Christmas cannot arrive fast enough. Una keeps Cressida's tickets in her pocket for the first 24 hours, but they threaten to burn a hole there from sheer impatience, and Una moves them to the security of one of the drawers in the rolltop desk. She folds them in a slip of paper she brands CRESSIDA TICKETS, so that there will be no confusion about what they are. That leaves the vexed question of Kiki, parrot in residence.

Martin solves this by petitioning for loan of her over what is in danger of becoming the traditional wrangle of Christmas decorations at the bookshop. 'For company,' he says as Una and Robin help with that year's greenery. He disentangles a string of lights and says, 'You'll be glad to be with family, of course.'

'Very glad,' Una says as she unwinds a battered pine wreath from the snare it makes around Robin. She holds the dried greenery out in his general direction and says, 'This wants replacing.'

'Will do,' says Martin, who is not looking, because he is busy scrabbling in a desk drawer. He emerges with a triumphant 'Ah!' and holds a box out to Una. 'As you won't be here for the holiday.'

It opens to expose a brooch in silver ichthys shape.

'Thought for years,' Martin says, 'it would make a good gift. Now it has.'

'Thank you,' says Una, tracing the ichthys shape of it with the pad of a finger. She doesn't ask what he means; Martin loves an excuse for a gift. And after years of having nothing, receiving them graciously comes easier to Una than it did once. Robin makes an exemplary teacher.

Robin leaps like a salmon to squint at the brooch, even as Una fastens it to her blouse and tucks the box into a pocket.

'Not to worry, Miss Bird,' Martin says, 'I haven't forgot you.'

Nor has he. There's a sheering sound like silk ripping as Robin splits the colourful paper with exuberant fingers, exposing four children on a mountainside that puffs red smoke. Adventures again, thinks Una, squinting at the cover. She's not wrong. Mountain of Adventure is writ large across the cover.

'Goats,' Robin says in exclamatory fashion, 'Like Auntie Emily's goats!'

'No,' says Una. 'Auntie Emily can keep her goats. They are my line in the sand.'

Gentle, nonsensical protestations from the others. Someone – Robin?– observes that the puffins have yet to martialize.

'For which your mother's everlasting gratitude, little bird,' says Una. To Martin she says wit haffected severity, 'You spoil her.'

'I like to,' he says.' It doesn't seem in your line.'

'That,' says Una, 'was emphatically not my sister's opinion when our Iris was little.'

'In that case,' he says, 'Kiki and I shall make a point of haranguing the consulate for you while you're away. I'd hate to become redundant.'

'Never,' says Una, and gathers up the mess of the wrapping paper, wadding it tight into a ball. They trade happy Christmases, and the usual peck on the cheek by way of goodbye. Robin is, naturally, more demonstrative.

Faith is trickier to wrangle. She comes to visit, as she so often does, after her late surgery on Wednesdays, and as Una dices onions for supper, she tells Faith about Cressida's offer.

'I've accepted, of course,' she says.

'You've what?' says Faith. She says it thickly because onions make her weep, they always do. This also accounts for the italics, Faith not being naturally given to them.

'Promised Cressida we'd come over,' Una says.

'Yes, but for Christmas!' says Faith. It sounds like Chrivsthbas.

'Chrrrrristmasss!' burrs Kiki from atop the bookshelf, where she sits exploring the remnants of a tin of pineapple.

'Yes,' says Una. 'That was part of the promise.'

She scoops the onions into cupped hands and deposits them in the skillet, where they sing softly to themselves. Una stirs them and Kiki swoops down out of nowhere and pecks stickily and benevolently at Una's neck. She swats, one-handed at this unsolicited display of avian affection with no success. Faith, apparently not to be outdone by a parrotlet, surprises Una by sneaking up behind Una and wrapping her arms around her sister. She also knows an opportunity when she sees one. Half-triumphant Faith says, 'You can't go. You've got a bird not Robin to look after.'

'We thought of that,' says Una and duly explains Kiki's holiday lodging. 'God knows why,' says Una. 'That Bird would – '

Faith doesn't let her finish. She says as she perches her chin on Una's birdless shoulder, 'Good with birds as well as Robin, hm? And you're sure you're not being courted?'

Una laughs because there is no other sane option available to her. At least it persuades Faith to let the subject drop.

To what Una suspects is Robin's everlasting disappointment, they do not board the wrong plane, there are no smugglers, and the chance of life behind a waterfall slim to nil. They land exactly where they should, when they should, and Una spots Joan first. She raises a hand and shouts, jubilant, 'Dr. Makori!'

Heads turn, whether because of this unladylike lack of decorum or because of the way Robin runs to and embraces the young black woman with outstretched arms is anyone's guess. Joan is smart and smiling as Una remembers her, green pea coat buttoned against the winter weather, blue leather driving gloves disappearing under her coat sleeves, matching blue scarf protectively coiled around her throat, and a fox-rusted beret jauntily atop her head. She motions them towards the car.

'I thought you ordered us not to stand on ceremony?' Joan asks as she pulls Una into a one-armed hug. They're both damp with drizzle and hampered by Robin, who eels enthusiastically between them for her share of attention.

'Seemed appropriate, in light of your new job. Robin, really!'

'She's grown!' says Joan and steps back a half-pace to take in Robin, age seven.

'The wonders of substantial meals and proper living conditions,' says Una.

'You don't have to tell me. Doctor, remember? Now, what's this about a parrot?'

'Isobel Blythe's idea,' says Una, bundling Robin unceremoniously into the back of the car. 'That girl is the most charming agent of honest-to-god chaos to ever whirl out of a dervish's nest, and that's a fact.'

'So, nothing like the girl who skipped church to clean house,' says Joan and grins a grin like a cracked mirror, wide and dazzling, but not without affection. 'Or demanded an old lady take in a street urchin without so much as a by-your-leave, while eating said old lady's doughnuts. Or…' Miles of grey sky and muddy English countryside slide past. Joan rabbits merrily onwards. 'And what does the vet say about a parrot?'

'The vet,' says Una with a laugh, 'is family. All he said on the subject was, Just think, it could be a monkey.'

Joan laughs. 'Well, it could be. Where did you vanish her too, anyway? I notice she's not with you.'

'The parrot? With Martin Swallow.'

Joan tilts her head, suddenly curious. But when she speaks it's with the practiced neutrality of her profession. 'I meant to ask about that,' she says.

'So Cressida let slip,' says Una. Joan takes the upcoming hairpin turn in thoughtful silence and with practiced hand. Una says, 'We're a lot together.'

'Yes, I'd noticed that,' says Joan. 'I do read your letters. They've definitely changed by the way, or I wouldn't ask.'

'You haven't asked a thing,' Una says.

'I'm about to, and you're going to clip me upside the head for it. Possibly I'll earn it. Cressida's not wrong, is she, thinking you're rather taken with Martin Swallow?'

To say it aloud is to admit to feelings not easily reboxed. Not, Una thinks, that she's had much luck that way, even without Joan's inquisition. Unbidden the memory of that summer evening boils to the surface. The sun in her eyes, the plash of the water and talk of Robin.

'No,' she says. 'Cressida has that right. She usually is right, though I never said so.'

'God no,' says Joan with emphasis. 'That's all we need – Cressida vindicated about her cleverness.' That head-tilt again, almost birdlike. Una has a sudden, sharp impression of Joan as she must be with patients. To Una she says, 'Then you are in love with him.'

'More nearly a schoolgirl fancy,' says Una.

Apparently Joan didn't expect an answer, because getting one, she brakes hard in the middle of the next, equally hairpin turn, which Una can't but think sets them up nicely for collision.

'I know,' she says. 'Have done for years.' This is unexpected and without context. Una briefly scans the landscape for elucidation but when the barren hedgerows overhanging the low stone walls prove unforthcoming, she turns perforce to Joan.

'I didn't mean to,' says Joan hastily, gloved fingers drumming against the wheel. 'But you know what camp was like. Never a private moment anywhere. So, I suppose what I mean is you needn't give me chapter and verse about long-dead ghosts, because I've known for ages that's exactly what they are. Long-dead and ghostly. I was there the night Bernice gave you that ring back.'

'I didn't mean to be. I was walking back from the sickbay and there you were. I didn't want to interrupt. I never said anything because I thought you'd say if you wanted us to know. Afterwards, it just seemed common sense not to.'

Una laughs. Impossible not to. Dr. Joan Makori always did have the sense God intended for her and a bit extra.

'And you're telling me all this, because…?' says Una, the question as unfinished and inarticulate as the gesture she makes at the barren hedgerows and the low-slung stone walls.

Joan shrugs, easy, fluid. 'Oh, I don't know,' says Joan. 'Maybe because I took for granted that if I knew, so did your bookseller. He's much too clever and far too close to you not to. And anyway that sort of thing comes up during courtships – even I know that much. And that's definitely what this has become – dare you to say otherwise.'

Before Una can, Joan presses on, 'At least according to Robin.'

'Robin is seven,' says Una and smiles. 'The world is an awful lot simpler at seven. If I squint, I can remember what that's like. I'm reluctant to spoil a good thing. Here, don't keep them waiting. Cressida will have your head.'

Opposite Una, Joan narrows her eyes, but seems to decide this is observation rather than evasion because she restarts the car.

'You're the minister's daughter,' says Joan as they go. 'Remind me how it goes? Out of the mouths of babes and infants?'

Una bats at Joan's shoulder. She then gets control of the conversation and steers it into comfortable waters by inquiring after Joan's various colleagues, competence, friendliness, handsomeness…Joan shrieks indignation and the car swerves. But turn about is fair play, and it's nice to know Una can still keep pace with Joan when occasion warrants. They wake Robin with laughter.

Cressida's considerable house looms into view. It is a massive, sprawling estate of a thing, with cornices, columns and elegant tracery in worn grey brick. There's a folly in the middle-distance, accounting for the house's absurd name. Una can just see it if she squints. Robin hops out of the car to open the monumental cast iron gate. It has finials like spears, and for a second Una looks at them and sees the Singapore market during the war, with heads weeping blood atop those spikes. She smells blood, buffalo and an overcrowded market. Then Una blinks away the rain and there is only the wet English expanse of a gravelled country drive. The gate gives an almighty shriek under Robin's sturdy young hands, and the car chortles along it lamenting the weather to itself. Since British cars are not, so far as Una can tell, designed for British weather in any way whatsoever, this attitude is entirely reasonable.

The others descend on them halfway up the walk.

'Auntie!' says Iain. 'I was going to fetch you.'

'Beat you to it,' says Joan. 'Rattling around in big English houses don't agree with me.'

'Not half as much as they disagree with Cressida, they don't,' says Bernice. 'The complaints I've had. I suppose you got them too?' She gives Una's shoulder a gentle punch. Then, spying Robin, 'This one is getting to be quite the world traveller. Old hat to you, of course, Una.'

'When, exactly,' says Una, 'do you have me gadding around England? Before the Anglo-Chinese School or after the Japanese let us go?' But there's a smile lacing her voice, because the babel-sound of so much clamour and chatter means home. Even if Una must stand under a grey English sky to hear it again.

'Poppycock,' says Bernice. 'You know damn well what I mean.'

Emily swoops down on Robin and gives her a kiss. Una says, 'Chopped liver, am I?'

'Hardly,' says Emily, and pulls Una into a hug. She has a kiss for Una's cheek too. Behind her Iain swings Robin up onto his shoulders and launches into a chorus of Van Amburgh is the man, who goes to all the shows…

'Ridiculous song,' says Bernice to no one.

'Bad luck, I'm afraid,' says Una. Robin has, naturally, learned all the words in the years since they were last together. Iain notices and turns his head to say, 'Someone's been working on our bird!'

'Your sister,' says Una, 'happened to her.'

'It's alarming how like my mother you sound when you say that,' says Iain, and grins before stooping to kiss Una's cheek. 'He tweaks Robin's nose and says, 'Though, that does explain the parrot.'

'Out of the rain! All of you!' This from a bellowing Cressida. She stands under what Una supposes would architecturally be called a porte crochet. With the bulk of her considerable home behind her, Cressida looks scrawnier and more out of place than ever. Una has no idea what she expected. But Cressida in a man's trousers and flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a kerchief round her head was not it. It's Cressida to the letter, but it begs the remarkable question as to why on earth the woman holds onto this grey stone monolith of a house.

'Well,' Cressida says, 'don't hang about! I haven't spent hours doing up a bloody great Christmas tree in the front room for you lot to catch pneumonia out here! Iain, put that child down and fetch their cases, will you? There's a good lad.'

Iain never falters. He swings Robin back onto solid ground with an apology and a bow and jogs off to haul the cases out of the boot.

Joan shouts right back, 'That's not how pneumonia works! If I've told you so once…'

Cressida practically marshals them into the front room, where there is indeed, to use that woman's elegant phraseology, a bloody great Christmas tree. It's like something out of Victorian picture books. Or, possibly, Una thinks wryly, out of the Christmas instalment of Enid Blyton. There are lights all over the thing. They wind and twist and glitter glassy-eyed and star-bright, like the many eyes of Bullfinch's Argos. There are baubles in more colours than Una thought possible. The usual reds, greens and golds, but also blues, purples and yellows. There is tinsel trim, a few porcelain St Nicks that bow unsuspecting branches, and a brash, polished star up at the top.

'Were you going for the Raffles look, or what?' Bernice demands.

'Emily and Iain helped,' says Cressida. 'Joan too.'

'I did the lights,' says Joan. 'I wasn't having Cressida climbing ladders after the last time.'

There's indignant snorting from Cressida and laughter from the others. Una, who well remembers Cressida's last fateful brush with a ladder, finds herself watching the other, older woman covertly. Better skin, thicker hair, but still scrawny and leathery. And still with those wrists that jut out at right angles. Una's no medic, but she's on Joan's side of the argument. She doesn't say so.

As they stand steaming by a fire that threatens to engulf the tree, Una peels off her coat and then Robin's. Bernice bustles into the room with a tea tray full of Runnymede Blue Wedgwood. This is only less incongruous than the consulate's Wedgwood clock because Una half-expects a house with so many ornate columns and cornices to have Wedgwood rattling about in it. It goes with the alarmingly botanical sofa stage left, done over in everything from beetles and ladybirds to lifelike zinnias. Also with the glossy, antiquated end-tables with clawed feet and curled legs. That doesn't mean Una expects Cressida to use the stuff.

Cressida obviously catches Una's look of incredulity, because she says, 'There's jumble sale tatt somewhere, if you'd rather. My ancestors will suffer several rotations of their graves if we use it, but that's half the fun.'

Bernice glowers. 'You are not,' she says, 'giving our girls jumble sale tatt.'

'Now, hold on,' says Una, 'I thought you put me in charge?'

'Against the enemy!' says Bernice.

'I see,' says Una, laughing good-naturedly as she accepts her cup of Runnymede Blue. It's full of a spiced Indian blend that immediately transports Una back, first to a tea shop Una and Li used to frequent, to a man with a sun-leathered face who used to say to her, Won't the British like it, when they come rescue us, Miss Meredith? But in the second instance to the ACS kitchen, the smell of spices, yeast and flour, and the uncompromising face of the school's cook, framed by that severe grey bun.

'You forgave Frenny for the cat, then,' Una says to Bernice.

'Impossible woman,' says Bernice. Una smothers her smile with more tea. From anyone else that would be a condemnation. From Bernice, it's the height of a compliment. Una fears for Evelyn Road.

Una takes Emily aside later. They go out onto the porte crochet, leaving the others forgathered in the drawing room. It's mizzling out, which seems a stroke of cosmic sympathy. Una shepherds Emily onto a nearby bench with a murmured 'A word in your ear, Emmy?'

Beside Una, Emily says, ''That's never good.'

'Hmm?' says Una.

'Something Elise said once,' says Emily. 'She said Cressida and the others used diminutives the way posh women wear expensive perfume. You remember how we all called her Leesey. Except you. She was Elise to you except when she was sick with malaria. She said to me once, 'Do you ever notice Una Meredith never shortens anyone's name unless there's a crisis?''

Una laughs despite herself. 'I never noticed.'

'Nor did I,' says Emily, 'until that moment. Then I never stopped noticing. Nellie was the exception.' Emily smiles, shakes her head and says, 'If I'm getting Emmy from you, something's wrong.'

The words Administrative Error spring to the forefront of Una's mind in lurid technicolour. The weather takes a sudden turn and for the next half minute mizzle becomes warm, wet droplets of water that fall improbably sideways and spatter the women in their cardigans and scarves. It patters tinnily against the roof of the porte crochet. The wind is a chill, wet thing that flays exposed skin and makes psalms blister along Una's soft pallet. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73. My tongue cleaveth to the roof of my mouth. I am poured out like water and my bones are out of joint. My heart is like melted wax. Psalms 137 and 22 respectively. Still Emily sits there, the liquid anguish of nascent dread blossoming in those pixie-eyes of hers.

Somehow, Una unsticks her tongue from the roof of her mouth and dislodges the stone in her throat. She folds Emily's hands in hers, which grow colder and redder as time passes. Then Una Meredith tells Emily Carnegie the how and why of her uncle's death in an Internment Camp somewhere in Canada meant for the Japanese. She does it with fewer sharp edges than the consulate, because Una remembers the cold-water shock of coming home to her own father's death, and that was peaceful. If Canadian internment camps were at all like the Japanese ones, peaceful seems an unlikely option. Emily blinks, once, twice, three times fast. Una watches the up-down of the young woman's lashes like butterfly wings. Una offers her a shoulder and Emily pillows her head on it.

'I never met him,' Emily says. 'You, and the others are more family to me than he was.'

'I'm still sorry,' says Una. 'The last of your family…' Another picture in lurid technicolour, this one of Carl with an iris behind his ear and a monkey on his shoulder as he fastens the clasp of a jade heart around the neck of a nine-year-old with a smile like a firecracker, and behind them, a serenely-smiling Li, one hand on the small of Carl's back. Emily's head shifts, tilts upwards, and she says to Una, 'You'll find them, you'll see.'

'No thanks to the consulate if I do,' says Una. There are nights when Iago sits on the shoulder that used to be Puck's and whispers, serpent-sibilant, They are dead now. All dead. It is difficult, at three in the morning, anxious and awake, not to believe him. To say, From birth I was cast upon you: From my mother's womb you have been my God. Do not be far from me. Keep me as the apple of an eye. Hide me under the shadow of Thy wings. Una does say these things. She whispers them fiercely to the ceiling, once for herself, and again for Carl, Li and Iris, who cannot be dead. Especially not Iris. Then, fish in hand, she prays Yeats, Though I am old with wandering/ through hollow lands and hilly lands…

At Una's elbow, Emily says, 'Maybe not. The consulate isn't run by you or Bernice.'

'No,' agrees Una. She squeezes Emily's shoulders and says, 'Don't worry, I gave him an earful.'

'I bet you did,' says Emily. Improbably, she begins to laugh. A real, silver-and-gold glissandi of laughter. 'Oh, that poor man. I almost feel sorry for him. At least you expect acrimony from Bernice and Cressida. But you…He never knew what hit him, did he?'

'No,' says Una. 'I really don't think he did.'

From the depths of the house, Cressida bawls for for order. Una steps indoors with Emily in tow. It's astonishingly warm after the wet English weather outside. In the corner of the room not dominated by the Victorian tree, is the hulking spectacle of a concert grand piano. Una barely has time to register it before Cressida claps her hands and demands music.

Una looks at Bernice and it's like stepping back in time. Except back then, the wood of the piano bench wasn't mirror-bright and the ivory of the piano keys not half this slippery. As Una takes her obligatory place, Bernice at her elbow, their eyes meet, and by mutual agreement they launch into Sleigh bells ring, are you listening…Somewhere, the other side of the room, Cressida cackles. She says, 'How much did we say? Fiver apiece? I told you they'd still be able to do that.'

'Oh ye of little faith,' mutters Bernice to Una, and they play on. They swap the raucous Sleigh Ride for Silver Bells while the others catch their breath. Then it's Let it Snow, and Una catches a flicker of surprise on Iain's face that they should know so many modern innovations, but it's sunburst-fleeting. Una shifts, Bernice never far behind, comfortably into Holly and the Ivy just to keep him guessing. This becomes Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day and Bernice says, 'Never did see what this one had to do with Christmas.'

'It was your idea,' says Una on the accompaniment. 'Anyway, I don't see that holly and ivy has much to do with it, either.'

'Pagan rubbish,' says Bernice without rancour. 'Robert sermonized on it.' More audibly, as they shift into It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, 'Don't make us do all the work! Sing out!'

As their impromptu choir bubbles to imperfect life, Una thinks it's shaping up to be one of the better Christmases she can remember.