They had drunk so many cups of tea that day that neither wished to imbibe a drop, yet there was no other place but the station tea room where they could sit and wait, their eyes tracing each other's features until they were memorised and trying to talk. And thus they sat, the milk separating into chilly spirals in the cups, the slice of cake cursorily picked at until it crumbled like rock.

"You should eat something," he said. "It's a long journey."

"I couldn't possibly after that lunch. I think Joan thinks there's still rationing in Scotland!" They both gave half-hearted smiles at the feeble joke. "I'll get something in the dining car later, maybe. When do you have to be on duty at the maternity hospital?"

He checked his watch. "An hour and a half."

"You should go."

"Another few minutes. If I can't see your train off, perhaps I can at least see you onto it." He had spent the day sharing her with everybody else. Now, for a few moments, until the last moment, he wanted her for himself.

All day time had unravelled. His plans had been simple: dropping her suitcase off early would leave time for a family walk or a trip to the Lyons Tearoom before the drive north-west to the Parkers. After a prompt lunch there and a quick trip to a jewellers on Portobello Road to select their wedding rings, they could wander lover-like, anonymous and free, maybe pausing at the shop where he suspected he would find the object he wished to give her as a wedding present, but would prefer her to choose. But every person had claimed their right: the nuns and nurses, the Parkers, the jeweller's wife, Timothy. While he did not blame Timothy wanting to postpone the separation, the jeweller had been an unexpected blow. He had eyed Patrick curiously when they entered, but it was only when he was examining the size of Shelagh's fingers and recognised her engagement ring that he recalled: a widowed doctor with a son, who sought a ring to offer a nurse who was recovering from TB. He was kindly little man, an immigrant and struggling, Patrick suspected, but meticulous in his work. His wife, anxious to hear each detail of the proposal and their plans, was similarly sweet and it was impossible to rebuff her hospitality while her husband finalised adjustments to be made to Shelagh's ring. They sat there, drinking tea and answering questions, both knowing the little time they had together was draining away.

"I'll offer to do next Saturday as well, which will free up the weekends next month."

"As long as the one when your friend Kenneth's here is free."

"Hmm," he replied. How to raise the suggestion that after hours stuck on a train and days when they had neither seen nor talked to one another, rather than a quiet meal together she might prefer driving to Hampstead to dine with his friends, two witty and opinionated macaws with three similarly loquacious children and a Welsh eccentric liable to start raving about the finer points of open heart surgery and use whatever was on his dinner plate for demonstrations, had been beyond him. It had been she who made possible the topic, surprising him that morning by casually saying she wished she could meet Kenneth given all Louisa had told her, but feared there would be little time at the wedding. He was still uncomfortable as he told her about the possible dinner at David's, although she responded most enthusiastically. It baffled him what Louisa might have said; most descriptions of Kenneth, even by those who loved him, left people keen to avoid the experience. It was only in person that the charm behind the oddness became apparent. "We don't have to, you know. I'd love you to meet Kenneth and I'm sure you'll like him, although he is an acquired taste. But if you're too tired after the journey, you'd only have to say."

"Oh, wheest!" she replied. "I like acquired tastes. There were plenty enough in the Order! It's dinner. What am I going to do on a train except rest anyway?" Patrick knew nothing of the urgent message waiting at her lodgings on Friday night, asking her to call Hampstead 361 on her return. In the past few hours, however, Shelagh had frequently chuckled over Louisa's contorted explanation about a stag night which involved covert letters, clandestine messages and Chummy's husband as messenger boy and her pleas that Shelagh would persuade Patrick to play along, as it would upset Timothy so much if it all fell through, while, frankly, David would sulk for a month. It amused her, yet it touched her; was there any soul in the world, she wondered, except Patrick or maybe Sister Julienne, who would put themselves to such discomfort for her? Close to sighing now, she suspected that she would feel the loss of a quiet evening with Patrick and Timothy far more when she returned; still, she was happy to be the oil which allowed the wheels their smooth progress.

"We'll see," he said. "I'll keep it free at any rate. And I must admit I'd love to see Ken. It's been too long. Timothy would too." He paused, undecided whether to burden her with concerns he was still unsure about.

She leaned across the table and took his hand. "What is it? You've got a funny, pensive look."

Patrick cleared his throat. "Do you think Timothy was behaving strangely today?"

"Not particularly. Why?"

"I don't know. Something about him this week. He's been a bit out of sorts."

"How d'you mean?"

It was hard to explain. Unusual questions, hiding things when he popped in to wish him goodnight and a bizarre, if enjoyable, discussion about Shakespeare? They were silly things, inconsequential, yet there had been the tearfulness the previous night and an exhausted nerviness over breakfast the same day. Would he have noticed any of them had it not been for the others? Patrick worried that he would not. "I don't know. Just strange. We had a very peculiar conversation the other day, about Shakespeare of all things."

Shelagh covered her mouth to hide her expression. Illuminated by Louisa, she was fairly sure why the topic had been raised. "Anything in particular about Shakespeare?"

"Nothing, really. Why I liked him and what my favourite play was. Nonsense, I suppose. And he keeps asking for the meanings of the weirdest words."

This she could not explain. "Such as? Was there any link between them."

Patrick reflected for a moment. "Mostly medical, not all. Cadaver. Botulism. Scurvy, if you'll believe it! Other things too. Whether they drive on the left in France was the strangest. Things like that."

"Maybe he came across them in a book or something. Scurvy might have been mentioned in that adventure book he's reading. I'm sure you're worrying about nothing."

"Perhaps. He was a bit teary yesterday. He isn't usually." Patrick did not mention why the tears had started, still blaming himself for almost making him cry by snapping at his request to put off his grandparents. He had ladled on the guilt he felt himself when he imagined how his joy might magnify the Parkers' grief. Timothy's reaction, though, had been startlingly unusual.

The amusement within her died. She could not imagine him crying or ever remember him doing so; even at the funeral his face had been set with resolute, manly sturdiness. All she had seen that day in Timothy was capriciousness, if anything; superficially boisterous and burning with energy, but over-tired. She had put it down to the secret about the stag party. Keeping it secret would challenge a boy as guileless as Timothy. She thought she was starting to know him, but had discerned none of what Patrick spoke. "I would never have guessed. I didn't see that at all," she faltered.

"You're probably right. I'm probably worrying about nothing." He looked up when she said nothing, watching her pained examination of the table. "Shelagh?" Although she looked up, she did not quite meet his eye. "Don't," he said softly. "Stop thinking whatever you're thinking. I don't know if it's anything and I've known him since before he was born when he used to kick whenever I talked to Elizabeth's bump."

Her face was still tense with frowning however. "What if it's because of me, Patrick?" There was something pathetic in the tiny shrug of her shoulders. "Us? This?"

"It's not. I'm absolutely certain of that."

His reassurance was quiet, and so, so firm, an absolute conviction. "Completely certain?"

She was testing him in two ways. He smiled. He understood. "Couldn't be more certain." She laughed gently and he ventured the one interpretation which had made sense to him when he could not sleep the previous night, saying through Timothy what was true for himself. "It's not you, except perhaps simply that he missed you and he's going to miss you."

There had been so many partings in both of their lives, always borne with cheerfulness; both felt the ridiculousness of distress at a separation so short it was hardly worth the letters both knew they would write. Yet when she realised in the middle of the afternoon that she did not even have a photograph of him or he one of her and, most uncharacteristically, burst into tears, neither had thought it absurd. Without speaking, he had ransacked his wallet to give her the picture of Timothy he kept in it, then gently teased her that perhaps photography had made its way to Scotland given it was 1958 and she could maybe have a picture taken while she was there and bring it home for him. Behind their pain lay the shadow partings, those that were for longer, with greater risk and sometimes forever; above all the last one, where all which they felt now had drifted in an impossible silence between them.

"Don't cry," he said as she discreetly wiped her handkerchief across her eyes and nose. "It will all get a bit Brief Encounter and 'there's something in my eye' and 'let me help, I'm a doctor' and so on." Shelagh gave a polite titter, unlike her normal bubbling giggle. Patrick was not deceived. "You've never seen it, have you?"

"No," she admitted bashfully.

He was perplexed. "It came out years before you joined the Order. Surely?"

"Yes," she replied, "but I think I was a wee bit prudish about it. I didn't think it was quite proper, being about adultery. Those were the days before I was confronted with the real world in Poplar!"

It had been the first film he and Elizabeth had seen after they were married. It had moved him in its restraint, while she had loved it, even though she sternly told him that when he was a boring, middle-aged doctor he wasn't allowed to have affairs with anyone except her. She had gone to see it again, twice, once with him, once with her sister, crying by the end every time. "What was the last film you did see?"

She thought for a moment. "One with James Stewart, where a suicidal man was saved by an angel."

"It's a Wonderful Life."

"Yes. I liked it very much. I went with two of the other nurses I trained with. That must have been in 1947 or 48?"

He shook his head. How much she had missed. "When you get back, we'll go to the pictures. Add it to the list, sweetheart." In the past few weeks their list of things they would do had grown and grown, modest, realistic fancies and absurd dreams added with equally merry abandon. "Have you ever seen a film in colour? Not an animated film, an ordinary one."

"Yes," she protested. "My father took me to me to the Dominion to see The Wizard of Oz for my thirteenth birthday."

"Ouch," he said. She raised her eyebrows quizzically. "I saw it at the barracks in between deployments. I must have been at least twenty-nine."

She chortled. "You're just an ancient relic, aren't you!"

He preferred her laughter, even in mockery of him. Dismay did not sit well upon her. The station was grimy and smoky, where grim faced crowds barged across platforms to crush into trains and escape, ignoring newly arrived, forlorn lost souls who marvelled at the cruel majesty of the capital they had journeyed to in hope of better lives or new beginnings. But her laughter was brightness, the one point of freshness and rejuvenation around him. "Shall we?" Picking up her suitcase, he patiently waited while she collected her handbag, putting on his hat as she took his arm.

The train was not due to leave for some time still. Whether it was Patrick's quiet word to the porter or Shelagh's modest manner, the porter directed them to her carriage, opening the door so she could enter and settle herself for the journey ahead. Patrick was standing below her on the platform when he gave her the case, their hands fumbling in the exchange. It had been a different suitcase, but it was oddly like another time, another parting.

She spoke softly. "Do you remember how our fingers brushed against each other when you gave me my suitcase after we arrived at the sanatorium?"

"Not really. Vaguely." There was an fragment of the memory in his mind, pale and indistinct.

"I felt it all the way to the door, the exact place where we'd touched, like you'd burnt me."

He shook his head. "I don't remember that. I'm sorry. I remember watching you while you walked away. I kept standing by the car, even after you'd gone in and shut the door. I was afraid it might be the last time I'd ever see your face and was willing you to look back one more time, to look back just once at me. But you never did."

"I was afraid you might be. That's why I never turned." Although her eyes were clear and tearless, her voice quivered.

The genteel chaos of the platform was too public a place for so private a couple, but taking off his hat and taking her hand, Patrick stepped up into the carriage doorway beside her and kissed her. No wild display of passion, they simply rested their inside lips against one another's. He did not relinquish her hand; she rested the other one against his chest; and when they slowly released their lips, they rested their foreheads against each other, their eyes closed, and listened to each other breathing. Yet when they opened their eyes and he stepped down again, the moment seemed as intimate to her as any they had shared.

There was no need for the words, but he added them nonetheless. "I love you."

She nodded. "Two weeks. That's all. And I'll be back."

"Timothy and I'll be here waiting for you. Don't get the wrong train."

He had wanted to make her smile, genuinely smile, before she left, to carry the playfulness of her voice with him; and he had succeeded. "I got one wrong bus, once!"

Patrick chuckled. "Have a wonderful time."

Just as he started to let go of her hand to leave, she bent down and tenderly kissed him upon his cheekbone, closing her eyes as she whispered the same words he had just said to her. Then she straightened up and after one last look, he walked away, straightening his head as he put on his hat again. She watched the brown coat's slight swing, guessing from the angular moves of his arm that he had taken out his cigarettes and lighter. She imagined the line of his spine and sagging curve of his shoulders as his back retreated, becoming smaller and smaller, beyond the end of her carriage.

"Patrick!"

"Yes?"

The moment he turned, she realised she had nothing to say. She did not even know why she had cried out, perhaps only because she wanted to call his name. "What is your favourite Shakespeare play?" she asked, stupidly.

He started to light the cigarette as he answered. "The Winter's Tale. It's hopeful. Whatever's happened, forgive people and there's always a way back." He smiled. "I'll see you in two weeks."

Now he was marginally beyond the porter with his trolley. Still she watched, willing him to respond to her need, and then, just before the end of the next carriage, he did, by turning back to look, once more, at her.