Timothy's instincts proved doubly correct. Joan Parker did like Shelagh. She had been so startled by Patrick's confessional telephone call that what he told her of his new fiancée barely registered and initially she marvelled at the small, discreet girl, as she unconsciously considered her. The old-fashioned quaintness was so strangely juxtaposed by the deceptively youthful face as they discussed cross-stitch and tea cosies over lunch and Patrick patiently sat with her husband, answering the same questions he was asked every time. But then she heard her soothe Timothy's woes over the pantomime with robust sense and blossoming wit, already maternal; and she started to like her for herself. She watched her eyes endlessly seek Patrick, his slavish awareness of her every gesture or cadence, and once she caught an instance when their eyes found each other, absorbing each other in their own world; and she felt so like a voyeur she had to look away. She had loved Patrick as a son so long she scarcely knew a different love for her own children. She had waited and prayed with her daughter in the war, willing the familiar dark head which had climbed her trees, trudged home with textbooks and proudly walked along the road in his graduation gown to reappear at her door. She could not grieve to see something of that young man returned, refined now by grief, nor fail to like the gentle catalyst for his happiness. When a summons arrived and Patrick vanished at a twitch upon the thread from the surgery, they talked of Timothy and family, then places and books. When the girl shyly asked for Patrick's and Timothy's chest sizes, she told her, uncovering the reason and lending knitting patterns for jumpers to be made as Christmas gifts for the family which by then they would share. And when Patrick returned to usher them away, she kissed her goodbye, a benediction for the woman who would be her grandson's mother. Yet, after she closed the door and calmed her husband's confused questions, 'But where was Elizabeth? Why did Patrick not bring her? And who was the little boy?', she went to her room and found her box of photographs. A tall, dark-haired young woman joyously cuddles her baby; she gravely smiles beside a thin RAMC officer on church steps; lovingness perches within the posed stare of a studio photograph to be taken into war. The vibrant woman within the images was now more cold and lost and dead than she had ever seemed; and Joan Parker sat on the edge of her bed and quietly wept.

They drove away from the Parkers' house in sunlight laced mist and in a quiet park near Poplar stopped to walk through piles of leaves in smoke tinged air. Patrick left them feeding chilly ducks to make his 'one short call', returning an hour later to find them smiling over hot drinks in a café. For some minutes he stood outside the window, watching before he entered. They sat laughing, Timothy explaining something at great length, his arms windmilling, while Shelagh teased him with lively questions. For that affectionate expression alone, he felt he could never love her enough. Their naturalness unnerved him; the ease of his son's love for his lover and hers for him almost frightened him. After wandering for months in a labyrinth of uncertainty and guilt, the new reality was still a mystery, too beautiful to be believed; every morning when he woke, he expected to find it shattered. Frozen in contemplation, afraid to believe the truth, it was peculiarly as though he had died himself and must watch someone else with their beloved child, aching for a forbidden and unreachable joy. But another instinct urged too, whispering to move beyond the glass and into life, leaving the past in the freezing chill; enter, embrace them both and, for the first time, take them home.

Shelagh's only knowledge of Patrick's house was vague and distant: a short wait in the sitting room while he searched unsuccessfully for a lost instrument, and two professional visits to treat Elizabeth Turner early on in her illness. In almost two weeks since their betrothal, she had never been to the home which would be hers in weeks.

The reason for this had been unspoken between them, but simple and understood. News of their engagement had been better received in many ways than he had expected. At Nonnatus House, the reactions were so entirely predictable that part of him wished he had been present when Sister Julienne made the staggering announcement simply for the amusement of watching them all. Nurse Lee smiled but could not hide her astonishment, which he suspected was at the thought that anyone would abandon their entire life for so shabby and tired an old man; Nurse Franklin was momentarily struck dumb, but swiftly regained her sang-froid and roguishly told him that it was 'Tickety-boo and marvellous', the comment so arch that he knew it was an allusion to something although neither he nor Shelagh had any sense of what. Jane and Nurse Miller were sweeter, kinder, with Nurse Miller shyly saying it was 'really lovely', before scuttling away from his thanks. Fred grinned, while the Noakes were as cheerily unperturbed by the bombshell as only a couple who had packed up their lives, moved to another continent for six months, returned to no home and then had a baby could be. He knew that there had been fervent demands for information made of Shelagh, but her chuckle hinted that she quite enjoyed their excited curiosity. The nuns were harder to gauge: he doubted Sister Monica Joan fully understood, but while Sister Evangelina harrumphed at him, this was not a new experience and she was not particularly unpleasant. These kindnesses he suspected they owed to Sister Julienne's discreet support. However, one of his deepest fears was that she herself, although too dignified and fond of Shelagh to say it, disapproved, feeling that Sister Bernadette had been misled in her vocation and that no human love or man could adequately substitute what she given up. His deepest fear was that the latter was true.

In the wider community, however, an epidemic of gossip raged, its symptoms manifested in every consultation or visit, in direct comments or conversations which suddenly stopped when he arrived. A couple of people joked about him 'getting on well the nuns, then!', while Len Warren stopped him in the street, beaming congratulations and offering to 'fix up any rooms that need doing for the new Mrs. Doctor cheap, just a thanks for what you two've done for Conchita and the nippers.' There was that one young man, soon to be married and in the middle of a consultation about an embarrassing complaint, who had tried to cover his awkwardness after Patrick suggested relaxing and letting nature take its course during the honeymoon by blurting out 'Same to you, doc', a joke which only made the meeting more uncomfortable. In all honesty, though, his patients were almost universal in their joy, a fact by which he was enormously touched.

Their protection from the murmuring he dreaded, more for her than himself, was years of integrity, an unobtrusive virtue beyond suspicion. Yet it was naïve to believe it was not happening and once he had overheard the filth himself: descending the revolting stairs of the abject Peabody Building, voices floated up towards him.

"How long d'you reckon it was going on? Perhaps he's got to marry her."

"Goes to show you never know, do ya? No-one's that good even if they is a nun. Ain't so good and proper now."

"What about 'im? Ain't that worse?"

There were only two voices dribbling venom and others rose in anger against them, but he physically recoiled, his hands curling into fists at the malice of the suggestions. The accusations against himself he could endure, but the attack on Shelagh wounded him like stabbing. He was appeased thanks to a strange champion, who roundly berated her neighbours as a bitch and a whore who thought everyone was as bad as they was and who she'd bloody murder for having a go at the doctor and that little nun. On hearing blows, accompanied by cheers, he quickened his pace and the brawling women parted as he appeared. Their angry defender was Pearl Winston. He had treated her for syphilis and a subsequent miscarriage; Shelagh had delivered two of her children. Guiltily he knew that he had always considered her as a negligent parent and something a slattern, but he would never forget her passionate belief in their integrity nor cease to be grateful for it.

Yet gossip could mutate and multiple and their weapon in the weeks to come was restraint. Somehow, they had managed to meet every day since the moment they opened their book of revelation, albeit often only for minutes stolen between consultations and clinics. However each meeting had been in a public place: the parlour of her lodgings under the landlady's eye; short walks around the canals or in the park; a tea shop; one blissful uninterrupted dinner at a restaurant just outside the district; and an afternoon at the Natural History Museum, a half-term treat for Timothy, which became strange and disconcerting when a curator congratulated them together on the intelligence of their son's questions. He was starting to respond, uncertain what the answer to the compliment now was, when he felt her hand, to his mind so small and soft, slip into his. He still was not sure what her gesture had meant. The public were their chaperone, as they studied and learnt each other, hesitantly graduating in intimacy. From her arm tucked protectively within his, their hands met, his arm encircled the slim waist, then kisses dropped briefly on her temple, her cheek and the slight, shy brush of his lips on hers; beautiful, bewitching and never, never enough.

But now the worst of the initial furore was over and with Timothy and his housekeeper as their security, he opened the door to his house and invited her in.

For Shelagh, this second introduction of the day was far more daunting than meeting Joan Parker. Living in nurses' quarters at the London and then Nonnatus House for over a decade, institutions had been homes for her, with no option to reinvent them to her taste. Ownership over a building or creating a home were alien concepts to her. Convinced early of her vocation, the last time she had built dream houses, imagining how she would make a castle in the air for her unknown beloved, had been in her mid teens. The reality of a modest Victorian house, fitted out with not only furniture, but a housekeeper and long-established domestic traditions was alarming. She had no knowledge of how one made a home, beyond the simplest truth of loving the occupants. In her fear she did not know that this was enough.

Irrepressible Timothy was all for marching her around the house, showing her every room and telling every story. However, Mrs. Harrison, Patrick's housekeeper, was wiser. A widow from North Yorkshire, she was a gentle lady, who had moved to London to be close to her son following her husband's death. The job initially had been a day a week to help the doctor's run down wife, but as time passed, Elizabeth's exhaustion grew with the same virulence as the dimly suspected cancers. Gradually Margaret Harrison took on more and more hours, until she was one of the household. A room awaited her at her son's house, but affection for Dr. Turner and his boy kept her with them. She delighted in welcoming the doctor's future bride, issuing her into the sitting room to spoil her with tea and freshly made scones, while Timothy contented himself with performing his latest violin pieces. Nor did Mrs. Harrison rebuff her help when Shelagh appeared some time later, asking if she could assist with dinner. The meal had been prepared hours earlier, but they settled into a partnership to wash and dry the dishes, both eager to please as they lightly chattered. Mrs. Harrison skilfully tacked between deferring to her, easing her into the role she would soon fill, and kindly guiding her, teaching her the tricks of the house, entertaining Shelagh with a tour of the kitchen and confiding to her the secret place where her best pans were hidden on her day off, to stop the doctor from accidentally burning them.

"Bless him, but I've lost two of them that way and I live in dread of the kettle. You'd think a man so clever would do better, but he really can't cook at all, my dear. I leave him something to heat up on my day off, but he always seems to forget. You come back and the meal's left, but everything in the biscuit tin's gone and the bread bin's empty. I'm sure he just eats a plate of rubbish from a greasy spoon. I do my big bake on Mondays now, so at least there's something! If you'd like, I can keep on with that, although we've plenty of time to discuss it, I'm sure, when you've had time to think."

"What about Timothy on your day off?"

"I think he lives on cornflakes and biscuits! I don't think he minds the excuse to eat biscuits, though!"

Shelagh laughed. "I can certainly imagine that. I've known other people who were similar!" In a few minutes Mrs Harrison was wiping her eyes over the stories of Jenny Lee, Sister Monica Joan and the vanishing coconut sponge and a pregnant pig called Evie which, Marie Antoinette-like, was encouraged to eat cake.

"At least he admits it about cooking. I've tried and tried to get him to let me do his mending, but he just won't ask. Did you notice the darn in the knee of his suit trousers?" Shelagh nodded. She had noticed it many times, but suit trousers were harder to discreetly take aside and mend than a clinical coat missing a button. "It's hard not to notice, isn't it? He did it himself and it's fine I suppose, but it's so clumsy. I wish I could fix it, but he'll never let me, just mends things himself, except he misses problems when they're little before they get to that stage."

"I wonder how he learnt." Through her mind ran an image, both comic and pathetic, of Patrick solemnly applying the same rules to mending his trousers that he had learnt for suturing wounds, but with results so much less neat than the stitching she professionally admired. She wondered whether he fastidiously washed his hands first and rushed off to smoke immediately afterwards.

"In the army," she replied promptly, then saw Shelagh's face fall and guessed at her discomfiture, discovering the things that she had not guessed and did not know, while this older lady did. She softened the answer, "I suspect, love. My Andrew was in Monty's army. He came back from Africa able to do all kinds of things he'd never done before, fixing his uniform and so on. It's a shame for Katie, that's my daughter-in-law, lovely girl, that he never seems to do them now!"

The kitchen burst into laughter once more.

Leaving the kitchen, shooed out by Mrs. Harrison to 'enjoy your time with them, dear', she walked into the middle of an unexpected routine. When she had slipped off to the kitchen, Patrick had been vanishing into his study to repack his briefcase, while Timothy was bent over his sketch pad. Now they were both in the hall, sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the staircase, sleeves rolled up, Patrick bereft of jacket and tie, with tins of polish, brushes and dust cloths. Spread out in front of them on newspaper were shoes: two old, creased pairs of Patrick's, one black, one brown, Timothy's black school shoes and brown sandals, both scuffed at the toes, Mrs. Harrison's court shoes, brought out once a week for church, and workaday black lace-ups, and at the end, with mud on the edges, her own dull utility shoes, which she had worn when they were walking in the park and then left in the boot of the car, unaware that Patrick had quietly retrieved them and brought them into the house. They were intent on their task, a small production line where Patrick scraped off mud and applied polish, while Timothy brushed it off and dusted and buffed the shoes to a shine.

"Hello, what are you doing?"

Timothy looked up blankly. "It's Saturday," he said, as if that answered her question.

"We always clean the shoes on Saturday afternoon before dinner," explained Patrick. "I suppose we always have. One of the chores for - "

"'Us Two'" interjected Timothy.

Patrick laughed. "I was going to say for the men of the house, but, yes, for 'Us Two'."

"Like taking out the bins and clearing the drive-way."

"And mowing the lawn and cutting the hedges." They grinned at each other.

"It looks like you have quite a system here!"

"Yes," replied Timothy. "Dad does the cleaning and putting polish on with one brush and I take off any extra polish and shine them up. I'd like to put the polish on, but Dad says I get too messy."

"Think Dickensian chimney sweep."

"Do you want us to do those?" asked Timothy, pointing at the pretty, nude heels she was wearing.

"Oh, you don't need to do that," she said, hurriedly, instinctively stepping back, almost hiding one foot behind the other. "You've got plenty enough to be getting on with and I don't think you can polish these anyway."

"Why not?" continued Timothy. "We do all our shoes on Saturday evening. Dad's, mine, Mrs. Harrison's. If we can't polish them," he added, squinting at them, "we could still brush them a bit."

"It's what we always do, Shelagh. If you didn't mind, we'd like to. Please?" Patrick said, quietly. He neither pled nor asserted, allowing her to decide, but his understated words altered the moment, its significance magnified. Briefly she nodded and sat down on the stairs to take them off. The pair was precious to her, part of the first outfit she had bought after leaving the Order, when even entering the shop had left her in turmoil. She had been torn between her innate frugality and modesty, both learnt and instinctive, and a mild but long-felt wistfulness for the pretty things the younger nurses wore, while she struggled not to feel guilt at the other desire, the one she was reluctant to admit even to herself: to find something which Patrick would find attractive, even while knowing how unlikely it was that he would ever notice her shoes. She had been wearing them for the first time on the day she became engaged, precariously picking her way down the steps of the hall to him, so anxious that he should still want her now the transformation was complete.

She began to reach for the right shoe, but Patrick was quicker, his hands already there. Having shifted his position slightly at the foot of the stairs, he was sitting below her now, his face only inches from her knee and she felt his breath washing over her calves, but he did not look up and she could not see his face as he took her ankle in his hand; the touch was light, yet she felt it as though he was probing below her skin. As he slowly eased the shoe off, removing it and gently placing her foot back on the step, she crimsoned, uncertain whether she was seeing a similar flush on his own face, still bent over her legs, or it was simply the shadow of his hair falling over his face as he felt for her other foot and repeated the action. More clumsy this time, was he shaking, when the shoe came off his thumb slipped across her instep, two of his fingers trailing on her stocking, and a wall of flame flashed over her. It was only when he turned back to the pile of cleaning to be done, that she could breathe once more.

"Your face is all red," commented Timothy.

"Perhaps I'm a little hot," she murmured, hardly aware of what she was saying. Patrick, always so solicitous about her health, said nothing now, but kept his focus on his task, letting Timothy chatter on and be the one who presented the shoes back to her when the cleaning was finished and whatever fevered expressions either of them might have had were cooled.

The dinner Mrs. Harrison had prepared was simple and delicious, food which spoke of home and comfort: a steak and kidney pie, followed by a rhubarb crumble so sticky and flavoursome that Timothy "scraped the pattern off the plate" as Patrick put it while ruffling his hair. The housekeeper retired before the meal, claiming to Shelagh that Saturday evening was her Yorkshire time, when she wrote letters to friends and family. If there was another reason which made her slip away, quietly satisfied by the three contentedly eating together while the gramophone spilled moonlit music into the room, it did not discredit her.

The clearing away was completed by Timothy and the washing up by Patrick and Shelagh, after which the Monopoly board appeared. With it began an intense discussion between father and son about whether their private board game league stood at ten-seven in Timothy's favour or eight all; on the grounds that one game of Monopoly should have been declared void because the doctor hadn't been in a position to collect his rents for the last third of the game, as he was delivering a baby, while Timothy had also cheated in a game of draughts when he altered the position of the pieces on the board when his father was at the bathroom, and thus should default.

Shelagh gathered early on that she was playing against, if not two masters of the game, then at least two demons. Neither gave a quarter. Initially she was tempted to indulge Timothy with soft deals, but soon realised that he would consider this an insult, while even being the object of Patrick's affection was no defence against his gamesmanship. Both played with outrageous ruthlessness, stretching the rules to breaking point and unrepentant about tactics such as blatantly distracting opponents when they landed on their property in the hope that they wouldn't be spotted and could squat rather than play rent. After the third time she had been cheated this way, twice by Timothy and once by Patrick, her own latent competitiveness surfaced and she found herself demanding rents, cheerfully negotiating Timothy into a corner over the purchasing of Marylebone Station and gleeful when Patrick was forced to mortgage Mayfair and Park Lane to pay off a horrific bill for general repairs. At this point she shot a furtive glance at him, in case he was appalled by this unknown aspect to her personality; he, however, seemed most entertained and less surprised by it than she was, lamenting that he should have anticipated this after a certain three-legged race where the Corinthian spirit went out of the window in pursuit of victory. She blushed at the memory and even more at those which succeeded the race, knowing that although he was answering Timothy's question about what Corinthian spirit meant, he was watching her, eyes sparkling with amusement. Briefly she wondered if her sisters would be appalled to see her now, competing so fiercely and laughing so freely, then realised that so entirely right did the moment feel, she simply did not care.

It was towards the end of the game, with it finely poised, that the outside world destroyed their idyll. The telephone rang.

Sitting where she was, she saw both faces and the manful way in which they tried to cover their reactions. Patrick was quicker, smoothing his features with bland professionalism, but she saw the two quick waves first; of frustration, then resignation. Timothy was more overt with his displeasure, although he stifled his sulky moan and stared impassively at the board.

The familiar responses, muted from the hallway, were just as they had often been when she heard them down the telephone herself. Then, they were an inexpressible relief, knowledge that she would soon be assisted by the colleague she respected most. Now she saw it from the other side; his stoicism, but crushing disappointment. Quietly, she followed him into the hall and was standing only feet behind him when he put down the receiver.

He did not know she was there and leaned his head on the bannisters, his eyes closed. "One evening," he muttered. "One Saturday evening with them. Was it really too much to ask?" He was about to lift his head when he felt her hands rest on his shoulders.

"Who was it?" she asked, as he turned around.

"Nurse Miller. Betty Williams has had a fall, she can't find a heartbeat and she suspects they've lost the child." Her hands were still on his shoulders, gently stroking them, no accusation on her face. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"I wanted us to have the whole evening. I'm not supposed to be on call tonight. I hoped that doing my rounds this morning and the check-up this afternoon - "

"It doesn't work that way, Patrick. We both know that. The babies of Poplar don't really worry about our social lives!"

He laughed and briefly hugged her, wondering, not for the first time, why he was so afraid of simply taking her in his arms and kissing her as deeply as he wanted to. "Sadly not." His arm remained around her waist as they headed back into the sitting room. "Timothy, I'm sorry, but - "

"You've got to go out on a call." The voice did not whine, but it was cold.

"You know when bedtime is."

"Yes," replied Timothy, scowling, then, at a sharper look from his father, more subdued, "yes, alright."

"And?"

"Horlicks. Hot chocolate's only for 'special occasions and man-to-man chats'."

"And?"

Timothy's expression was as innocent as a choirboy. "One chapter."

"Yes. Try to make sure it's fewer than four." Timothy looked sheepish, then grinned as his father winked at him. "Please don't drive Shelagh mad. Sleep tight, son."

By the time he had collected his bag and jacket, hastily doing up his tie and pushing his feet into the black shoes en route, Shelagh was standing by the front door to help him into his coat and wind his scarf around his neck.

"I'm sorry. I really am."

"I understand. They need you too. I'll be here when you get back."

He frowned. "It could be hours, Shelagh. You need your rest." He started fumbling in his jacket pocket. "I can give you money for a taxi."

She stilled his searching hand and took it in hers. "Patrick, stop. I'll wait for you."

"I don't want you to be compromised. What if it's really late?"

She squeezed his hand. "I don't think I'll be compromised by being in your house with your son and your housekeeper while you're on the other side of Poplar dealing with a patient. And if anyone sees that as compromising behaviour, then they're far too silly to be taken seriously. I'll be here when you get back. Please let me be here."

Slowly, he nodded and kissed the top of her head.

"Now go. Take care of Cynthia. She'll be distressed."

And he was gone, already mulling over the clinical complications Cynthia Miller had outlined to him. It had been less than three minutes since her telephone call to him had ended.

She watched the car splutter into life and out of the drive, remembering how Patrick had carefully turned it when they first arrived. She saw in that now a mirror of her own reluctance to rest or eat until she had cleaned her instruments and repacked her bag after a call. When the tail lights blinked and disappeared around the corner of the street, Shelagh shut the door.