Innisfree, 1952

Iain,

Writing to tell you the Lovall baby arrived safe. Father besotted – they've called her Catherine Elizabeth. Catherine after Miss Forster, who travelled down ostensibly for the express purpose of castigating Teddy Lovall for the tribute. Says she always hated the name. Mind, Faith vetoed all and any virtue names, Teddy wanted a family name and Isabella wanted a saint's name, so in the moment it seemed a compromise. Absolutely no idea what they'll shorten it to, because obviously all cat-themed variations are out.

Elizabeth, obviously, for the new Queen, even if she was away in Kenya when the announcement of her accession came through. I actually don't mind that if others do – Nice to think we may yet get a monarch that makes an effort to understand her 'great imperial family.'

Speaking of, Miss Forster's inquiries into Li, and Carl ongoing but still unsuccessful, as are mine. Hopefully contacts in a Hong Kong refugee camp prove more fruitful. I mention all this as I took the liberty of giving her your address as a second contact. Thought that with you and Emily being closer it might be easier to send intelligence to you.

Got your news by way of Emily – best of luck to you. You have no idea what you've signed on for, and I say that without having to do the brunt of the child-raising, much less in riotous Singapore. It's worth the effort though. Promise.

Love ever,

Una

P.S. I have no objection to Anglican candles. If I did, I'd have far less time for Bernice, much less stuff like Miracles or The Problem of Pain. I'm sending you a copy of the latter and also returning my father's confirmation bible. He meant that for you, Iain, wherever you found God. Robin can have mine some day.

The telegram comes not to Iain, but to Una in bookshop. It's the last gasp of spring and the girls at school, which is as well, because neither of them are there when she bursts into tears. They blot only the cover of Excellent Women, hastily closed where Una left when she accepted the telegram. Up in the rafters, Kiki hesitates, then swoops down to whisper avian nothings in Una's stunned ears.

Van Amburgh is the man, she sings as she nuzzles Una's neck, who goes to all the shows...Up in the air, the junior birdsmen! Up in the air and upside-down! Murrrderrr! Murrrderrr! Firecracker! Murrrderrr…steps right into the lion's den, and shows him all he knows…

Una reaches backwards over her shoulder and strokes Kiki's crop in gratitude. It's not her idea of comfort, but it's manifestly Kiki's, and the nonsense of it strangely soothing. Una allows it to work on her as she continues to stroke soft green feathers. Then she braces herself against the inevitable onslaught and begins to read.

To: Una Meredith

Confirmed. Li Meredith (nee Wai) alive.

More to follow.

From the desk of
Catherine Forster

News Desk

Globe and Mail

For a moment Una stares at it, open-mouthed. After all these years of fruitless looking, and tears and haranguing the consulate, Li is alive. Iris's mother is alive.

Oh, the things Una will say to her, and the things they will do. They always said that afterwards – They said many things. Now they can realize them. Idly, Una's traces the inscription on the flyleaf of Excellent Women. Martin's haphazard script, short and to the point: Thought the title was apt.

Una's instinct is to run to and tell Iris. But Miss Forster's message is cryptic at best. More to follow could mean anything. Li could be a hostage, half-dead, malaria-raddled, the cerebral kind like Elise English…Una's fingers slip from Kiki''s soft green crop to wind nervous and coy around her silver fish. This earns her an indignant squawk. Una ignores it. She thinks I will find out where she has gone…She picks up the phone, meaning to call Rosemary. She will be so pleased. Recalls Rosemary is dead and beyond earthly concerns. No doubt she knows anyway. Una tightens her hold on her fish. Then, with her unencumbered hand, she places a trunk call to The Globe and Mail. After much shuffling from desk to secretary to other desk, a Miss Ola tells her that Miss Forster is no longer in the office, try her Cabbage Town Flat, extension – .

Una does. It takes an age. The phone rings, and rings, and finally a tinny, far-off voice says, 'Your call will connect now.'

Thank God for that, thinks Una, her nerves fraying with each chattering of the pips on the line. The spikes of her silver fish dig needle-sharp into her fingers. On her shoulder, Kiki hops impatiently, pecking occasionally at Una's earlobe and grumbling It takes five box tops, four bottle caps, three wrappers…

Catherine Forster's voice crackles fuzzily through the earpiece, cutting off the Junior Birdsmen lyrics. 'Hello? Speaking?'

'Una Meredith,' says Una.

Oh my goodness, oh my soul, here comes the junior bird patrol! says Kiki in her most declarative voice.

'Of course!' Miss Forster's voice is still tinny, but there's a brightness to it as she launches full-gallop into what has the feel of a set-piece. Una doesn't mind; She used to land the Commandant with set-pieces of her own when occasion warranted. Impressively, the set-piece cuts through Kiki's best aeroplane impression. Una would apologize, but Miss Forster is already neck-deep in explanation.

'Sorry, there's only so much I can spend on outgoing communication, and obviously…Look, they're going to try and get her back … Having a hell of a time – sorry– '

'Don't be,' says Una. 'I expect that sums it up perfectly.'

'Right,' says Miss Forster. 'Anyone tell you that you are not at all as described? The point is, they found Li in a Hong Kong Refugee Camp, and the country is in a bit of a mess – well, you don't need the telling. China marked her as a Foreign Hostile or I guess she wouldn't have got in. Something about re-education. She was at Shanghai during the war. One of those places for families. Afterwards, obviously, having married a non-Chinese they…'

No, thinks Una, not hearing the rest. No. Not Li, too. Please. She heard about Shanghai. They swapped horror-stories in Raffles. Sumatra versus Shanghai versus Rangoon, the Dutch East Indies…To leave That and end up…Quite honestly Una doesn't know where Li ended up. After Shanghai it all becomes so much static.

Can you hear the grand announcement,
That their wings are made of tin (gee tin!)
And you know the junior birdsmen…

Kiki again.

Una makes an effort to refocus on Miss Forster.

'…Guess escaping took time,' says Miss Forster when Una's ears catch up with the conversation. 'Which is why you and yours kept drawing blanks. The Refugee Camp seems pretty recent. It sounded like she had to decide if she would stay and starve or bolt and maybe live. My contact thinks he'll be able to extract her.'

Thinks? Una wants to say. Can't he guarantee it? But of course he can't.

'Thank you,' says Una automatically. She cannot dispel the vision of Li in anything like the camp she and the others lived in. The prongs of the silver fish tails are sharper than ever, nettle-stinging against Una's fingers. Please no. Una's shoulders tense and her stomach clenches. Her blood runs alternately hot and cold, little knots of ice and worry rattling through it like quicksilver. Headlines float boldfaced and severe behind Una's eyes. Civil War in China… She's lost the through-line of Miss Forster's conversation again.

'…Won't happen overnight,' Miss Forster says.

'No,' says Una automatically. 'No, of course. Thank you, again. For all your help.'

There's a click as the receiver drops back into its cradle. For the length of an eternity, or perhaps a heartbeat, Una sits there, dizzy in her unbelief. Re-education looms spectre-grim against the far wall of the bookshop. The shadow of Shanghai is worse. Una tightens one hand against her fish, and with the other caresses the cover of Excellent Women. Flips it open and traces the inscription with a thumb. Thought the title was apt. She must tell Iris something, but she cannot tell her this. Una has no idea what Re-education means. Nor does she want to. But her imagination is traitorous and it conjures all kinds of grim spectres. Starvation, malaria, beriberi, comfort women… Oh, Una can conjure horrors to rival John the Divine any day. She prays to God to be wrong, anyway. Please God, let her be wrong.

To say it takes an extraordinarily long time to grant Li license to come to Canada is one of the world's many understatements. Every day, Una, Iris and Robin pounce on the morning post in case there is new information. Every day Una holds her breath for another telegram, from Iain, Miss Forster, anyone, telling her the paperwork is in order.

Una remembers the interval as a surreal one. Miss Forster becomes Kitty to Una and Rosemary's estate gets released. This leads leads to a bizarre and unlikely wrangle over her piano. The wrangle, as retold by everyone from an increasingly frail Anne Blythe, to Dr. Joan Makori, happens backwards.

Bruce wants the piano to go to Una. Says Rosemary would have wanted it. Una, who has improbably crammed two growing girls and a parrotlet into Inisfree's narrow yellow-brick construction, cannot fathom where to put a piano and says it makes imminently more sense for Bruce to have it.

'Don't tell me,' says Alice Caldicote when this vexed quandary comes up over Glen St Mary's Trinity Sunday coffee hour, 'you had a piano in camp.'

Una laughs, her cheap green china teacup chattering in its saucer. The new minister's first action as minister was to consult with the refreshments committee and replace the decrepit stuff of Una's girlhood. A laudable ambition, but somehow the newer model is worse not better.

'In fact, we had,' she says. 'And at Trinity House. But for once that's nothing to do with the issue. Where would I put a piano?'

Alice Caldicote shrugs and narrows her eyes. 'People move,' she says. 'All the time.'

'You never did,' says Una.

'Touché,' says Alice. 'But you're asking the wrong question. The right one is what on earth would you do with it when, inevitably you moved those girls back to Singapore.'

Una crinkles her eyes. She says, 'Anyone ever tell you that you went into entirely the wrong profession, Nurse Caldicote?'

'Well, am I wrong?'

Una declines to answer. She sips her church-strength tea, which is oversteeped and overmilked in equal measure. It tastes of tepid, astringent leaf dust. What she says is, 'Remind me why Jerry's Mandy can't take it, again?'

Alice heaves the sigh of a woman who has had this conversation more times than she deems sane. 'Because,' she says, 'Mandy Challow is wedded to an imperfect upright specimen Mick Challow gave her for a wedding present. Bruce can't understand it. Says it's always out of tune. I keep saying it has nothing to do with the gift – '

'And everything to do with the giver,' finishes Una, and smiles. She's seen Mandy's brand of wedded happiness, and that sounds about right. Never mind Una's said this herself, more than once. 'Funny the things we end up with, that way.'

Alice chinks her teacup and taps the silver ichthys snug against Una's white poppy. 'Know a bit about that yourself, don't you?' she says and smiles. Confronted with Una's raised eyebrows she says, 'I'll have a word with Bruce.'

Alice is as good as her word. In the end, all Una has to wrangle is Rosemary's reams of sheet music. They cascade out of the cedar box they arrive in smelling of crisp, leaf-brittle paper and lavender. Una sifts through them gingerly. Kiki is less reverent. She swoops down and snatches at pages, flying away now with Ständchen by Schubert, now Mozart's playful L'Amore un Ladroncello.

Una hums as she sorts, snatches of Bach, fragments of Chopin. And then, out of the jumble, of all the unlikely composers, Charles Ives. Una does a double-take. It's the sort of thing she would play, not Rosemary. Nor did she, it transpires. Una cracks the spine and there on the flyleaf is Rosemary's beautifully practised hand.

1939 – Una, I couldn't get to grips with the harmony. Maybe you can.

Presumably she meant to send it on and then the war intervened. Eyes misting, Una scans the index and finds, ah, there. Nature's Way. Pet wiegenlied of Bernice Allerstone. Difficult, chromatic music full of unlikely intervals. Bernice made it sound easy.

When the distant evening bell calmly bears its blessing,
When the moonlight to the trees speaks in words caressing…

From Glen St Mary to a prison camp at the end of the world. Una scrubs at her eyes and finds there are no words for the universality of music.

Further diversion comes in the shape of the senior girls' end-of-year dance. Iris and Isobel need dresses, and the women of Innisfree, Larkrise and Fox Corner converge in the Fox Corner sitting room, sewing amicably. Almost it has the flavour of camp life. Faith can't sew any more than Cressida, and is about as interested. But she keeps them in laughter while the machine whirls and Mull pottery chinks. Una squints over unforgiving green velvet and stitches sequins into what want to be peacock eyes on the beginnings a cheongsam.

A dangerously Chinese choice, maybe, but Una wants Iris to hold on to this piece of familial inheritance. So, were she here – and please God she soon will be – would Li. The sartorial choice is a painful one, too, because when Iris stands, arms starfished out and models the fabric, she looks heartbreakingly like her mother at this age. It makes Una miss Li with a vengeance. She should be here, agonizing over the fit of Iris's dress and fretting that no one taught her to sew like Una. To see Iris, swan-graceful and butterfly-elegant in her first proper evening gown.

Li should be in the Fox Corner sitting room too, lately converted to a dressing room by excitable girls. It should be Li, Una thinks, pins between her teeth, styling and coiling Iris's maternal inheritance of thick, dark hair. But Li isn't there and Una is – and yes, Isobel helps a bit, which has the effect of distracting Una's nerves, and Robin mines jewel-boxes for treasures ditto. But even so. This is a mother's job, coiffing, painting and fussing with jewellery.

Iris pulls Una out of these musings by saying, 'Do the clasp for me, Auntie?'

Once, Rosemary fussed and clucked over motherless Una and it meant the world. Iris isn't motherless, but it still feels the least Una can do. Like the picking-up of the torch Rosemary so lately set down. If it also feels like impinging on distinctly maternal territory. Una squares her shoulders and does it anyway. Iris was always more than a niece and anyway, what Li wants, Una is sure, is Iris loved and aware of it. So, Una moves, hands outstretched for the necklace, and feels her heart stop or near enough. She expected Li's ruby-hearted fish, perhaps because Una herself never takes hers off. They're so rote Robin doesn't count them as jewellery when she helps Una dress for evenings with Faith and the others. But that's not the necklace Iris hands her.

Half-buried in the cheongsam's high collar and so much dark green velvet is the jade heart Carl gave Iris in girlhood. Her first and last adult birthday gift from her father. He was terribly proprietorial about the clasp. Since he isn't here, either, Una sweeps Iris's thick, dark hair out of the way and does as asked. Then she turns her niece to look at her.

'You look beautiful, Firecracker,' she says.

'And me?' Isobel asks, sweeping in before tears can threaten. She's all in white linen, a maternal choice that ruffled girlish feathers until Una clicked her tongue and stuck this changeling-child in front of the mirror.

'You, Miss Mannering,' says Una with a smile, 'would charm down off a duck. And you know it.'

Isobel beams. Someone raps their knuckles against the door. Shirley, from the way Isobel's grin widens. She holds out her hands greedily for the flowers in his arms. Fairy flowers, Una thinks as Mara pins them to her girl's chest and wrists. The kind of thing Aunt Martha would have looked askance at. Ladysmock and bluebells.

'Don't,' says Mara wryly, 'bewitch anyone, will you? We have trouble enough without that.'

'Not a stone you can cast, Ariel,' says Shirley Blythe.

Isobel makes no such promise. Shirley grins and swoops to steal an unsolicited kiss first from his wife and then Isobel, even as his daughter squeals horror and indignation in time with Iris. A further rap against the door-jamb to the Fox Corner sitting room. Una isn't sure who is more surprised, herself or Iris when a disembodied voice says, 'May I?'

'Of course,' says Iris. She beams her firecracker of a smile at such astonishing wattage that Una turns her head needlessly. She'd know that knock, that voice anywhere. She doesn't expect Martin to be armed with irises for her Firecracker.

'I wasn't sure about the colour,' he says. 'But I know your aunt favours the blue ones, so I thought – '

'They're perfect,' says Iris and darts hummingbird-rapid to brush a kiss against his cheek.

Another memory. Li always wore her irises – blue, like these – behind her ears for Iris's birthdays. Una takes the flowers and arranges them that way now, gently plaiting them through the weave and twist of Iris's carefully-coiled hair.

Someone – Una loses track – insists on photos, and at first these are the ordinary, mantelpiece-poised variety. But for the change in the cast, these aren't worlds away from the photograph Faith armed Iain with when he set out for Singapore. Isobel and Iris, arms entwined and the Fox Corner mantle behind them. Then Robin joins the tableau, trouser-clad and grass-stained. Next thing Iris wears Kiki on her shoulder like a pirate and Isobel's arms are full of writhing, indignant cat. All three children are laughing, and it's contagious.

Afterwards, the adults sit in subdued fashion around the Fox Corner kitchen table nursing teacups of the Mull pottery variety and reminiscing about their share of dances. Glen ones and wartime ones, and the ones they improvised in camp, Elise trying to teach the others and Una and Bernice at the piano. The arms of the clock tick slow and lugubrious. Robin tries to sit with them, but she falls asleep at the ten o'clock mark and Martin carries her upstairs, Kiki following on the wing chattering somnolent parrot-nothings about murder and polly wolly doodle, Van Amburgh is the man...

They wonder if their adults did this – sat needlessly anxious kitchen vigils – and suppose they must have. Rosemary was one of Pym's excellent women, never far from a cup of tea or a kettle. No doubt she sat in the Manse and waited as they wait now. Or perhaps she cut across the valley and through the maple grove to Ingleside to sit with Anne Blythe and Susan Baker, half-hopeful and half-afraid their children's evening's sartorial agonies would be noticed. Would they be kissed or stand idle or shuck shoes that pinched for seaside interludes in too-elegant finery?

'Mostly,' says Shirley, 'I think Susan worried about Irene Howard. She had a mortal terror Miss Howard would inveigle her way into Ingleside somehow.'

Una laughs and says, 'Would this be by way of Jem, who never turned his head for anyone not Faith, or Walter, who never left the stratosphere, or you, who never noticed anything but aeroplanes until we blinked and Nan wrote home about old-world wedding rituals and Catholicism?'

Mara's laughter is warm, musical and decidedly changeling in tune. No wonder Isobel can charm the stars out of heaven. Shirley kisses Mara's knuckles and laughs too, but says, insistent, 'No, really. It got worse after that Binnie girl married…What was his name? The Gardiner boy?'

'Sidney,' says Una. 'Up at Silver Bush. The talk that caused…'

'Worse than Catholicism by way of old world wedding vows?' asks Mara.

'You have no idea,' says Shirley.

And so the evening wears on, the clock and amicable gossip harmonizing in a social key.

Later, much later, Isobel and Iris slip in flushed with giddiness and exhaustion, still laughing, and Shirley snaps that too, because it's the kind of moment that deserves to be if not bottled then at least frozen in time. Isobel has her shoes held loose between thumb and forefinger, and Iris's flowers are escaping their moorings. They look like seraph wings framing her face. They shriek indignation at being photographed less-than-immaculate, but that only conjures Shirley's version of the Blythe grin and redoubles his efforts. Iris laughs, silvery and exhausted, but happy, too.

Oh Li, Una thinks. Get here soon.

Innisfree, 1952,

Emily,

Newly back from Struan. I only promised Jerry we'd join him for the season – oh, years ago now. The air was cool and crisp, and I thought on arrival, that Carl would have loved it. Never did get a chance to be teary about it, though, because then Jerry was there, kissing the top of my head and tousling the girls, querying what we'd done with Kiki. (Three guesses who had Kiki. Jerry didn't need them all. Cue everlasting teasing from Jerry, who is vexed that all this time later they continue missing each other.)

Enclosing a sling for the baby when it comes. Li always went through dozens. I was stuck on any number of trains between Kingsport and Struan, so needed the project. The girls were playing at Mannerings and Trents for the duration, and they may have cast me as Aunt Allie, but you'll recall she never comes on the adventures until that latest story.

Thinking about it, you may not recall, as entirely wrong age for the books. Will send a set on to you with next parcel. Robin will never forgive me if that gosling of yours grows up without meeting the original Kiki. Look for them with next posting.

Give that gosling of yours a kiss from me when the time comes round, and one from Robin, too.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. All my love,

Una

Moon-in-the-Rain, 1952,

Auntie,

Arrived safe; One healthy baby boy. Emily's colouring, and what everyone says are my eyes, which means Mam's. Not the colour, just the depth of them, I guess I mean. What you call soul-quick. I see now what you mean about signing up unaware. I've known this boy hours, but also, I think, all my life. Emily is radiant – well, you'll see in the pictures. We wish you were here – I've head so many stories over the years about you and Iris, and of course I've seen you with Robin.

Cressida is threatening to send for you, but Emily says not until you've got Li back and can leave her with girls and parrot. Apologies. Parotlet.

Whereas, I think Bernice is trying to feed the 500, not just me and Emmy, notwithstanding the obvious food difficulties. Can't complain though. Not having to worry about things like meals is surprisingly helpful.

Joan sent a food parcel too. Also several long, detailed letters that are excessively medical and all incomprehensible. Does she do this to you, too? How do you translate them and will you give us a hint?

He encloses photos. Emily indeed looks radiant, if exhausted. She sits with the baby cradled against her arms, his downy head snug against her elbow. Elsewhere, Emily has him in the sling Una worked back in Struan, and his still-soft head rests, eyes half-closed against her chest. As for Iain, the pictures give the impression that no father was ever prouder or more enamoured of an infant. On Una's mantel, Carl grins devotion at an infant Iris in direct contradiction of this theory, but it's a near thing.

There's one of the baby, hands fisted and upraised as he lies in his cot. Iris did that, too. She turned windmills, and it seems this baby is no different. There's what Una suspects is an ill-got photo of Cressida and the baby, her with her orange-peel grin, him ruddy-cheeked, arch-backed and presumably bawling lustily. Also, what Una makes a more legally-obtained photo of Bernice in the old cane rocker, late of Trinity House, rocking the boy to sleep. Nature's Way, Una remembers, that's what Bernice used to sing to the camp babies. Robin mostly, but the few others they had briefly before Robin. Sometimes to the mothers whose wee, premature, malnourished infants slipped away on a bloody, moon-spattered wing. The song drifts through the Innisfree window, ghost-footed and tender as a kiss,

When the distant evening bell, calmly breathes its blessing,
When the moonlight to the trees, speaks in words caressing…

Difficult, chromatic intervals that Bernice softened into a caress. Or sometimes, in a classical mood, she sang Brahms, Lullaby, and goodnight/ With roses bedight…Never hymns. Bernice kept those for Sundays and wondered that Una could make a cradle song of Firmly I Believe and Truly or St Patrick's Breastplate. Una turns over the photo and Iain's careful copperplate winks up at her. Bernice with little Robert. No wonder Bernice looks so contented.

Martin appears unannounced, drops a kiss on her collarbone and says, 'Who's hung the moon then?' This has the effect of forcibly bringing Una back into the immediate present and away from Singapore. She cannot speak – not even her usual line about the normalcy of knocking and how ordinary people have keys. The news is too new and too much, so she hands the letter to him over her shoulder.

'Wonderful news,' he says, laughing. He pulls Una upwards and into his arms. Asks, 'Are there pictures?'

Una hands him those, to, watching as he scans them for clues of Singapore life.

'Robert was Bernice's husband's name?' Martin asks.

Una hums against his sternum, surprised by how pleased she is that he retains this obscure detail of someone else's history. Then she turns her head fractionally and they both squint at the photos, debating good-naturedly who young Robert resembles more closely. Emily's pixie-eyes they decide, but Iain's way of looking with them. A devastating combination.

Later, Una carries the pictures to Larkrise, where Faith, kneels among soapwart flowers attempting to stop their systematic invasion of the garden. Yesterday hampers her in the first instance and the flowers in the second. Their progress is considerable and their roots entrenched.

Una joins Faith on the bamboo garden mat, elbows her sister gently and says, 'Fox Corner hasn't had a letter?'

'Should they have?'

Una hands Faith a rag for her hands and then Iain's letter.

'Are there pictures?' asks Faith, whirling round. And then, 'Have you spoken to Ariel? Does Fox Corner know? I'll just – ' Una watches as Faith trips over her hem, feet and gardening impedementa in her haste to get to the telephone. She lets the letter fall and Yesterday pounces on it.

Una doesn't hurry after her. It won't be long before the Investigateers amass in the Larkrise sitting room to talk not murder, but the finer points of baby Robert, and who he looks most like, speculate as to Susan's assessment of his ears and fervently hope Iain's earaches aren't heritable. Una puts the kettle on. Yesterday bounds hither and yon, barking frenetic canine ecstasies about one more gremlin for the collection.

Soon Mara Blythe's fairy laugh mixes with Faith's jubilation. Shirley attempts his usual unruffled commentary but cannot quite suppress his glee. Christopher dandles his children on his knee, considerably tamer by comparison. He has weathered nascent parenthood too recently to consider it nothing but euphoric rainbows. This is no less true of his wife, Jonas Blake's pet granddaughter, Una now recalls, Emma, but she adjusts her glasses takes her turn agonizing over the photos anyway. Her golden head knocks lightly against a quietly content Helen's. Her Ben, is equally quietly hopeful, and Sophy monumentally unimpressed.

Murrrderrr! Shrieks someone not human stage-left, and Una knows Isobel, Iris and Robin have come with the adults. They fall in with the others, but it isn't hard to see that neither Iris nor Isobel is all that interested. They're at that awkward age – too old for dolls, too young for babies. Just old enough, Una suspects, that they have begun to be interested in the finer points of romance, and she watches as they covertly scrutinize their adults for notes even while they affect horror and indignation at their more overt displays. Ben Carlisle offers his contemporaries a textbook example. He leans too-casual by half over the back of Helen's chair and cards lazy fingers through her golden hair, grinning the grin of newly-consecrated love. On the floor, a trouser-shod Sophy does her best impression of Rosalind Russell's Girl Friday, rolling her eyes at the whole enraptured lot of them. Even so, she gamely sequesters and cossets Teddy Lovall's baby Kay, probably the better to explain the fine art of shorthand, Una thinks and smiles.

Someone says something about gremlins and Iris gets a hand on Una's ankle and pulls her forcibly into the discussion.

'Goslings,' Iris says authoritatively. 'That's what you and yours call them, isn't it, Auntie?'

Una stoops to kiss Iris's head. 'I think we established,' she says, 'you were singular, Firecracker.'

Iris beams her firecracker grin. 'We aren't talking about me, Auntie,' she says. 'I'm talking about the rest of your family. And I don't think little Bobby is going to be singular.'

Gentle laughter from the other adults. Una smothers a smile in Iris's sleek, dark hair.

'And,' says Iris, 'you and the other women called the babies goslings, didn't you?'

'That's right, says Una.

Iris nods approval. That's that then. Li to the letter, if only the other woman were there to see it. Una shakes her head. Please god, she soon will be. She knows the damage is done. Kingsport has gremlins, and she had a Firecracker. But the camp babies were goslings, and so will be all the Moon-in-the-Rain babies going forwards, Una knows. World without end, amen.