a baby sister. Mara hardly recalled her except in flashes of Redmond holidays and photograph stills. 'I don't suppose your talking to Mam…'

'I thought you were wanting to win this argument?' said Mara, and earned another laugh, slightly more steady this time. Then, because Mara was curious, 'What is it you're angling to do, anyway, a leannan?'

'I don't know,' said Mharie, vexed. 'They keep asking and asking I don't know, and – I don't know – why do I have to, anyway? Can't I – isn't it enough to want to know more? Does that make sense?'

It did, of course it did. But then, there it was, the nub of the thing, its heart. Impossible to communicate to their mother, of course. To so many of the Halifax people. And those that had understood all dead now. Or nearly.

It occurred to Mara that there was a school not so far away. The Carlisle gremlins went there; Christopher was in the infants' class. Naomi Blake had liked it well enough to have tried for a teaching place there. It had its failings, Mara supposed, all schools did. A failure to recognise the particular brilliance of Helen Blythe, for instance but… It came home to Mara that she had never yet answered her sister. Now she inclined her head, Yes. It is enough. More than enough. In a world reeling from change after seismic change, it made all manner of sense not to rush unthinking into the future, and she said so.

'Then I can stay?' Tea tumbled free of the Mull pottery and dappled the smocking of Mharie's dress with little amber beads that caught the sunlight. Instinctively, Mara plucked a handkerchief from a pocket and dabbed at them, even as her sister swatted her hand away. She was laughing; this was good.

'Phone Senga,' said Mara. 'Tell her where you are.'

'You know where I am.'

'Mm, and someone at home ought to too. Ring Senga. She won't have your head for it. She hasn't the time.'

She's got Nancy's children now too and…It occurred to Mara to wonder how she had ever surfaced from the 'flu without half a dozen nieces and nephews to minister to. Had it really been that she wasn't living perpetually in Halifax on her mother's doorstep? It seemed no reason at all. Mharie had not moved from the sofa. If anything she had buried herself deeper into it.

'Alastair will tell you,' said Mara to her, 'I made him do the same, when he came with news of Alec. And he'd been sent on purpose. Ring home. I'm not much bothered who, it will go all round the houses however it goes. But I'll not have them worrying for you added to all the rest of this.' She gestured at the sunroom, Mharie with Iain crooked under her arm, the tea with its bounty of Ceylon, the scones and strawberry jam. Mharie went.

One of Senga's girls got hold of the mouthpiece and only passed it on to her mother under duress, squealing with excitement that sent static rippling down the line, giddy at being declared messenger. Faintly Mara could hear the pips crackling over the line, the sound of her would-be sister's exhaustion. The last time she had sounded this wrung out, they had sat up nights at the Keracher house trying to stave off the 'flu with no very good luck.

'Here,' said Mharie, nudging Mara's elbow, 'for you.'

Senga said, 'I hate to ask it, but you couldn't hazard a guess as to when we'll get her back?'

Mara squinted into the setting sun, which streamed full into the telephone nook, purple and pink in the gloaming. Mara shook her head. Then recalling the telephone necessarily rendered such a gesture invisible, said, 'I'll sort that out, shall I?'

'Please.'

And yet, they were sitting at the dining-room table not discussing it when Shirley came home to them. That is, they were talking about the Kingsport school, what Mara knew of it; subjects, teachers, entry marks and fine details that had nothing to do with Halifax or their mother. Which was fine, Mara reasoned, inasmuch as it would surprise Senga not at all when she got to hear of it.

That was how Shirley found them, full of a story about tubercular cattle. Seeing them, he broke off mid-sentence to take stock of Mharie, still wide-eyed and pale at the table.

To say the last time he had seen Mharie she had been slighter, smaller and in attendance at their wedding, Shirely surfaced her name with remarkable quickness.

'Down to visit?' he asked as if it was in the usual order of things to come home midweek to unannounced company. And to be fair, it broadly was. The company wasn't typically spontaneously manifested relatives on Mara's side, that was all. Mharie shrugged. Iain, kneeling on the improbable combination of a Britannica volume and the family bible said, 'Yes,' with due solemnity.

'We're negotiating that,' said Mara.

The Britannica wavered precariously and Shirley pulled his son into his lap, the better to take in the story of the familial wrangling that had brought Mharie to Fox Corner. Implicit in the retelling was I don't want to go back. All Mharire said on the subject was, 'I couldn't stay, and I thought of here. It doesn't have to be for long.'

Then they resumed their talk of the Kingsport school, as if this was also perfectly ordinary conversation of an early evening. No one mentioned Helen's Miss Watson, who had so lately failed to be a vampire.

Mara was making up the spare room when Shirley appeared. The sun was sloping gently towards the rolling green lawn so beloved of the resident foxes, and the birds singing their evensong. On the dresser the last of the lilacs had dried, and their scent dissolved; it made the room smell faintly of dust. With effort Mara pushed open the window to admit the cool freshness of evening air. It stuck as it always did, this time of year, only coming free when Shirley joined her and cajoled the other side of the sash into rising.

When he had done it he said, 'She's welcome to stay, you know.'

'There's no need for that,' said Mara. She crossed the room to sit on the bed, absently slipping a case over a pillow.

'No need,' said Shirley, 'but you'd like it?'

'I didn't say that,' said Mara. 'And anyway,' starting on the mattress, 'you cannot possibly want – '

'I very much want you to have what you want.'

'Mm,' said Mara. 'There's a difference between that and the sudden and indefinite acquisition of family.'

The sheet Mara was folding stretched preternaturally taut and when she looked up she found Shirley opposite her, folding hospital corners of his own. He caught her eye and shrugged, much to say this was a war habit that time had yet to unravel. He said, 'But she is family. Whereas Jem and Faith – '

'Never flinched about taking on Kitty. I remember. Teddy, too. And we're not them. Your sister isn't trying to hand you reporters with nowhere to live.'

'What, shunt them into your house?' said Shirley, and smiled. 'I'm not sure even Di would dare. Anyway, it wouldn't be indefinite. It would be for what – four years? Until she set off for Redmond anyway.'

'Two,' said Mara. They began to unfold a quilt between them.

Shirley said, 'No time at all then. And you want her here.'

'You keep saying that as if I've said it at some earlier junction.'

'You looked it, Ariel.'

Mara sat down on the quilt and began to trace the seams of the blocks. Little diamond pinwheels in her mother's patient piecework, white and blue and floral by alteration. Hardly ideal, under the circumstances, but warm enough. Besides, it wasn't as if Mara had developed her own taste for sitting up into the small hours stitching and piecing until the pads of her fingers went raw. That was for Mam, and for Jeanie, Nancy too. 'I'd like her to have somewhere to stay,' said Mara. 'She can't very well go home. They'll pull her to pieces without meaning to. The aunt I went to all that time ago – well she isn't there now. There's a lot of them that aren't there now.'

Malcolm, dead of the war, and Tam of the 'flu; Jeanie with her piecing, wee Cameron named for Mam's people, and little Rabbie named for his uncle; Alec, whose fetch she had seen, and Jessie with her dancing feet, on, and on it went. Too many to name in the stillness of the spare room with its newmade bed and the dusty smell of dried lilacs, the cool smell of the evening. Shirley crossed the room and joining her on the edge of the bed, folding her hand under his and Mara nodded. He said, 'Kitty will love her. So will the gremlins probably. She must be – what do we think, David Carlisle's age?'

'Simon's, more nearly,' said Mara. 'Though if you're going to play at matchmaking, she really will end up on the Larkrise doorstep.'

Shirley shook his head, laughing. He said, 'Matchmake for you sister? I shouldn't dream of it. I was more thinking of school sets.'

'I'll hold you to that.'

'Do. I'll finish with this, shall I? You go tell her.'

Mara went. She found Mharie out on the back porch, limbs balled tightly together on the steps. The midges were out too, undeterred by the smell of residual smoke as it curled from the chimney. Mharie gave them no mind, startling only when Mara sat down next to her, nudged her shoulder with an arm.

'Sorry,' said Mharie, not for the first time that day.

'You'll take cold, sitting out here,' said Mara, and touched her fingers to Mharie's cheek to show the difference. Mharie squealed, much in the way Mara remembered her doing in those last days at Anchorage, before Redmond and the War. Then Mharie laughed and snaked her fingers around Mara's neck to warm them. A sickle moon came into flower and Mara tugged her sister upright and into the house.

They drifted to the spare room, where the sash was up still and the boughs of a nearby cedar were straining for ingress, the faintly smoky smell of it chasing away the last traces of lilac. Shirley had turned the quilt down at the corner, so that the linen underneath was cool with outside air, the smell of the cedar. Mara perched carefully on the edge of the bed and Mharie eased under the covers, slight and slippery as an elm, the peter pan collar of her nightgown just visible over the topmost of the windmill blocks. It made her look almost as childish as Iain in the moonlight.

'You haven't got to do that,' Mharie said, when Mara mentioned the school, 'that isn't why I came down.'

'No,' said Mara, 'but, you're here now.' She smoothed the golden head ensconced on the pillows with their silk shaded covers and offered her a smile. They hardly knew each other, she realised, feeling the pulse of her sister's heart under her fingers. 'It's what I'd have done for the others,' she said, and hoped it was enough. Mharie offered her a smile like a lotus, slow-dawning and sleepy. 'Not Jeanie,' Mharie said drowsily. 'She'd never have needed it.'

'Jessie then.'

'Mm,' said Mharie. 'Maisie too. Wee Maisie would have got up to all sorts.'

'She gave that a pretty good go as it was,' said Mara, and kissed Mharie's temple. 'Catkin will tell you – Nan.' Then, as she tugged her sister's collar straight, 'If it comes to that, Maisie has a cousin or six who will make up the difference.' Finally, as an afterthought, Mharie's laughter ghosting away on the cedar-perfumed breeze, 'I'm sorry I wasn't there. Afterwards.'

Mharie shook her head. 'You're here now. I only hoped you would be.'