January 1946

It was still bitterly cold. December's weather had breached the barrier of the year, and all windows began early mornings with frost on both sides. Milo knew better than to begin a fire of any sort.

And yet...here in her father's house it was warm in the cellar, where she had lit fuel under the copper and allowed the water in it to simmer. The steam from the washing water was piped underground and would emerge near the stream half a mile away, thus not in any way traceable to her living in her own home.

Because...and here was where her logic began to falter, while she wanted to see Thomas with all her will, she equally did not want to see him. He would be the person Patrick Blackett would have been in contact with to tell him she was at Manchester.

And yet, either Blackett had not or, Blackett had sent word and Thomas had not come. Either way, Milo was not ready to see him.

But she was ready to see her own child.

Three weeks she had hidden here, warm and snug, sneaking out every so often for food, dressing as her brother or now, considering her appearance and age, her father. She had money still, and she was using it frugally. And she had lingered in places where Milo thought her son might pass, the post office, the pub, the church yard.

But she had not seen him, Ernest, her son. She had not seen him once. So, she would have to brave Downton Abbey at some stage if she did want to, Milo told herself.

Not today, she concluded, as ice began to form on the one window pane, high above in the cellar, at ground level. Not today.

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Patrick Blackett held out the letter to Thomas, as Downton's butler glowered at him. It was the second week in January, and already two weeks too late - already nearly five months too late. And for what? For Blackett to tell him he already knew?

"And this is Dr. Turing," Blackett told Thomas, who waited for Turing to turn round and acknowledge him, something which did not happen. Blackett looked back to Thomas. "For months, she never left Turing's side; developed much of this part of the machine herself and, to be honest, we might not have been so far on without her."

At this point, Alan Turing turned, and nodded to Thomas. Thomas nodded back, but then pushed past Blackett and took the man's hand.

"When you saw to benevolence towards Milo Ashby, you saw to benevolence to myself," Thomas told him. "My wife." Turing was unmoved.

"She seemed at a loss when I met her in Cambridge; I gave her a purpose," Turing told him. "Nothing untoward - " But Thomas was waving a hand towards Alan Turing, the word, "Cambridge" registering in his mind.

"I know it wouldn't have," Thomas assured him. "But, do you know where she went?" He looked between Turing and Blackett.

"I do not," Turing told Thomas. "She disappeared one afternoon, at Christmas." He nodded to Thomas. "I am glad someone seeks her, and that she is wanted."

"She is wanted, I can assure you," Thomas told him, his anger growing towards Blackett. "My thanks again." And then he stepped past Blackett and into the corridor that led to a flight of stairs which ascended to ground level.

"Thomas," Blackett began, following him, allowing the inner door to close behind him. "If I had known - "

"You wrote, Blackett," Thomas growled at him, "To tell me Milo was alive, and then do nothing about the fact that I did not reply? Did you not think to follow this up? With a phone call, perhaps?" He was angry, angry with Blackett; disappointed that his former lover chose to keep this from him. "And she was at Cambridge before coming here?"

Blackett sighed. A lot of questions, all of them legitimite. All of those he would ask of Thomas if the situation was reversed.

"I - " he began, but then broke off.

"There is another reason for you to be here, unknown to yourself," Blackett told Thomas. And, from his pocket he produced Douglas Hartree's letter. "The invitation comes, indirectly, from myself," Blackett told Thomas, as he read over the words that told Ernest he had a place working in the laboratory, with special tuition for his other subjects, the cost being met by the university.

"And?" Blackett asked, when Thomas had finished reading.

"If it were me, I would tell you "yes immediately, but it has to be Ernest's decision - my son's decision," Thomas added, proudly.

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All through a soggy, snowy January the electricity supply to Downton Abbey worked imminently. In the drawing room one evening when the whole house was plunged into darkness, Lady Mary cursed, a proper, fruity string of words that would surely have curled her grandmother's hair and bleached the colour from her mother's face.

"This damn electricity!" she stormed. "Something must be done! Get someone in, Goddamit!"

"Mother," soothed George Crawley, crossing to the cupboard where the candles were now more or less permanently kept, "We have had someone in - people in, from Ripon, from York. It's age, they've said," he continued, "And unless we can pay for a full re-wire...and unless copper can be found for it..."

"But none could determine the fault," Caroline told her brother. "Surely it must be something simple? From the generator building to the house, for example?" And so with snow falling and candles, they limped on that night, Lady Mary recalling the days when all of the rooms were lit so.

"Something must be able to be done," Lady Mary insisted. "Send for someone else, or find someone to rip the whole useless lot out and start again - !" And she broke off, aware that Barrow was in the room.

"Oh, I am sorry," Mary Talbot told him, "I did not mean it like that."

"Never fear, Lady Mary," Thomas told her. "It was put in neaely forty years ago. Times have changed."

"They have indeed," Master George told Thomas. "Tell me, has Ernest given his offer any more thought?" Thomas shifted.

"He has, and he wuld like to wait until April, when he is thirteen. It was when his mother began." And memories of that time, too, fleeted across Thomas's brain.

"Indeed," George Crawley told Thomas Barrow, "Please tell Dr. Hartree that I am happy to continue to pay."

"No need," Thomas told him. "He had been awarded money from the university, a benevolent grant for gifted students who meet certain criteria."

"And there has been no news of his mother," Lady Mary asked Thomas.

"No news of his mother," Thomas confirmed. He was still angry with Blackett - why had he written and not called? Had he intended for Milo to stay and work on his engine? All those times he could have gone to her. He had shown his anger to his former lover. But the one thing he did remember was the apple that Milo had left on the desk of Turing. What was that about? Had she been fretting in her old way and soothed herself with the fruit? Was it a gift for him? Or had she done an "Oppy"?

No, the Milo Thomas knew would not do anything like that. Maybe Dr. Turing just liked apples.

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It was past midnight on a mild March night and Ernest Barrow was looking at the stars. Draco could be seen far off, and Venus had swung high. The hunter was low on the horizon now - soon he would not be seen for another six months, until autumn came again.

He should be in bed, he knew. What had Mr. and Mrs. Scholtz told him about a good night's rest? "Ernst," his German father had told him when his brain was restless and sleep would not come, "With a good night's sleep, tomorrow you can do anything."

And his mind was restless now. Ernest did not think he had spent too much time with Flora. But her father had spoken to his father, and Thomas had spoken to Ernest. "See if you can find another friend, for now," Thomas told him, in his usual benevolent manner. He hadn't told Ernest off. But it was enough to lodge in his mind that being with Flora was not a thing to be done.

He sighed. But he would be gone soon, to Manchester, and a new life. He had earned it, with his skill, and he was wanted.

He would miss Downton Abbey, and the people who lived here.

And then realised one of those people was watching him.

"You should be at home," he told Flora, glancing nervously in the direction of the chauffeur's cottage. If someone had seen them, they could at least confirm that he had told her to go.

"You'll be going away soon," Flora said, a light sadness in her voice. "I dont want you to go away."

And then the truth of Ernest's discomfort came to the fore and, as Flora crossed the cobbles towards him, he told it to her, as her wide, pale eyes lit on his face.

"I want to stay here and never leave here," Ernest admitted. "When I knew I had a mother, a mother who had borne me, I was so desperate to see her I wanted to run across the North Sea to find her. I wanted to take her ring back to her, that of her and her husband, and - "

"Ring?"

Ernest got it out of his pocket. It was a simple gold alloy, but it had been carefully folded in a handkerchief and left with his birth certificate and her wedding certificate when she had left him with the Scholtz family. Flora watched it glint in the moonlight.

"She wanted me to have it; she wanted me to find her, of this I am certain," Ernest told Flora, the words slipping from his lips whthout care. "And then I was told she was dead...dead at the hands of men who ruled the contry I grew up in," he added, carefully. "And now Mr. Baroff adopted me,so I am Ernest Baroff now."

"All that's good," Flora ventured, equally carefully.

"And now she is alive. But where? And to leave here now, if she were to come back? To leave Thomas, and Downton Abbey?" He laughed, hollowly. "I have walked around this place and have imagined my mother here. I do not even know what she looks like, but I have heard many stories of what when she was little." Ernest smiled. "Jusy tonight, Mrs. Parker told me he caught her hiding in the chauffeur's car when he took out Miss Sybbie's mother, when he should not have - "

"You mean...Mr. Branson?" Flora giggled. "I've not heard that one before!"

"And trying to catch rainbows in the fountain, and, when the whole of the staff had been looking for her, she had been sitting in the kitchen all the time...and then, she got to go to Manchester, and then Cambridge, and worked with the best, and met my father - " Ernest broke off. Even now, he did not wish to speak the man's name.

"Mr. Barrow married your mother when she was sixteen so she could do all of those things," Flora told him. Ernest nodded. He knew that. "And now he has made you his son...I can see why you wouldn't want to go - " Flora turned, and made to go.

"There is...something else," Ernest told her. Flora turned back, and Ernst had stepped quickly towaeds her, taking her hands in his. And then he drew her close and kissed her on the lips. It didn't last long, but Flora ended it, breaking off from the embrace, and stood apart from Ernst for a moment. And then, of her own will, crossed quickly to him and, on tiptoes, kissed him back.

"I'll miss yer too, Ernest," Flora Parker told him, "Honest I will, sorely. But yer got ter go ter Manchester, don't yer see? There's nothing else here for you to learn from Mr. Molesley and it's not forever, and yer can come back for holidays..." she trailed off. "His Lordship is supporting you to do this, and the university has given yer a scholarship..."

And in Ernst's logical mind, there was nothing to stand in his way. But in his heart, he did not want to leave his mother's home, nor Thomas, his father, nor Flora, who made his spirit saw when even he just glimpsed her.

"I cannot disagree," Ernest told her. "But - "

"But, we can still be friends, Ernest Baroff," she told him, trying to imitate his accent. "In fact, make sure you know that we will be friends forever and always."

And after that, she stood on tiptoes once more, and pressed her lips to his.

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Time at her old home had given Milo to think.

Birds began to raid the field a the back of the cottage for ephemera for nests. Snowdrops and then crocuses began to appear in the lanes.

Days began to get warmer, with cold mornings of frost and white cobbles outside the door.

Not that Milo went outside much in the daytime - how would it be if she were to be caught? A policeman came to ask her who she was and what she was doing in the property belonging to Thomas Barrow.

She had managed to wash the sheets from the bed she had moved downstairs, as well as some of her clothes, and had found an ingenious way to dry them after being in the copper. The copper's flue was channelled up an iron pipe, which was hot and kept its heat all day. A small rack she used to use to lay out her electrical device parts was in the closed up shop, and Milo was surprised how well it had circulated the heat.

But she knew she couldn't stay there forever.

That late March day, with two collared doves flitting backwards and forwards from the eaves of the house opposite, Milo's mind drew back to Manchester, and to Alan. He had been frutrated with the two women mathematics graduates who had been allocated to his office. Cicely Popplewell and Audrey Bates, gossiped and tittering at one thing or another, or rattled about their day, things which Milo had learned women did a lot, and something which she knew Turing would be irritated with.

And irritated he was, for one day he had left the building only to find Milo had wandered into the wrong building. She had remembered her time there, with Rutherford, and had been trying to get into the Victoria building.

So, when they had returned, Audrey had commented about Turing being late, and he had lost his temper with them both, telling them that it came to something that all two mathematics graduates could aspire to were form fillers and document filers, although having been trying to locate something in their unfathomable filing system was beyond him - had they been using a variation on a a Lorentz cypher? Or was it something that adhered to the Fibonacci Series?

Milo had tried not to laugh, and was aware that she could not remember the last time she had laughed at all. And then Blackett had arrived, filling the doorway in his louche way, as he listened to the Audrey and Cicely's complaints about Turing, to which Alan had dismissed out of hand.

"Well," retorted Blackett, "If this is how you treat women, it is no wonder none of them wanted to come within six feet of you!" And, at his word, it reminded Milo of how he had been with Oppenheimer, and she had turned at that moment and shot back, "Don't be nasty, Blackett!" before she could help herself.

He hadn't been half as cross as he ought to have been with her. Aside from a sneer and a black look, Blackett had stalked away.

But, he had been told to shut up in his own laboraotry by a hanger-on of one of his employees- logic dictated he should have been angrier.

Which led Milo to believe that perhaps Patrick Blackett had known who she was after all.

"I cannot tell you," Milo told Alan as they walked home that night, an early autumn evening. She had stumbled over an uneven pavement and he had caught her arm. It was her feet. the bones had not mended straight, and her feet were not as sure as they had been before the War,

"I did not ask, as you did not ask," Turing replied. But Milo stopped, something on her mind.

"I knew him, Oppenheimer," she told him, and laughed at the distant memory. "He was sent to work at the Cavendish; Blackett was his mentor. And Oppy was so annoyed about Blackett - although he had other mental problems as well - he dosed an apple in cyanide and left it on his desk." Milo shook her head. "Blackett didn't eat it, and Oppy was on holiday before the realisation hit."

"It would take more than Blackett to annoy me," Turing told her. "I do not go in for...fairy stories..."

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," he mused, as they continued to walk back to the Blackett's home.

"But if you worked with Blackett, you must have been an experimental physicist?"

"I was," Milo conceded, "And I still did not think it was possible." An outright lie. "Oppy just could not make anything practical work. That's what irritated Blackett."

"Ironic that he was put in charge of the Bomb, then," Turing told her, "While I was in charge of the Bombe. Ha ha."

Milo nodded, not knowing what the "Bombe" was, nor wanted to find out. The war was past, and she just wanted to forget about it.

"But...you must know some mathematics?" Turing added, as they neared home.

...Dirac, Sommerfeld in Goettingen, and...Aitch Bee had taught her some...

"Not enough," Milo admitted. And, when they had got back, they hurried to a quiet space in the attic where Alan took her through some of his own mathematics.

"It looks like...matrix mathematics to me," she told him, "I don't rightly understand it all"

"Heisenberg," Turing replied.

"I worked with him...for a time," Milo nodded.

Now, as she thought back to that evening, as Alan went through several exercises with her, Milo considered the work at Manchester would be the best thing she would never be involved in.

She did feel guilty that she hadn't told Alan where she was going. And it had never crossed her mind to go back to the house and confide in him.

Nor had she considered that to walk was ridiculous, even though she had walked far futher, once, with other women taken under suspicion of being spies.

They had borne it together, as the SS guards commented in their hearing what they would like to do to them sexually.

She had money, had had, on that Christmas Eve, been able to board a train. It was funny how a culture conditioned a person.

"I am giving you a five pound note," Alan told Milo on that evening of the mathematics lesson. "I found it in your rooms at Cambridge. I apologise that it has taken me so long to remember to give it back to you."

And that was what she had used, to get back to Downton. Milo had had it in her pocket ever since that night, and her hand had brushed against it when she had found Hartree's letter.

"I am glad you are my friend, Alan," she told him, "And I wish you luck with Blackett, he seems strict, but he is fair and honest, and a good man, even if he is being spied on by the Soviets." And that had been the first time Milo had seen Alan Turing look completely confused.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

Lindemann. He had told her. But Milo's silence answered for her.

Her mind then dwelt on Frederick Lindemann, and how he had treated her when she hung her head at the threats he had laid on her, how the safety of her family depended on her silence.

And Milo looked out of the window, watching the signs of spring, feeling glad, and not for the first time, to have returned home.

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Ernest was sitting out in the yard again, watching an army of ants march to wherever ants went in the evenin. He hung his head. Even from out here, he could hear Flora's parents shouting at her.

"What's the matter?" Albert, the youngest footman, bringing in the coal.

"I've got a Flora into trouble," he told Albert.

"Really?" Albert pushed up his spectacles.

"Last night," Ernest told him, mournfully. "My father is very cross - her father is very cross, and her mother." The shouting continued, but from what he could hear, it wasn't all one way.

"Ernest!" came a shout from the door. "His Lorship wishes to see you!" It was Larry. He scowled at Ernest in the darkness.

"Now you're done for," Albert told him, as Larry pushed Ernest as he stepped inside. As the door closed behind him, Larry pushed him against the wall. Across the hall, more shouts arose.

"I saw you kiss her!" he declared, as they got to the back steps that led upstairs. "That's what they're arguing about!" Ernest sighed.

"I like your sister," he told Larry, but Larry turned away.

"And you kissed her?"

"I kissed her. Only a kiss."

"Aye," Larry snarled, "But what else did you have on your mind?" Ernst felt himself shudder. It was clear now why there was so much arguing. But the truth was he had never thought about Flora like that, nor any girl. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where the shouting was continuing. He supposed Flora's parents didn't know that.

"I should hit you, for what you've done!" Larry told him, which, Ernest thought later, was not much of a threat. If you wanted to hit someone, you did it, rather than threatening to. Larry had given his hand away there. But there was something in the boy's eye that Ernest did not like.

Someone else obviously thought that as well, and as Larry stepped back, Thomas stood between them.

"Upstairs," he told Ernest, brusquely. "Wait at the hall door, I'll be up in a minute." Ernest climbed the stairs looking back when he neared the top. Clearly Thomas hadn't meant to be seen by anyone, for he had gripped Larry's shirt with one hand, his head jerking as he was talking, his words staccatoed, like someone issuing a command or a warning of some kind.

Ernest turned back, looking at the inner door that led out into the main hall of Downton Abbey, before pushing through it. Behind him, footsteps on the stairs became his father and he pushed the door open for him.

"Master George wishes to speak to you," he told Thomas. "And - " he looked past his father, "Flora. I did kiss her...but she kissed me too, and that was all! And - " But Thomas waved his arm.

"Come," he told Ernest, and he led him into the library. Along with his mother and sister, Master George was waiting for them. He got to his feet when Thomas entered.

"Ernest," George Crawley said, and held out his arm in a friendly gesture. "I have had a second letter from Manchester, from Dr. Hartree. He has arranged your living accommodation and your tutor for when you arrive in April." He stopped, waiting for Ernest's worried face to relax from the worry he was betraying.

"Now, there is something I wish to talk to you about, concerning young Miss Parker," Master George continued. But, before he could ask, Ernest took a few steps from Thomas and began to talk in haste.

"She came out to talk to me...she saw I was upset...and she was kind to me, and I kissed her..." He looked at George Crawley desperately. Did this depend on him leaving? "She is my friend, your Lordship," he continued, "And then she kissed me back and told me we were to be friends for the rest of our lives."

Was that it? He had been honest. And perhaps it would stop Flora's parents shouting at her. Farming with Mr. Davies had its appeal.

"It seems clear to me," Master George told Ernest, "You will go with Mr. Barrow and explain that to her parents. Then you can get yourself organised to leave."

"Leave?" Ernest felt panic fill his chest.

"Look, I can imagine, a year ago, when you were with your German parents, that you could hardly have imagined what your life would be like a year later, and everything you've done?" Master George shook his head. "God knows, I've made some decisions in my time I regret..." He broke off when he saw his mother's quizzical look and the one of surprise on Caroline's.

"But, I do not regret - " Ernest began. But Thomas nudged him, as Master George held up a hand.

"Her parents will hear from you that you regret it," Geroge Crawley told Ernest, "And in doing so you will tell them how muh you are looking forward to beginning the term after Easter in Manchester with Dr. Hartree.

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Seven months after being incarcerated at Farm Hall, the Uranverein were released and repatriated back to Germany.