Another hard chapter, and another content warning for period-typical prejudices and homophobia.

And to my lovely long-term lurking guest, this is just to say you made my day the other week. I've been wandering around grinning ever since. Few things terrified me so much as the writing of that chapter and to hear it resonated meant a lot. And I have to say, while I too have loved my previous iterations of Persis, I don't think I could write her any other way now. She and Cass just feel right. So if I can get hold of a decent plot, you may yet get that detailed story. But no promises.

1938

Catherine Forster, Kitty to friends and family, was not in the habit of keeping secrets. If she had been she might have seen fit to choose a less uncomfortable career than journalism for herself. But Kitty had chosen journalism, and she hadn't chosen it for the popularity and accolades any more than she had chosen it so she could make so many misanthropic men cup after everlasting cup of tea.

That did not mean Kitty was necessarily heartless. This was why, in the aftermath of Rilla Ford's electric dinner party, Kitty was to be found not asleep in her Cabbage Town flat, but in front of her well-worn Remmington typewriter, framed copy of The Kingsport Chronicle on the wall behind it, revising the copy of The Globe's latest trainee reporter. She thought, in a vague sort of way, that sooner rather than later she must tell Larkrise about Jims and the supposed brother he was living with. Kitty did not, for one moment, think Rilla Ford had temporarily forgotten the existence of Jims' natural brother, and even less did she think that memory would have so effectively petrified the amassed Fords and Hargreaves. Kitty Forster was no man's fool and she had not clawed her way from events reporter to police beat to news desk on the strength of her gullibility. Misplaced siblings did not cause the degree of stilted, stunted conversation Ben Nermin's conversational grenade had induced. They just didn't. Ask Teddy Lovall, who had four such brothers, none of whom lived with him, all of whom made for entirely normal, if halting conversation when touched on. No, the fact was that Rilla Ford had invented Jims' brother whole cloth. She had done it quickly, and effectively, and with a healthy dose of not-quite-supressed dread. And if Jims Anderson was living with another man then Kitty's family in Kingsport deserved to know. The gremlins needed protecting.

It was not entirely a comfortable thought. Kitty spared a thought for the little Fords, and how devoted they were to Jims. Even more uncomfortable though was the thought Christopher, Helen and little Sophy running rampant through Rainbow Valley all carefree unconcern, maybe with Jims for supervision. It didn't bear thinking about.

And if it ever came out that Kitty had known, and hadn't said…Well, they wouldn't forgive her; not Jem and Faith, nor Mara and Shirley and really, Kitty wouldn't be able to blame them.

So it would hurt the Fords. Kitty knew that unerringly. When it came to the point though, the Fords of Maple St had offered her the occasional Sunday dinner, this evening's affair being the latest and most trying, and Kingsport was Home. Was family. Some things just took precedence. No, she would simply have to do as she had resolved all those years ago and tell the truth at all costs. There was no other choice.

Into these musings, punctuated previously only by God Wednesday's sleepy canine snuffles, and the clack of the Remmington, came a smart rap at the door. Much too late for idle callers, thought Kitty, the back of her neck prickling. God Wednesday roused himself sufficiently to give a sleepy sort of grumble, but when Kitty didn't move he only turned himself over at her feet and fell silent. The knock came again. Wednesday sat up, and atop his woolly black head, two triangular ears twitched.

Almost Kitty decided to be asleep. It was late and this was not unreasonable. A third knock, more persistent than the others dissuaded her. Wednesday growled low in his throat and Kitty groaned inwardly. Nothing for it but to leave the copy languishing and hope her junior had the wherewithal to see to his own errors before tomorrow's meeting. Kitty pushed back from the desk, and with a parting glance for a framed copy of The Kingsport Chronicle, opened the door.

There was a woman on the doorstep. Dark hair, beautiful in an exotic sort of way, smartly dressed in red. More to the point, she too had been at that catastrophe of a dinner. The children called her Aunt.

'Miss Forster?' asked the woman on the doorstep and for a moment Kitty did not respond. She was rarely Miss Forster; in the newsroom by the time you had wasted energy on the niceties of Miss Forster could you possibly someone else had got the scoop, so they were all first names to one another. And she was Kitty at Ingleside, and of course had never been anything else at Larkrise, give or take Teddy's occasional Kitten. But then, as ever, Teddy was the exception to the rule. So Kitty did not immediately react, but she had no trouble placing Miss Hargreave. Yesterday, or perhaps years ago, she had turned up on this same doorstep, casserole in hand and offering Kitty well-wishes.

She had brought food again now, Kitty noticed. Not casserole though. The smell was wrong. Too sweet.

'I thought,' said Miss Hargreave, 'it would help.'

Kitty accepted the dish and motioned her visitor into the house. Idly she wondered what the sweet-smelling platter was supposed to help with. She did not wonder what had transpired to make Miss Hargreave look bone-weary with exhaustion. See further Kitty having got her job on more than a strong intuition.

She said, 'I can cook, you know. Not to Teddy Lovall's grade, or anything, much less Madrun or Susan Baker, but I can.'

'Oh, I'm sure,' said Miss Hargreave. 'After all,' and she smiled, 'culinary ability isn't a failure of feminism, it's a life skill.'

She had a lovely smile, Kitty thought, obliquely. No wonder she had charmed the Fords. Miss Hargreave smiled like a sunburst on a cloudy spring day and Kitty could not shake the feeling as she peaked under the checkered tea towel and gestured the other woman into a vacant chair, that she had come bearing trouble along with her baking.

Kitty had forgotten there was copy on the chair, and that Curiosity had a propensity for sleeping on said copy. She watched as Miss Hargreave lightly shooed the cat from its perch and began the elaborate wrangle of translocating the copy without actually disordering it. It was an acquired skill and Kitty was grateful Miss Hargreave had it. Now she smiled at Kitty again and said disarmingly, 'I'm glad it's not just us – Ken and Rilla visiting, or even just collecting the Cherubs always involves such organising. Re-organising, I should say.'

Kitty said nothing. That her reserve was atypical was unknown to the visiting Miss Hargreave and, therefore, couldn't faze her. Or else she was choosing not to be fazed. It could be either.

'Look,' she said, finally settling in the chair opposite Kitty, 'about earlier, what was said – about Jims – '

'You really don't owe me any kind of explanation, Miss Hargreave,' said Kitty. And indeed, she didn't. Kitty was clever; Miss Hargreave knew she was clever. The whole situation, such as it was, was strikingly obvious. Equally obvious was the trouble that had brought Miss Hargreave to the door, a platter of delicate, flaky, sweet-smelling pastry in hand. Kenneth Ford's colleague had stripped the theatrical curtains away from the truth, exposing Jims' indiscretions and peccadillos for anyone to see, and now they were all running around trying to stem the worst of the crisis.

'I think there is,' said Miss Hargreave, 'and it's Cass. Please.'

Kitty groaned inwardly. She felt the way she sometimes did when confronted with a particularly obstructive source, say a councillor who wouldn't give her a quote or a grieving relative that refused to speak with the press. Well, Kitty thought, if you wanted life easy you'd have done something else. Like secretary work.

'It shouldn't have come out like that,' said Kitty now, to placate her company. 'I do understand that, Miss Hargreave. I don't know what people tell you about the press, but we don't enjoy brutally carting others' dirty linen through the mud. Tea?'

She said this last out of slow-dawning awareness that she ought to at least gesture in the direction of hospitality. Miss Hargreave wasn't going anywhere; Kitty could see that. And this was going to be an ordeal. A long one. Miss Hargreave owed Kitty nothing, this was true. And Kitty did not particularly want her there; that was also true. But she had been just schooled enough in the ways of housekeeping by Judith Carlisle and Mara Blythe to have a sense of how one treated company. And if Judith could amicably offer tea to criminals and police alike even unto the small hours of the morning, then Kitty could do her due by the undemanding honorary Ford aunt. Even following a dinner of disastrous proportions, even with the clock showing an ungodly hour and the Remington throwing weird shadows across the sitting area.

'Please,' said Miss Hargreave, so Kitty rose and bustled towards the kitchen, Miss Hargreave following behind her.

'Say if you need help,' she said.

Kitty demurred, so instead Miss Hargreave leaned against the counter, arms crossed and fingers beating a fretful tattoo against her elbows.

'Anyway,' said Kitty, 'the point is, we're not all out to schism unsuspecting families.'

Miss Hargreave gave Kitty what Kitty supposed was a grateful smile.

'I'm glad you understand,' said Miss Hargreave. 'Persis thought – oh, I don't know. That I'd have to petition endlessly, I suppose on Jims' behalf for you to let the whole thing go.'

Kitty poured tea haphazardly into two dizzyingly mosaiced mugs, vintage a Rosedale coffee morning, and bundled them onto the tray. Only then did she turn, and catching Miss Hargreave's eye, said, 'I never agreed to do that.'

It was awful. Like watching Dog Tuesday cower, or one of Jem's criminals finally brought to bear. Hastily Kitty proceeded back to the sitting room with its uneven coffee table and jostled the mugs into position around the sweet-smelling pastry. Anything not to have to watch the crisis transpiring in her Cabbage Town flat.

'But you said,' began Miss Hargreave.

'I said I didn't enjoy it,' said Kitty. 'I didn't say it was unnecessary.'

'But you know Jims,' said Miss Hargreave. She made to resume her chair and had to again, per necessity, remove the cat. Curiosity squealed feline indignation and outrage. Kitty thought she and her visitor both sympathised, albeit in their own particular ways.

'I thought I did,' said Kitty. 'Not well – not the way I know Jem and the others – but a little. Evidently I was wrong about that.'

'Please,' said Miss Hargreave, 'you mustn't tell them. I know it's a tremendous ask, but you mustn't. Jims has endured so much as it is. It's…not easy, I suppose I mean. Love isn't, whatever the novels say, not all of the time anyway. And dragging him into the limelight to be gawped at because some friend of Kenneth Ford's thought to visit him, well that won't help.'

'It won't help Jem either, or my Gremlins, my keeping quiet,' said Kitty. 'You must see that. You can't really expect me to sit on my hands?'

'Not expected,' said Miss Hargreave. 'I – hoped – I think, you'd be sympathetic. Reasonable.'

There was nothing to say to this. On the table, the typewriter's shadow warped ever longer in the lamplight and Kitty's mug of tea grew ever colder and more neglected by the second. She'd only made it for something to do, anyway. The expectation that Kitty decline to warn Larkrise that Jims had chosen a lifestyle contrary to law, nature and God knew what else was so patently unreasonable that it was difficult to know where to start. She forbore to comment.

Opposite Kitty, her visitor said, 'Look, I'm sure you don't tell your family everything – '

'No, Miss Hargreave,' said Kitty, 'you don't tell your family everything, so it follows logically that I don't. What is it they call that? Post hoc ergo proctor hoc?'

'I really wouldn't – '

'I don't know either,' said Kitty, relenting. 'Look, it's Teddy that's good with that sort of thing. I just report the facts. I've made a career of it, even.'

'I know,' said Miss Hargreave. 'And you're good at it. We always read your column. But that's not at issue. Jims is harmless. He loves those children. And Tom – '

'That's the Anderson brother Rilla Ford invented?'

Miss Hargreave smiled, but it was a tired thing now, faint and watery in its sketch of the earlier sunburst. 'Something like that. But you'd get on, I think. He's good with words.'

'So's Teddy,' said Kitty. 'But he's somehow managed to keep firmly on the right side of what's legal. Nothing unnatural – No danger to children, either.'

'No one is – ' began Miss Hargreave, but then she stopped. Maybe, Kitty thought, her own face had betrayed the futility of the exercise. Or perhaps she was only tired of arguing. Certainly Kitty was.

Miss Hargreave sighed, and scrubbed at her face with her hands. 'God knows I'm not asking you to agree with me, Kitty,' she said.

Kitty bristled, not meaning to. Saw the bristling register with her company.

'Miss Forster. Forgive me. I'm not asking you to approve – only to leave well enough alone. For Jims. Just this once, say nothing.'

'You know I can't do that,' said Kitty.

'For the Cherubs then,' said Miss Hargreave, shifting in her chair. Kitty watched as she plucked fussily at the fabric of her skirt, worked it into creases that mirrored her eyes. 'Forget Jims, and me if it comes to that. But the little Fords – '

'You have Cherubs to think of,' said Kitty, 'I quite see that. I understand that, even. But you must understand, I have Gremlins. Quite a few of them, in fact. And I love them more than anything. I owe their parents so much more than I could ever hope to explain to you. Oh, Larkrise started as a place to sleep, but that was never all it was. You must know what that's like. What that means.'

Miss Hargreave did; Kitty could see the words hit home in the twist of her face. She was trying and failing not to look harrowed. Between them the sweet smell of pastry began to cloy.

'And that,' said Kitty, 'they come before everything for me, do you understand? Before even my job or my stories and anyone else in the world.'

'Please,' said Miss Hargreave, 'I'm only trying to protect my family.'

Kitty nodded. 'As am I,' she said.