As the week drew to its close a steady trickle of visitors started to flow into Poplar. First came Elspeth Sutherland and her children, arriving sufficiently early on Thursday morning on the overnight train for Patrick and Shelagh to collect them before he had to take his morning surgery. Bleary-eyed though the children were, they marvelled at the soaring energy and filth of the city in which their aunt had made her life and stared at the first coloured faces they had ever seen.

To Elspeth, the city's unfriendly glories were of scant interest: it was not her first visit. More interesting was the driver of the car, the catalyst for her sister's distress and most ecstatic joy. She was better at hiding her reactions than Agnes, who struggled to disguise how crushed she was when the romantic figure she had concocted collapsed, confronted by Patrick's lined face and stink of nicotine; she found him perfectly pleasant and unassuming. Nonetheless his very ordinariness surprised her, juxtaposed with the extraordinary circumstances which led to his betrothal to her sister. But she watched them and although Elspeth could not know what he was without Shelagh, she knew Shelagh blossomed in the sun of his adulation and instinctively he drew from her both the tenderness she sometimes hid under efficiency and the bossiness which timidity crushed. It amused her hearing Patrick reminded when his child's pantomime began, reminded again that he must not be late in a tone suspiciously close to nagging, then listen as he punctured her pomposity with a brief quip, unintelligible to anyone else, but leaving the couple smiling.

"And here I was expecting Cary Grant with a stethoscope," Elspeth said after he had deposited them at Nonnatus House and departed. While there was still something undefinable she found odd, she rejoiced in Shelagh's dimpling reaction to the tease. Before Patrick there had not been such jokes.

Agnes' disillusionment was harder to assuage, his kissless farewell to her aunt as he left for work no less disappointing to her than the hints of grey in his hair. But viewing the dress, as magical as she had dreamt of, resurrected some of her daydreams, while a fortunate twist in the nursing rota saw her taken under the wing of Trixie, who was sharing their late breakfast after a lengthy shift the previous night. Even in a dressing gown, to Agnes she seemed an impossibly glamorous figure and one who interspersed suggestions of sights to visit in London with vigorously gossiping over every touching detail of the love story and recounting tales of Dr. Turner's feats with such artful exaggeration that when Patrick returned the girl was reconciled, ready to be charmed by a subtler and everyday chivalry.

It was imperturbable Jamie who had his head turned most thoroughly by his future uncle. In the afternoon when his female relatives headed for the charms of Oxford Street (where little was bought beyond tea and scones), he joined Patrick on his rounds. Finding him a generous listener, Jamie soon dispensed with his usual reserve to talk about his school, friends and hobbies and ask endless questions about the cases visited, which Patrick, delighted by his interest, was happy to answer; and as they drove home he admitted to the sympathetic man a secret ambition he was starting to harbour – to go to university, maybe to become a vet rather than take over the farm – but was reluctant to admit to his parents for fear of hurting them.

Such was Jamie's enjoyment of the afternoon, he was entirely unaware of the sensation he himself was causing in Poplar. Tall and blond, a lifetime of assisting his father around the farm had left him broad-shouldered, tanned and oozing with robust health. In the one or two houses where the patients were sufficiently long-standing and their complaints sufficiently minor for Jamie to accompany Patrick inside rather than wait in the car, jaws dropped, while heads visibly turned when he strode into the church hall to watch Timothy's pantomime. It was a healthiness born of a healthy world Patrick mused, which no child in Poplar, no matter how much they were cared for, would ever achieve. It was a rueful thought to the doctor, only fractionally less rueful than the fact that Jamie at fourteen was already the same height that he was.

Timothy himself was awestruck by Jamie, more than a little embarrassed that two hours after they met, Jamie and his family should see him pretending to be a cat. Stepping onto the stage, he saw face after face, blurred and expectant, and he froze. Then the fuzziness came into focus and he found the second row on the right hand side. That row was entirely his, with his new aunt and cousins, Mrs. Harrison, Shelagh and, next to the aisle, leaning forward and surreptitiously winking, his father. Nerves forgotten, he started to act, knowing he was better, wittier and more joyfully abandoned than he had ever managed in rehearsal, almost believing he deserved their compliments, above all the glittering accolade from the tall, impressive cousin: 'Aye, I enjoyed it. It was great. Yon big lad who played the alderman was good, but you were the funniest.'

Late on Friday morning, Mother Jesu Emmanuel and Sister Teresa arrived to an almost abandoned house. The Sutherlands had gone to sight-see before collecting Rob from the afternoon train; all of the nurses but Cynthia were on calls; and even Shelagh had vanished on a private pilgrimage, from which she returned by lunchtime pensive and reflective. Sister Julienne was glad to greet them alone. Time to prepare for their afternoon meeting with the council and consider the opposition they faced was valuable. Although they tried to converse cheerfully at lunch, the meeting's sombre pall spread over them, for none could not see any road ahead except the sad uncertainty of eviction.

All were glad of the distraction of the last arrivals towards the end of the meal, shortly before Sister Julienne and Mother Jesu Emmanuel's meeting: Kenneth Rees and his family, who had driven from Bristol that morning. Although unlike the others they were not staying at Nonnatus House, Alice was as keen to meet Shelagh as she was to meet her, while a long-held promise from Patrick to give Kenneth a tour of the maternity hospital was finally being made good. Hospitable and generous herself, Alice Rees was swift to appreciate the same in others, answering questions about their journey and enquiring after the mornings of people she had only just met, while four year old Gareth entertained them by trotting around with the happy confidence of one certain he was the most important person in the room, a belief he was unlikely to be disabused of given the abundant petting he received.

Of Patrick's friends the one whom Shelagh least expected to be a convivial source of chit-chat was Kenneth and when she saw him take the empty seat between Sister Teresa and Sister Monica Joan for his coffee, she was tempted to rescue him. Theirs was a long-held bond, deepened as the years' long march left them the last dwindling survivors after their peers had gone. In Sister Teresa's presence, lost fragments of Sister Monica Joan's mind were found. However the tie was not without frustrations, too long-standing for either to feel the need to modify them, Sister Teresa exasperated by Sister Monica Joan's 'unscholarly mind', the latter provoking her by suggesting that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in her little-minded philosophy. Where small talk was beyond Kenneth however, an animated argument about St. Thomas Aquinas was precisely the type of debate in which he delighted. With energetic gesticulations he punctuated his points, unconsciously removing what needle existed in a discussion he saw purely as intellectual discourse and leaving Sister Teresa observing, when he left for the hospital in the company of Jenny, that, all things considered, he might have been quite a good theologian.

Late in the afternoon a festival atmosphere started to pervade the house, with bright and sunny chatter infecting residents and guests. Outside, however, ice was invading the sloped driveway and fingering the steps to the house where two figures sat, their words emerging like spiralling patterns of breath. "Don't. Not tonight. It'll upset her and won't make a blooming jot of difference."

"I didn't intend to, although I suspect she may work it out."

Huddled by one another were Sister Evangelina, wrapped in her coat, and Sister Julienne, a terrible sorrow engraved upon her faces. "All these years," said Sister Julienne, "through the Blitz, through the Depression." Her voice faltered.

"Remember the Great Smog? How we could hardly see the end of our arms?"

"Yes."

"And the other Great Smog when the boiler blew up? And how Sister Monica Joan decided the big priority was rescuing Mrs. B's cherry slab?"

Despite herself, Sister Julienne briefly laughed. "This will change everything we have been."

Evangelina snorted. "We've changed before, what with the National Health and maternity hospitals and gas and air rubbish. Care, that's the heart of it, not any modern malarkey and what have you. That's the important thing and we can keep on doing that." Grasping her sister's hand, she patted her knee with their joined fists.

"Yes, of course. God is very good to us. It's only a house."

"What's it they say? A house isn't a home until it's had a birth, a death – "

"And a wedding. Yes."

"Plenty of births. A few deaths too. Finish with a wedding, eh?" There had been other weddings, Chummy's and other nurses in earlier years, but none where the bride had been so truly theirs. Looking up, she saw Patrick gingerly walking up the drive, having parked in Newby Place rather than risk the icy slope. "Evening, Dr. Turner! If this is what the Lord wants, let's make it a good end." Picking up her bag, she bustled to her bicycle.

Sister Julienne smiled in greeting, however Patrick was too astute to be fooled; they had worked together many years. "Your meeting was unsuccessful? Sister, I'm so dreadfully sorry."

"It is what we expected," she replied with a stoicism she did not feel as they entered the building. Goodwill rang from the dining room. Outside its door, Sister Julienne stopped. "I will not announce it tonight. I don't want Shelagh to be troubled the night before her wedding."

He knew what she was asking. "Of course."

It was with a strange feeling that Patrick surveyed the scene as she opened the door. The arrivals and impending arrivals had occupied so much time and energy that week his and Shelagh's lives had increasingly not been their own: it did not feel entirely real that they were to be married the next day. His days had been crowded, with extra shifts and paperwork in readiness for the days off to come, but normal days like any other. That day home visits had followed morning surgery, his hospital round preceded an urgent call out. Even Kenneth's tour of the hospital, inspecting the facilities while Patrick attended to his patients, had been little different to tours he gave department officials or Rachel Simpson's induction the previous month. All day he had waited for the imminence and enormity of what was about to happen to strike, yet it had not.

Only one incident had come close. Finishing a house visit on Cemetery Road early, impulsively he had made a detour into the cemetery itself. He rarely went; he did not believe Elizabeth was there. It had been a sense of a chapter finishing which pulled him by an invisible cord to say goodbye to a past which would not be forgotten, but was soon to close. But someone else had been there that morning for there were footprints in the frost, a small shoe, a woman's or a child's. By the headstone was a modest bunch of Christmas roses. He suspected he knew the footprints, although he could not be certain, and fervently hoped for one tiny burst of privacy at Nonnatus House so final words could be spoken.

The dining room was so crammed Patrick wondered why they were not in the parlour's more spacious surroundings. Scanning the room for Shelagh and Timothy, he was confronted by myriad interactions. Standing at the end of the table by a diminishing pile of sandwiches, Fred was bantering with Jamie and a tall, powerful man who could only be Rob. Elspeth was sat nearby with Sister Teresa, remembering their last meeting, the night before Shelagh took her final vows. In another corner, Agnes glowed as Trixie and Jenny suggested how she might wear her hair for the wedding. Alice and Chummy's conversation was more serious; although Alice smiled, Chummy resembled an earnest student in a tutorial. From the way the women observed Little Fred, he suspected he knew what the advice concerned. Gareth had toddled under the table to play with a train set, assisted by Jane, occasionally emerging to pontificate to a delighted Sister Monica Joan, while Cynthia flitted from conversation to conversation, refilling cups and plates and listening for the telephone. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed by the affection in the room; it seemed surreal that it existed because of Shelagh and himself. A spring of extraordinary gratitude started to well inside him.

"Hello." From behind him, Shelagh spoke. Turning, he discovered she was beside him. Her vacated chair was by the door, as though she had been waiting for his ring at the doorbell, not realising Sister Julienne was outside and would let him in. Their eyes promised 'Later, properly, before we part', while they drifted through bland and public greetings and then there was Mother Jesu Emmanuel to be re-acquainted with and Alice to greet with fond warmth, Sister Teresa to be cross-examined by, Gareth's handiwork to admire, Jamie's introduction "Uncle Patrick, this is my dad!" and a vigorous, bone crushing handshake, each time listening to their guests' happiness and listening to their eager expression of joy, all the time uneasy in the jarring knowledge they were the regular, if intermittent, focus of all in the room.

Shelagh had returned to her seat, a conversation with Mother Jesu Emmanuel resumed, when he sought her again, questions about Rob's journey and the market day which had delayed his departure for London exhausted.

"I think your brother-in-law's broken my hand," he said dryly, before returning to a question he had asked at the start without receiving a satisfactory answer. "Where's Timothy? I know you said he was with Ken, but where?"

"The parlour I think."

"Why?" asked Patrick, suspicions immediately alerted.

"I'm not sure. Peter Noakes is there too. It seemed to be a pre-arranged shenanigan."

"It's not another trip to the theatre, is it?" As Shelagh laughed, he continued. "Is he up to something?"

"I think so, but I don't know what."

"Welcome to the rest of your life," sighed Patrick, recasting himself in the role of Eeyore. His next question, however, was serious. "Do you think it would be alright if I interrupted them?" The fidgeting of his thumb and fingers glared like warning lights.

"Do you have to? Why?"

"Time." He rolled his eyes. "Isn't it always? Michael's already on his way and we need to get back to the house in time for him."

"I'm sorry I can't meet him. I so wanted to," she said wistfully.

He shook his head. "Don't be silly. There'll be other times. You must spend tonight with your family. Both of your families." He had started tentatively to reach for her when someone, he was not sure who, brushed past them. Instead his voice lowered and gentled. "I wish we could see each other tonight, not so you can meet Michael, but just us, without all of this."

Looking down as she made her soft, ambiguous reply, her face was obscured to him. "Yes, I know."

"Could we talk somewhere? Now? Even just for a couple of minutes?"

What her answer was was unsure, for as she started to open her lips, a burst of hilarity preceded the reappearance of the three plotters. Cynthia had suggested to them they return, hearing Patrick ask about them and happy to find some little way in which to be of service, not realising how ill-timed her help would be. They entered loudly, continuing a discussion which degenerated into frequent rumbles of chuckling and was ornamented by wheezy laughter.

"That bit's brilliant, Timothy! You should stick in your uncle's line though. Finishes the story off with a bit of a bang."

"Appropriate word!" remarked Kenneth, causing Peter to snigger heartily.

Timothy was less convinced. "Why's it funny? I don't get it."

"Your father will, Timothy boy, and Shelagh. Your relatives too."

"Akela'll think it's great," promised Peter.

Whatever the reservations, Timothy cheerfully ran to greet his father. "Dad!"

"Hello," said Patrick cautiously, suspicions spectacularly confirmed. "What've you been doing?"

"I've got something to show you," announced Timothy, rushing off without answering the question, a fact which escaped neither his father nor Shelagh.

Patrick turned a sceptical look on Kenneth. "Nothing terrible," he reassured them, before going in search of his own son.

They did not have to wait long for Timothy's return, this time the boy rummaging through his schoolbag as he appeared and pulling out a crumpled envelope which he proudly presented.

"Timothy, we haven't got time for this. Uncle Michael's on his way already. You know that."

"But you have to see it! You'll like it!"

"How do you know?" Taking it, Patrick turned it over and saw the back of the envelope flap freely. "Ah," he said, "a school report which has already been opened. There's a shock." Timothy hung his head, however his countenance was cheerfully guilt-free. "We'll do this at home, Timothy."

"We can't!' he cried aghast. "Shelagh won't be there. You have to open it together. Please," he wheedled. "I promise you'll be really pleased! You only have to look at the main bit."

The charm of the reason was irresistible. "Alright," said Patrick. "But first – "

"Yes, sort of and yes," Timothy blurted. "Open it now."

"Properly," said Patrick, catechising him with mock solemnity. "Have you worked hard?"

"Yes."

"Done everything you were supposed to? No chatting to Nick and Simon or drawing in your Maths book?"

Timothy wriggled. "Sort of?" The exercise book was not entirely sketch free, although he only succumbed to temptation when he had finished and was waiting for everyone else to catch up, and thus, in his mind, it was justifiable.

"Hmm. Have you done your best?"

"Definitely!"

"Good lad." He offered the report to Shelagh, pressing it into her hand when she resisted. She had been excluded during the first part of the tradition; he would not see her excluded from the rest. "You open it, sweetheart," he said, whispering, "I think he may have come top."

"Seems a decent enough man," observed Rob to Elspeth, joining her and Sister Julienne. He snorted as they watched Timothy jiggling from one foot to the other while Shelagh read the line which declared his position as top of his class. Patrick peered over her shoulder with undisguised pride, his hand absent-mindedly nestled in the small of her back. "A wee bit of an old married couple, aren't they?" he said as he replenished his plate, unconscious that his chance comment provided the insight which had eluded Elspeth for the previous day and a half and which had struck Julienne with such poignancy two months earlier.

"Well done," said Patrick after Timothy unwrapped himself from Shelagh's congratulatory hug. "Very well done. I'll look at it properly at home. Now, go and get your things, Timothy, say your goodbyes and go and wait in the car. I need to have a little chat with Shelagh and then we must head off."

"Why do I have to wait in the car? Can't I wait here?"

"Timothy, not now, please. I don't want you wandering off."

"Could I go in Uncle Kenneth's car, Dad?" Anticipating the objection, Timothy charged on. "I really need to talk to him about something and he's got a wedding present he wants to drop off so I could help direct him. And if I go with Uncle Kenneth then I won't have to wait around while you and Shelagh are saying goodbye and stuff."

The amount of disdain he managed to invest into the word 'stuff' was remarkable. Had they been in private, Patrick would have laughed or given some sardonic riposte. However a sudden burst of giggling from the nurses made him uneasy; he did not know if it was fluke or a cocked eyebrow and ribald remark from Trixie after overhearing them. Shelagh started to clean her glasses, a symptom always of embarrassment or discomfort, sometimes both. Even more he wanted to speak to her.

The offer of the lift was therefore gratefully received, but with an unexpected consequence. The departure was fanfared with final salutations and promises to continue conversations the next day, then they were gone. It coincided with the call to Vespers and with the vanishing of the nuns and the Reeses came the dissolution of the festivities. Then, like a subsiding balloon, the atmosphere became more languid. Fred seized the chance for a rare Friday night at the Pig and Whistle rather than in the company of the Cubs, while the rest separated into disparate groups and with each one in different rooms – the Noakes and Elspeth alternating between kitchen and dining room, Jane helping Cynthia in the supplies room prior to her attending a call, Jamie and Agnes playing cards with their father in the parlour and Trixie and Jenny disappearing somewhere, upstairs Patrick thought – there was no place where the lovers could unobtrusively go to hold their final tryst.

The sound of the nuns singing wandered throughout the house. Many times the slow pulse of the responses had been a comfort to Patrick and he would stand in the corridor, given perspective by the ancient words and the voices' purity. Knowing what was to happen to the community it haunted him today, similar to the time back in August when he first heard them without Shelagh's voice and felt that she had been obliterated. As they stood in the hall listening, his haunting deepened. He had heard Mother Jesu Emmanuel invite her to use the chapel or join the sisters in their acts of worship that evening, an invitation lightly made, but pointed; and now Shelagh constantly looked back beyond the supplies room and telephone to the chapel from where the call to serve God was issuing.

Seldom had he ever seen her look more uncomfortable. Once or twice she looked at him so emphatically he knew there must be a reason, then looked back at the chapel again. Much of the time she did not look at him, seemingly listening for somebody else. His tongue was gummy and oversized as it fumbled for unfound words. He considered taking her hand, hoping his body could open the dialogue, however Shelagh's hands were tightly clasped in front of her. He offered a word and she cut him off by beginning to babble, avidly saying how much she liked Alice and how pleasant their afternoon had been; inconsequential talk, too fast and glib. A creeping dread started to slide over him, shuddering him. A drop of sweat formed at the top of his neck under his hair, swelling and bloating as she continued to jabber about how wonderful Timothy's report had been. Like nausea it grew. He had thought she wished to speak to him and when she brought him tea in the dining room he had felt her fingers resting too long on his, certain her fingertips brushed his knuckle as she withdrew, yet now it seemed the last thing she wanted was to be alone with him. He wondered if he had seen too little when he thought he had seen so much, the reality of their imminent marriage, a reality which had evaded him, rearing up for her as a sheer face of impenetrable granite: cold, terrifying and inescapable.

All the time they were drawing closer to the front door and the next time they stood by a door together it should be the door of All Saints as a newly married couple. Anxiety made him bold. He seized her hand and his voice was fevered. "Shelagh. Sweetheart."

She stopped him, her manner brisk and clipped. "I think we should go outside."

"It's freezing out there," he protested weakly. Now he felt the reality that in eighteen hours they should be married and he felt it as a desperate need. Although he shivered, the bead of sweat trickled down his neck and he loosened his hand to release her.

She, however, did not release him, interlacing her fingers more tightly with his. Lowering her face, she caught his eyes and held them. There was no flinty ice in hers, only the same liquid warmth he had seen in the dining room. "Patrick, don't let go," she whispered ardently; then added, her voice again clear and over-loud, "I know, but there are pairs of wagging ears in here!"

"Spoilsports!" exclaimed Trixie, appearing from around the corner where the telephone was.

She was followed by Jenny. "Just a case of tit for tat!"

"I sure I don't know what you mean!" declared Shelagh as their colleagues smirked and ran up the stairs.

"How did you know?" asked Patrick, appalled.

"I might have been known to be involved in something a wee bit similar myself once or twice," she admitted, her coyness laced with mischief. "I know they've gone – for now – but I still think we should go outside, my love. I know it's cold, but it's only for a minute."

"And that's all that was? Nothing else?" He opened the door and they stepped onto the threshold, no cover above them from the winter sky.

She looked bewildered. "Of course. What else could it have been?"

"Thank Christ," muttered Patrick to himself. The violence of the oath was deeply unlike him and he desperately hoped she had not heard it, knowing it would offend her more than any other. His sudden anxiety, stupid, paranoid, untrusting, had shaken him more than he realised.

"Patrick?" She stroked his face, directing it towards her. There was an intensity in her gaze sometimes which struck him every time like blinding light, wounding to look at, yet impossible to pull away from. "You didn't think, you couldn't think, surely, it was anything else?"

Taking both her hands, he curled them towards him so they rested upon his chest and slowly replied. "I didn't, not really. I didn't understand why you were behaving so oddly in the hall though."

"You didn't realise I was looking back at the telephone? I was trying to let you know they were there. I thought you'd understood."

"I didn't. I'm sorry. I could see you were unhappy about something and I didn't know what. I was worried that you were having pre-wedding jitters or something. I thought you were looking back at the chapel." He heard the short cry of protest and rushed on. "Things have happened so fast and I wouldn't blame you if it all felt overwhelming, especially tonight when the wedding's so close. I've been busy getting finished at work and it only just struck me fully it's tomorrow. It's an enormous step, Shelagh."

"Nothing has changed, Patrick. I still feel the same," she said. Her fervency evoked more vividly what she was recalling than any words could. "Exactly the same, my love. I couldn't be more certain. Surely it's the same for you?"

"Almost," he said. They stood so intimately, their eyes so closely fixed upon each other, it seemed to Patrick that their vows were being made there. "I meant it in October when I said I was completely certain. Truly I did. And yet, I don't see how I could have been when I am so much more certain now, my dear."

Had Trixie or Jenny overheard, they would have felt ashamed to pry into the moment. If Agnes had watched, every fantasy she had of love would have been realised. Instead, they stood alone, unwatched, distant noise from traffic unheeded, framed in the doorway and offering their words and acts of reassurance.

"Shelagh, may I ask you something?" he asked quietly.

"Of course."

"I had a home visit this morning on Cemetery Lane and had ten minutes afterwards, so I dropped into the graveyard for a moment." The lightness in the voice belied the attentiveness with which he watched for her reaction and the speed with which he saw a muscle jump in her jaw. "The flowers on Elizabeth's grave. It was you, wasn't it?" She nodded and he saw her lip was trembling. He had meant to ask her why, yet his moment of panic in the hall had given him clarity. It did not matter what her reason was or even if he understood: it had been an act of love from one who embraced his past as well as his future and that was enough. "You went this morning?"

"Yes. Around eleven, a quarter past perhaps."

"I was there at half past."

"We must have only just missed each other," she said. "If I'd waited I would have seen you."

He smiled. "We've seen each other now. We got there in the end." Neither were sure, but both suspected he was no longer talking of the morning. "Thank you."

"What for?"

"For standing here," he said simply. "For this," he continued, raising her left hand so the diamond glimmered. "For everything you've given up."

"I haven't," she replied. "I found out who it is I'm supposed to be. How can I not live the life I'm meant to live?"

She thought he was going to kiss her and in her mind started to anticipate his touch on her lips. It livened her in a way she could not express. But he did not. Instead he looked at her in a way which made her tremble and blush. She hesitated at the word, but could only call it reverence.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then." She nodded. "To get married." As he started to smile, he bent his head and kissed her hand, his lips by the stone of her ring. "Sleep well."

"Good night, my love."

When he reached the bottom of the steps, he turned around and his face was boyish and happy. "Mind you're not late, Shelagh!"

"Oh, skedaddle! Be off with you or Michael will be at your house before you are and Timothy will think you've crashed the car."

Their laughter resounded as Patrick made his way to his car and although it was faint, Shelagh could hear him whistling. It rose into the air jauntily, vigorous and lively, cutting through the air even as the distance stretched between them, until finally it was muffled as the car door smacked shut.