The third and final part for you all, I hope you enjoy and have enjoyed my little wander through the life that might be!

As always - please review I write for your enjoyment mes amis!

1948

Anna looked out across the garden, the heat of the august summer day had finally started to subside leaving them with a warm late afternoon and a cool breeze that drifted across the village. Their new home, she still thought of it as such – despite them moving there some 5 years before, was off the estate, next door to the village church and across from the cottage hospital, something that John found a constant source of amusement with a kind of gallows humour. Stepping out from under the gables, Anna walked towards her husband carrying out her pot of tea in one hand and a jug of lemonade that was made sans sugar and sans lemons – and as a result tasted disgustingly like an orange had been left to rot in a glass of stale water, but needs must in times of rationing.

"Mam, you shouldn't be carrying that!" Said an indignant Patrick, jumping to his feet and manhandling the jug and pot from her grasp.

"Paddy! I'm not an invalid – but if you want to be helpful you can fetch the milk … and there's some cake on the side." She called out over her shoulder, as she sat down opposite her husband at the table, pulled out onto the lawn by the boys. She surveyed the group together, the Bates family. Paddy was the only one to have been formally demobbed, in his long grey flannel trousers and shirt he had flopped down beside Emma, who, Anna was pleased to see, had acclimatised to becoming a Bates so easily. Unlike her parents who, although they had allowed Anna and John to keep their jobs, had insisted that they give up their cottage – refusing that their daughter night share a home in the grounds with three of the servants. She watched her eldest son for a moment, his arm around his young wife, their baby daughter on his lap – the swell of his wife's second pregnancy barely visible, she was pleased, pleased for them that things for them had finally come right, after their moonlight flit to elope, and 2 years constantly aware of the presence of her disapproving parents looming over them they could finally relax together, and it suited him. Sitting beside his brother was Ciaran, like his brother his hair was thick and dark, but unlike his brother he was shorter and narrow shouldered, still a serving member – some three years after the war had ended in North Africa, her son was dressed in his RAF blues, the tunic open in the heat and his tie pulled a little loose – he had come home just three weeks before , stationed in South Wales now - he had brought his wife, Molly, home to meet his parents. 5 years after they had married and four years since the birth of their first child, three since the birth of their second, now that Molly was heavily pregnant with the third they had decided to accept the MoD's offer of a training post in Newport.

"I think …" Began John, "That it is time for a toast!" he said coming to his feet. "I think that today, we should be very grateful for all we have, I know that your Mother and I are so happy that we have all three of our children back home safe and sound, and our 4 grandchildren, who I think we all hope will be spared the world we have endured for the past 7 years, and can, we hope, enjoy a happy – fruitful world … now as lucky as we have been so see our Paddy and Ciaran home safe and sound with us … I realize that we have not all been so fortunate … I have lost a son in law in our Aoife's Michael, who was lost at sea – but we have his son, our beautiful grandson who, I know, will do his father's memory proud. Also Harold Crawley – our Emma's brother, a more charming man, a more hardworking man yet to be found – taken from us too young. I think that today – we out to raise a glass to – absent friends!"

"To absent friends" Came the chorus of the Bates family, joined together in all their forms.

Anna sat beside John on the bench, a cup of tea in her hands and she smiled at him.

"That was a beautiful speech John … and so true."

"Thank you – I'm glad Ciaran's home, it feels good to have the whole family together again … well almost the whole family."

"Aoife? Yes … lets not pretend that she wont remarry though."

"You think?"

"She's a young woman John, not that she didn't love Michael … but I think she's hardy – and a romantic, she'll find love again."

"I'm sure you're right … you have been happy with me haven't you Anna?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Just reflecting – on life, you know how it is …"

"I know how you are John Bates if that's what you mean!"

"I'm serious Anna, not that I wish you hadn't waited for me, but I just wondered if I had never come home from when I left with Vera, or if my case … if I had died … would you have remarried?"

"I don't know – I know that if I had remarried, it would have been for companionship, not for love, I could never love another man as I have loved you."

"Good – I'm glad, because you know I often worried that you would have lived as some kind of spinster without me, and that … that is something I could never forgive myself."

"Well then … you needn't worry! You go on up to bed – I'll see Paddy and Emma off home."

"Alright then, see you in a while."

Anna gave him a kiss, gently he eased himself to his feet and went back into the house, she smiled quietly to herself and then:

"How long have you been eavesdropping Patrick Bates?"

"Sorry Mam … can I join you?"

"Do you really have to ask? Come and sit down here – I'd offer you and Emma a bed for the night but I know you'd rather get back to Manchester."

"Mam? …. Who's Vera?"

"Vera?"

"Dad mentioned a Vera – just then …"

"Vera … Vera was – a woman, who you're father was married to …"

"Married!"

"Yes – a long time ago, they married in the last century, before your father left to fight in the Boers."

"Dad was in the Boers?"

"He was … he was a different man then, a … a very different man. They married – and weren't very happy."

"What happened to her?"

"She died – in 1919, she commit suicide – and … and that was that, she was a very unhappy soul you see Patrick, a terribly unhappy woman. But before she died, she tried to black mail your father about … oh about something, which was big news at the time … anyway – your father left me in 1916 to go back to her, thinking it would make her go away – but it didn't. So he came back to me. And that's that … all in the past now though." Patrick looked at his mother, she was looking off into the middle distance, not quite meeting his eyes, he knew she was lying – but he also knew that his mother was an honest woman who wouldn't lie without good reason. To protect him, to shield him, to make his own life a little better, and he respected that – for her knew he would do the same for his own children.

None of the Bates children knew about their parents past, they knew that they had met at Downton on the day the Titanic sunk, and they knew that they had married in 1920. But neither Anna nor John saw any reason to tell their children about John's time in Prison, about his wrongful conviction for Vera's murder, about Vera at all indeed. That was all part of a history – which their children played no part in.

As Anna lay in bed that night, beside her husband she knew that the world around them was changing, Princess Elizabeth was pregnant, and would have her baby by the end of the year, a friend of hers in service in London spoke of the commonplace-ness of a television set in her employers home and across the world wars were being fought – countries divided up and men brought to trial for their actions in the war. She knew that the world was changing, and that her time left on this earth was limited. Threescore and ten … she thought as she closed her eyes and smelt the smell of her husband beside him and listened to his regular deep breaths … threescore and ten … but not tonight, not tonight.

I hope you don't find the end too down beat - it isn't meant to be - I was going for warm and uplifting!