Incredibly, the days until Iris's arrival pass slower even than the days following that first, half-crazed letter to Frenny Razdan. Expectation, Una thinks, as she consults the porcelain macaws, has a lot to do with it. There's no knowing when Iris will appear, or who she is these days, much less what happened after Una bundled her and Li onto that fateful cattle car. Sometimes, in the white hour of three in the morning, Percival Curtis' discourse on that necklace, A necklace to pray Yeats on, comes back to haunt Una. Li never prayed Yeats, but Una does, hand to the blue heart of her silver fish, fervently as any psalm. I will find out where she has gone... She does it often these days, as the shadows of the aspen in the back garden warp across the ceiling in strange and intricate weave. Una sees again Li as she was at the station, hears her refusal to gift Iris Cecilia Meredith's locket because that was for When Iris becomes a lady. Sees it and prays fiercely I will find out where she has gone and I lift mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.

Li, Una thinks, the weird, elastic warp of the aspen searing itself into her mind's eye, what on earth happened?

The sun comes up and the ghosts ebb. But Iris and her necklace loom large again in the evening, and many evenings subsequent. Diversion comes in the shape of Robin, wide-eyed and wakeful. She clutches one of the Singaporean cuddly menagerie. The latest is a striking silver-and-navy tiger with outsized head and paws. Atypically subdued for Emily's usual, but perhaps more to the taste of a growing young girl than the kite-bright colourful creations of those first few years in Kingsport.

'Read to me, Mama?' she says.

It's The Ship of Adventure these days, and it's the usual ebullient misadventure, with ships in bottles, treasure maps and extravagant teas, right up until Phillip Mannering befriends a monkey. When he does, the tears catch Una off-guard.

The monkey is absurdly child-like. This shouldn't be a surprise because God knows Blyton's Kiki is nothing like a real parrot. No. The monkey isn't childlike, because Kiki – the original, not Robin's – is strikingly childlike. Mickey the Monkey is strikingly Puckish. He clambers over crates and through tunnels and onto Phillip's shoulder. All Una can see is Puck, Iris's devoted, simian brother. Puck cradling the last remnants of Cecilia Meredith's china and wailing. Puck screaming at the guards while Una, Li and Iris lay inhaling the dust of the attic, their noses level with the slats of the floor. Puck terrorizing Una's kitchen, chasing Nenni, playing chess with Carl, or the piano with Una…Tormenting that poor, unfortunate vet…

Blyton's Kiki chatters 'Mickey and Kiki, Kiki and Mickey,' which has the effect of setting off their Kiki, ditto. Una's throat prickles and squeezes painfully at the thought of what Puck would have made of a parrot. Oh, he'd have hated the competition. At telling Iris someday soon - please God make it soon - that Puck is dead.

'All right?' says Robin, little hands feeling for Una's elbow. She is astonishingly like Bernice, the way she does it, right down to that cupped-elbow gesture. This is why, Una realizes, blinking furiously, mothers and aunts aren't meant to cry where children can see.

'Keeping faith with a ghost, little bird.'

'Puck?' says Robin.

'Lucky guess, was that?' Robin giggles and kicks from under her covers. She manoeuvres Una closer to her, so they are both lying down on the narrow bed with the Flying Geese quilt. Una's chest is flush with Robin's back and this makes reading nigh impossible.

'I can read the rest just me,' Robin offers as she snuggles close.

'Not on your life. Kiki and I want to know if these children ever get a holiday that doesn't go amok.'

'Mama, the adventures are the point,' says Robin. She says it with the extreme patience of one explaining something to the incurably dense. Una kisses Robin's glossy dark head and smiles against the smell of orchid soap and sleepy child.

When they finish the chapter, Una swaps Northern Cradle Song for Dvorak, Songs My Mother Taught Me. The falling sixths linger like ghosts, like echoes, long after Una stops singing. Una keeps vigil a moment longer than necessary to see Robin is smiling asleep.

Down the hall, the telephone rings. Robin writhes, lazy-cat fashion and says groggily, 'That will be Mr. Swallow. You'd better get it.'

Not asleep after all, then. Una shakes her head; She forgot it was his evening to telephone. Puck's fault, of course. Or Mickey the Monkey's. You owe me a debt Puck, Una thinks. I haven't forgotten.

'You,' she says to Robin, 'are becoming more imp than bird by the day. I blame your cousin.'

'I'm right though,' says Robin, and her grin stretches chasm-wide and starlight-bright.

Another kiss for Robin, and Una answers the phone. She must still sound teary, that water-tracery of the ghost of a sob still lozenge-painful against her throat, because Martin leads as Robin did with, 'All right?'

'You might have warned me,' says Una, 'that those intrepid children took on a monkey.'

'Mannerings?'

'We know others?' asks Una.

'Well, Robin…No, of course Mannerings. I really had no idea. What do they name it? Not Puck?'

'Mickey,' says Una, which naturally sets off Kiki again. Mickey and Kiki, Mickey and Kiki…In surreal counterpoint to this avian recitation, Jo Stafford comes on the radio singing Haunted Heart in the background, sweet and low. It's a veritable night for ghosts. This one is dark-haired and holds a poetry book under one arm, and he takes up residence opposite Puck. It's an incongruous thought, because boy and monkey would never have got on.

Haunted heart won't let me be,
Dreams repeat a sweet but lonely song to me…

'Mickey and Kiki, eh?'

'Don't you start,' says Una, but she's laughing now. Stafford still sings sweet and low, but it sounds less like a heartache and more like a serenade. Walter slips into nothingness. Puck's lingering ghost bows elaborately and vanishes whence it came. It's not the Japanese bow Una taught him, but the courtly variety he aped off of Carl in an impish mood. Una smiles at the fading ghost.

Martin hums approvingly. 'Much better,' he says. 'You wear laughter well.'

Trinity House, 1950

Cressida is threatening tickets. Wanted to warn you. Also threatening a return to Trinity House. Told her you got final say in that, as it was your house and only my per annum that kept my name on the paper. Realize you would disagree but not the point. Between you, me and the bedpost, if Cressida does want to come back, I'd let her. It will suit her better than that catacomb of hers and will be company when Emily moves out. Unless, naturally, you want to come back.

Want to, Una thinks, incredulous. She aches for her home. The smell of it, the sound and noise. The clack of her heels against the pavement, the hymnody of the mynas, the scent of guavas and the shimmer of fireflies of a hot summer evening. Perhaps if she was there she could hold Iris close again and promise that this time she would go with her to Safety. She wants Bernice to glower and Cressida to bawl orders, and Carl to wander absent-mindedly up the walk with his latest pet in tow. He can have hundreds of buffalo if only he is not dead. But to expect all of this would be greedy. Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.

But maybe, Una thinks, when Cressida's envelope arrives, it would be acceptable to accede to Cressida's summons to Singapore for a wedding. Emily's letter, arriving on its heels, settles the matter.

Trinity House, 1950,

Una,

Cressida will order you, but I'm asking. Please come. It's going to be all strangers from Kingsport, and I want someone at my side that is mine. Bernice will be there, obviously, but I want someone next to me in that receiving line that doesn't masquerade as a porcupine.

I know, because I've read your letters and because Iain has told me about them, that his family will probably be lovely – but I'm the wrong religion, and the wrong colour – the wrong everything, and once you gave a home to someone not so different and loved her anyway. Please. Don't be cross at Cressida. Kiss Robin for me and come home.

Emily

There is no gainsaying Emily's letter. Martin numbers her among the children Una counts in her heart as almost-daughters and is not wrong. Una writes back acceptance and makes plans to return to Singapore. And because there's no sense in being that close and not trying to break through the paperwork morass ensnaring Iris, Una packs, in addition to wedding linens and finery, a ream of birth certificates, baptismal records and marriage certificates. Then she wires Percival Curtis, care of the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School and tells him to send Iris to Singapore, dates enclosed. Una will get her the rest of the way.

Robin is jubilant. She hangs bat-fashion from the kitchen rafters, which place she has climbed by dint of terrifying acrobatics that enthral Kiki and horrify Una if she thinks to hard. Faith, watching this pas de deux between parent and child looks unlawfully amused. Probably, Una thinks, because Sophy Blythe was scaling all manner of edifices and walking ridge poles from the moment she first pulled herself up on the coffee table, as did Faith before her.

Another exasperatingly accurate observation from the bookshop quarter; Una doesn't cope with heights or acrobatics. She nurses a cup of tea in an effort to blunt the edges of Robin's latest stunt, which sees her leap gazelle-graceful from rafters to floor in one daring, fell swoop. This is a mistake. Nothing, not all the tea in the world could fortify Una in anticipation of Robin's conversational segue, which she lobs with all the carelessness of a sprung grenade into their sitting room.

'When we come back from Singapore,' says Robin, 'will you and Mr. Swallow marry?'

'Excellent question,' says Faith, helpfully from her particular armchair.

Una chokes on her mouthful of tea only after scalding the roof of her mouth, and manages, 'What gave you that idea, Miss Bird?'

Robin says, 'Because Mrs. Mannering and Bill Smuggs marry at the end of Ship of Adventure, and he's sort of our Bill Smuggs, isn't he?'

'Is he?' asks Una. Yet again The Ship of Adventure has an awful lot to answer for. Puck's ghost is the least of it. Cautiously, Una assays another sip of tea.

'Well, I think so,' says Robin. Before Una can argue, Robin says, 'I think you should. He's nice.'

'There's a bit more to it than that, darling,' says Una.

Undeterred Robin hoists herself onto the counter an says, ankles swinging, 'Like what?'

This time it's Faith that chokes on half-swallowed tea and Una smothers a smile against her tea bowl, red with butterfly stamp. Faith is more than welcome to field this answer if so minded. She's not, apparently, though she is a lovely shade of tea-rose pink.

All Faith offers, half-curious and unhelpful, is 'I thought Miss Bird was someone else's name for Robin?'

Una sorts through and dismisses various answers for sister and child before deciding it is entirely the wrong time of day for this conversation. If Faith won't answer, Emily can wrangle one when they're next together.

'I think,' she says in the tone that brooked no nonsense with ACS pupils, 'one wedding is lots to be getting on with. Especially if I have to get you back to Singapore for the occasion. Especially if I have to get you into a frock that's halfway smart, Miss Bird.'

Robin looks unconvinced, but not so unconvinced as to stay and press the point when there are adventures to be had. She's off in a clatter of rubber-soled feet and cacophonous parrot to the tune of Van Amburgh is the man, who goes to all the shows… and Faith's sunbeam laugh.

Because it's a wedding taking them home, Una conjures Bruce's heartfelt wedding gift to his sister-in-law back in 1929 and embarks on wedding linens for Emily. She embroiders them by hand. Gold on red silk, Una remembers. A terrible, unforgiving fabric, but Una works it on a hoop by the lamplight of Innisfree's front room, and in quieter moments in the anonymity of the flat over the bookshop. Sometimes she stitches it at Larkrise while simultaneously trying to answer various familial questions about Singapore. Some of these are easy; Wedding customs, the Trinity House menagerie, what to wear. But one afternoon Mara Blythe pauses the ongoing murder investigation to say, 'Our Iain's never coming home is he?'

Una thinks this unlikely. But it's easier – so much easier - to feign sudden preoccupation with Kiki taunting the Larkrise Dachshunds.

Anyway, Mara always was clever. She says to the silence, which was answer enough, 'I rather thought not.'

Una hums apology.

Mara waves it away with the theatricality of her birthright. 'He's happy,' she says, and it isn't a question. This is an easy thing to answer. More than easy.

'Yes,' says Una. Then, more elaborately, 'He's himself.'

Mara nods, satisfied. She says, 'We almost stayed in Scotland, and more than once. I could hardly go asking him to do anything less than find his home.'

Una sews on, no particular design in mind. One afternoon she extracts the hoop and sees Yeats in the stitching.

And walk along long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.

A good foundation for a marriage. A hopeful vow to seek each other out, always. Una traces the spherical golden apples with the blunt end of her goldwork tool, and shakes her head. She supposes Emily knows her well enough that she too, will look at the design and see Yeats. Emily, after all, taught Yeats at Una's elbow for years, while they were allowed their impoverished school. Oh, she'll see other things too, the moon, mynas, the curling leaves of iris flowers, but the apples first and foremost. Finished, Una's hand slips to her silver fish, Una prays that no more wars will disappear Iain from Emily. Milton had it all wrong about standing and waiting; It's not Godly, it's agony.

This time Bernice meets them with a car.

'I thought the garage was for the goats?' says Una, seeing this unlikely thing in English Mustard colouration.

'Hello to you, too,' says Bernice. 'Robin! I'm putting a brick on your head before you go, remind me. You can't get any taller.'

'I've tried that one,' says Una. 'It doesn't work. Also, she cheats when I measure her against the door jamb. Goes up on her toes and arches her back.'

Bernice laughs heartily. Fussily, she bundles first the cases and then Robin into the car before ushering Una in and careening off into the middle distance. Una thinks she has taken rickshaws with more predictability.

'Where's the parrot?'

'Suffering the tender mercies of the man that got Robin hooked on those adventure books in the first place,' says Una. Bernice shoots a calculating look Una-ward and takes a hill at a gallop. 'Don't look like that. He's with you on Robin growing. Wants to cut her off at the knees.'

Bernice harrumphs. She says, 'Joan's right. You do talk as if you're describing a family unit.'

'Altogether,' Una says ignoring Bernice, 'I think I prefer Joan driving.'

Bernice snorts. 'I thought she was guilty of overzealous ribbing?'

'Well observed. Are you the kettle or the pot in this instance? Certainly you're what Martin calls the Anglican Inquisition. Anyway – that's the wrong side of the road! – Joan was considerably less aggressive behind the wheel. No, don't change here. You'll choke something.'

'Demonic little thing, isn't it?' says Bernice, unruffled. 'I've got it on loan from one of your neighbours.

'Do be reasonable,' says Una, 'you are manifestly possessed of a devil yourself. Mind you don't completely scrap the infernal vehicle, hmm?' Then, for the sake of her jangling nerves, 'Turn! Just here!'

'What do you know about it, anyway?' asks Bernice amicably and swerving drunkenly.

'Who do you think drove in our house?' says Una. 'Certainly not Carl – no one would have sanctioned it with his eyesight. Li and I took it in turns. That's a hedge coming up on your – No, don't stop – we'll stall. What are you doing anyway?' This last as, contra Una's instructions, Bernice abruptly stops the car. Sure enough it makes an irritable noise and the engine gives up the ghost. Consumatum est, as the Anglicans of Bernice's variety say.

'You might have said,' says Bernice, climbing laboriously out from her side of the vehicle. Awkwardly, Una clambers into the now vacant space. She allows a half second to count her limbs and catch her breath. She decides she and Bernice had worse runs in camp.

Una turns her head and inquires of the back seat, 'All right, little bird?'

'Robin's fine,' says Bernice, installing herself in what, until moments ago was Una's seat. 'I suppose you do remember what you're doing?'

'I cannot possibly,' Una says, 'do worse than follow your example.'

Bernice grumbles and the engine remains stubbornly unresponsive. Una was right about the stalling. She gets out and cranks the car back into recalcitrant life. Gloved hands on the wheel, it comes back to Una why she and Li used to trade the job back and forth. Neither of them ever warmed to driving, but it was worth it with Iris chattering to them from behind and Carl making a fuss of whichever animal was closest. Typically that was Puck, though sometimes Akela woke up and whined to rival the engine.

Now Bernice chatters and Robin joins in. It's not remotely the same, except in that it's eiderdown-dense and comforting.

Una knows they've turned onto Evelyn Road when she hears Cressida's almighty shout, 'Oh good! They're still alive!'

'I told you so,' says Joan mildly.

'Is Una – oh, well that explains it. Bernice isn't driving.' So saying, Emily runs to meet them, and Una has to pull the car up short to avoid collision.

'Thank you,' she says, pulling Una close into a painful-tight hug. Una returns it.

'We wouldn't have missed it for worlds.'

Bernice says, 'Don't mind me, I've only been with you how many years now?'

'Quite,' says Cressida. 'Like fish. More than three days and you go off.'

There's a lizard, jewel-green and glittering on the verandah. Una reaches out a finger and strokes him.

'Ah,' said Bernice, 'you found Harry. We couldn't work out if your Harry was still alive, so call all lizards Harry.'

'He was hardly mine,' says Una but she smiles in spite of herself. Iris will be so pleased, she thinks, to know there is still a Harry the Lizard at Trinity House.

They are still jostling and ribbing and talking over each other when Iain and his family rejoin them. Briefly, Una wonders what they must make of the rabble that Emily clings ivy-tight to as family. But only briefly. She is too busy revelling in being back. Una passes a grateful hand over Kuan Yin's smooth jade head and commandeers the kitchen before Bernice can stop her. She makes tea and feeds the hens as she used to. When Bernice tries intervening, she's far too late.

'Leave off, Bernie,' says Cressida, 'You can't expect Una to let you boss her around her own house.'

'Let!' says Bernice. 'I like that! The idea that Una Meredith ever let me get away with anything she didn't want! See further the automobile earlier.'

Cressida snorts. She says, 'That was just good sense.'

With two red tea bowls back in Kingsport they are down to eight. Una supplements the set with one of the Christmas Old Country Rose mugs. Somehow, they have survived shells, bombs and Occupation. Well of course they have, Una thinks wryly as she designates the mug as Robin's – No one normal could possibly want the pattern. No, that's wrong. Li loved their Victoriana. No one but Li, then.

They have also, Una sees, re-furnished the house. She knew from Bernice and Emily's letters that this happened, but it's different seeing it. Seeing it turns Una's stomach into a tensile knot seconds before reducing her to water. This is Trinity House but not as she knows it. Next to the piano is an citrusy-orange divan with deep brown trim and legs the curl underneath it. There's a coffee table in matching wood and a glass-inlayed top, and where Nenni's footstool used to be there is void space. Una's eyes slide over it and Iain, perched on the arm of Emily's chair -daffodil yellow with a blue diamond stamp and matching footstool – says 'We thought we should leave that for Nenni.'

Una sets the tea tray down on the alien glass-topped coffee table and crosses the room to pull Iain awkwardly into a hug. He submits with good grace. He turns, kisses Una's cheek, and says, 'It's good to have you back, Auntie. It's been much too long.'

'Amen to that,' says Cressida.

'Oh, go on,' says Una. 'When were you last here, Cressida?'

Vaguely she registers the surprise of Blythes not Iain at this bolder, more forward Una Meredith. But barely. All her attention is for Emily and the others, and she can see it's the same with Robin. Home, Una thinks and the weight of it settles golden and liquid in her blood.

'Come on, you,' she says prising Bernice away from the teapot. 'Shirley's Ariel knows her way around a teapot. I take it the piano still works.'

It does. Soon Iain has Emily on his arm and waltzes her in time to Valse Frontenac.

Then Una shifts and changes for Rhapsody in Blue. Bernice follows. She thinks she catches Shirley's raised eyebrow, as he follows his son's lead. It's not that he hasn't heard Una play since returning to Canada. Judith Carlisle has an under-utilized spinet that she's been known to appropriate. Blute Nur, Bach, full of bleeding, weeping hearts in moments of catharsis. If Ye Love Me, Tallis, a reminder to be merciful to the consulates and Hendersons of the world. Biblical Songs, Dvorak, when she wants to pray. But never the jazz of Trinity House. Never Gershwin. Not like this.

Someone not encamped with Una says 'Modern for you, isn't it Una?'

'Hardly,' says Cressida. 'Do Gershwin, Una.'

'This is Gershwin,' says Una, not turning round. 'And a staple of Trinity House weddings.'

'You know what I mean,' says Cressida. 'The one that slithers. Shock them properly.'

It would, too. Una knows exactly what piece Cressida means. Ministers daughters play Bach, Tallis, and in daring moods, Dvorak. They do not collaborate with the widows of Anglican vicars to play It Ain't Necessarily So. But Una does, and the melody dips low and sinuous as Virgil's blue-black serpent rearing up to strike.

The things that you're liable to read in the Bible warbles the right hand in rich, ponderous lethargy, It ain't necessarily so… Bernice stops playing somewhere around the improvisation. She claims the theory of the harmonic progression eludes her. Always has. Sometimes Una thinks, Bernice enjoys listening. And maybe trying to puzzle out where Una will take the melody. Una slips down the ladder-rungs of the piano, dropping lower, lower, and then swooping heron-sudden, up out of the depths of the instrument to astonishing B flats and Ds that have no business working when played that high, but do, anyway. The pedals conspire with her to hold the notes long, longer, and then unravel them into the air like flags unfurled.

Cressida grins the orange-peel grin. Unnecessarily she says, 'I always liked that one.' Then, gruffly but affectionately, 'Una Meredith never met a piece of music she couldn't navigate blindfolded in the dark.'

'That sounds about right,' says Iain. He turns Emily under his arm. Una forebears to comment. Some battles aren't worth fighting, and this is one.

Iain and Emily's wedding is a small, familial affair, as per what Una now considers Trinity House tradition. Also Trinity House tradition to hear the newly-weds talk; Rev. Peach's officiation at the service. Una supposes it is, at that. There's an old joke Bernice tells about Anglicans. It goes; Do something once and it's an event. Twice is a habit. Do it three times and it's tradition. Well, near enough, anyway.

Something that should not be tradition but is; The extreme difficulty faced by the young people finding an officiant. They are gracious about it – see further the observation about tradition – but Una wouldn't wish it on them, anyway. She says none of this. She dresses Emily's hair with orchids and calls her beautiful. All in red and gold, she is at that. She reminds Una of Li, or maybe of the way Una and Li pictured Iris at her wedding, give or take a careworn crease.

Cressida produces a hairpiece so elaborate and overwrought that no one can fathom why she hasn't auctioned it off aeons ago. Bernice takes one look at it, all curlicued silver vines and improbable clasps and says, 'What godforsaken attic did you dredge that out of?'

'More to the point,' says a laughing Joan for all of them, 'why did you keep it?'

Instead of answering, Cressida cackles like a hyena. She cackles all the wilder when Bernice produces the pearls Robert gifted her for a wedding present and coils them round Emily's throat, where they shimmer smooth and nacreous as moonlight.

Robin waltzes in wearing a creation of gauzy green with ribbed edges and lacewing sleeves. It makes her look about three years older than she already is, and Una underlines a mental note to leave Martin Swallow well out of sartorial decisions for her girl. Joan doesn't help, brandishing lipsticks and paint like armour, even as she shepherds Robin off to one side.

'Here,' says Una and fastens a brooch of forget-me-knots at Emily's throat. The young woman affects playful relief that that's all it is – no antiques or lingering ghosts here. She kisses Una's cheek and quotes Essays in Idleness.

'If you follow the ways of the world…' and that's as far as she gets.

Una swats Emily's silk-shod arm lightly and says 'Not today of all days, Emily.'

They laugh, and across the room Robin and Joan laugh too. Robin now looks at least five years older than she is courtesy of Joan. Una makes the fatal mistake of saying so.

Emily's pixie-eyes flash and she says, heedless, 'If you run about the streets pretending to be a madman…'

Bernice narrows her eyes. This does nothing to prevent Emily's wedding day beginning with laughter.

So, it's not the Catholic wedding Iain's mother almost certainly imagined. Una doesn't really think Mara minds. Even if she does, it's not a stone she can cast; Una can still remember the Anglican service that was the Fox Corner Blythes' wedding compromise. Specifically, Una recalls the way both Susan Baker and Mrs Elspeth McNeilly clucked and the happy couple were oblivious. So no, Una doesn't think it bothers Mara Blythe quite so much as her children or Emily supposes. She kisses Emily with good grace and hugs her like a daughter when the service ends. Una can't remember the McNeilly reception of Shirley, though she thinks it was warm enough. But she knows this is at the very minimum the inheritance of Susan Baker's olive branch to the half-fairy, half-Catholic young woman with fishing-folk origins when she came to Ingleside Christmas of 1917.

Afterwards, Iain sees to it that Rhapsody in Blue plays. He proffers his arm to Una and waltzes with her, smiling the smile of the well-content. His family might worry he's abandoned church and calling, but Una knows better.

She must say this aloud, because Iain flashes the Blythe grin at her with its inscrutable mixture of charm and mischief, and says, 'There is no life so undesirable as that of a priest.'

'Emily's been teaching you,' says Una. It's a wedding, so she breaks the old rule and smiles.

'I couldn't let you women have all the fun,' says Iain. 'And don't you have to pay a forfeit for not taking that stuff deadly seriously?'

Una's smile broadens, stretches to her eyes. How well Iain learned them all. 'I'm dancing with you, aren't I?' she says. 'Isn't that enough?'

That grin again, like a coruscation, a sunburst. 'Look,' says Iain, 'I know Isobel's the dancer, but I do respectably. Well, I think so.'

Una laughs, kisses his cheek and hands him over to Emily as Rhapsody in Blue becomes Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree.

As Una watches them, the Rev. Peach finds her and reiterates Frenny Razdan's offer to help reconstitute the ACS.

''Maybe in another life,' says Una. She watches as Robin spins under Shirley Blythe's arm, the lacey green overlay of her frock flaring out and around her. 'One gosling is firmly my lot these days.'

Call it a half-truth. Robin might be the only gosling Una is actively raising, but as she watches Emily and Iain to the tune of Haunted Heart she redoubles the sentiment of months ago. Robin has four sisters of the heart. Elise and Nellie might be dead, but Joan is thriving, Emily is radiant, and Iris - Iris is all but home.