September 1970

So Flora Ashby Barrow packed a small case of clothing and personal things and put it beside that of Ernest. They were going! Not since their honeymoon to the Lake DIstrict - Ernest didn't want to go far - had they gone away together for more than a night or two.

"You look giddy, Flora," her mother told her, standing as she was by the old chauffeur's cottage. Turning, Florrie put her hand to her cheeks for a moment, and then stepped towards Daisy, frowning.

"I am not! I'm just wondering, that's all, if I've got everything! And if Janet and Christopher will be all right!"

Daisy smiled, and looked over the cases. Brown leather, bought at a sale by Daisy and Andy before they went on their honeymoon, it wasn't a lot to be taking for a fortnight in Birmingham.

"There's shops, and places to get things from, mother," Florrie told Daisy as she looked over Ernest's slightly larger case. "Father said he would drive us to the station; we're meeting Henry there and - "

A crunch of gravel, and a Morris pulled up outside the old chauffeur's cottage. Daisy turned her head, white with age, but still in the same style as it had been in the mid twenties - ear-line bob and fringe. Crinkled on the top a little where the dampness of the early autumn shower had come down as she crossed over the yard between the kitchen and the cottage and was just drying out.

"Christopher you don't have to worry about - he will be at Manchester next week; Janet will be at school, and she's staying with us, isn't she? And - "

"Hi, love," Andy nodded to his daughter, picking up the two cases in the hall with the ease of a man who had spent nearly a lifetime of working on a farm, then kissed her on the cheek. Daisy followed her husband's wake and walked beside Florrie, as the back door of the Morris was opened and the cases put in, on top of boxes that had already been put in. Ernest was taking some of his equipment and experimental timepieces and jewellery down with him and everything was well wrapped.

" - and she will be able to go to the Ashby cottage, and on the estate. She'll have as much freedom as a sixteen year old girl needs to finish her last year at school."

"That's what worries me," Flora told her mother, and would have liked to say more but she noticed Ernest striding beside his father.

Adopted father, of course, Florrie noted in her head. Nearly all the time and she didn't notice. But now, walking beside one another as they were, their differences were irreconcilable: Thomas could not be Ernest's biological father, dark haired, dark eyed as he was beside Ernest's white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes.

To her mother, these were the people who had fought against Britain for six years. But Florrie could only see a man so handsome, so kind, so generous in manner and character that she knew she could never love anyone else, and that it would be for all her life. He grew more handsome when his eyes caught hers and he strode ahead of Thomas taking up Florrie's hands and kissing her on the forehead.

"My love," he said, close to her ear, and kissed her on the cheek. "What have you done to your hair? It is looking very good this morning!" Daisy gave a small smile to Thomas, who returned it, with a nod.

"I'm not in my pinny, and we are going away for the first time without the children," she told him, with flawless logic. Ernest smiled again and then strode to the passenger side door, lifting the catch on the seat. "After you; Father will sit in the front."

Blushing like a teenager in the first flushes of love, Flora got into the car, Ernest behind and Thomas Barrow sitting in the front passenger seat.

"Is Uncle Henry expecting you?" Ernest asked his father. Thomas turned as Andy put his foot on the accelerator and eased past the old chauffeur's cottage.

"Yes," Thomas agreed. "And I will, of course, look in on Christopher, and make sure that he has settled in. As long as I am back for the Brancaster visit the day after tomorrow, Georgie will not mind."

Settled. It was settled that day. Thomas was carrying on with his butlering duties, Daisy would cover what orders were needed for the Pelhams visiting down from Brancaster and make sure Miss Sybbie had everything she needed; Janet would help her. How lovely the day was.

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"What was she like, Grandma Melusina?"

A tray had just come down from Miss Sybbie's room. Daisy Parker looked at it disconsolately. So little had been eaten. But then, grief took like that. She smiled at her granddaughter and handed her a teatowel.

"Why the sudden interest?"

And Janet told Daisy about her visit to Larry, and the piece of paper. But not the metal; somehow she wanted to keep that to herself.

"I found some of her things at the Ashby cottage, and I just wondered. We all talk about her, but not about her, who she was, what she was like. And I want to know, really. She seems like an interesting person."

"For your school project?" Daisy asked.

"Ye-es," Janet agreed, drawing out the word. But it was more than that. More than something to write about for school. She had known for a long time what she wanted to do with her life and wanted to find out more and more about it. Writing. Journalism. Recording the facts and incidences of a particular thing. Janet liked finding things out, and she liked writing. She also felt a great deal of satisfaction when an injustice was put right.

A woman had come to their school and had spoken to them about her own work on the Great Train Robbery and the Moors Murders. Both Janet had heard about, and she had listened to the woman journalist tell them all that collecting facts, putting those facts out to the public was her way of feeling she had done right by the victims. And to Janet, Melusina Ashby was the same, there, between them all, but ignored, as if she committed a lifetime of wrong and had been rewarded by an eternal cold shoulder. Like the trees, being cut down for the building of whatever the Dower house was being condemned for: what had those trees done to be hacked down to their roots.

She had told Master Georgie this - about Grandma Melusina, not the trees - when she had shown him the letter she had found in the old book that belonged to Downton Abbey. Georgie didn't know Milo, of course, and, like with her own family, the Crawleys barely spoke of her.

"But I think a long enough time has passed since the incident in the library that people would talk to you, Miss Barrow," Georgie had said to her. "Great Aunt Edith likes to talk of the past now, and of course, Cousin Sybbie knew her for a short time." But Janet knew she would not approach Mrs Sybbie Bell about anything of the sort, knowing her involvement in the "Library Incident" and also that she had lost her husband in an accident at Catterick.

So Janet had begun where she felt safest, with Grandma Daisy, and doing the household jobs at Downton had made Grandma Daisy relaxed enough to chat.

"Uncle Larry said I should find out if I wanted; I have been to her trees, or what was left of them - "Janet patted her pockets where she was keeping the seeds from the trees, " - and her grave. And I asked granddad Thomas, but he didn't say much. It looked as if he wanted to, though."

"You are so like her," Daisy told Janet, as she stacked away the cooking pots. "You look like her, you behave like her. When you used to sit at the end of the kitchen table there," Daisy gestured to the worn oak planked table that ran the length of the kitchen, "I see her in you. I see Thomas look at you twice when you walk around the place. He sees her in you too." And worries, Daisy thought to herself.

"But I don't feel I am like her. Wasn't she...a scientist? She invented something to do with radio, got an award for it."

"You are just like her, you roaming all over the place as you did when you were younger," Daisy continued, not yet finished with the previous topic they were discussing. "They were different days - she was so carefree, so in her own mind. And Lord Crawley as was let her, told us she was a free spirit. He was sponsoring her brother, Ernest Ashby, at university, and he wired the house for his Lordship, built the generator building, got it all working. He was so handsome," she added, smiling to Janet. "Tall, like your father is tall, looked like your father in a lot of ways. "But - " Daisy broke off and handed Janet two baking trays that needed going on a high shelf. "But, he was more friendly with Thomas than with anyone. Killed in the War, just weeks before it ended."

"The War?" Janet asked, turning from her position on the stool. "The Great War? '14 to '18?"

"Yes," nodded Daisy. "He was an officer. He was in a corps with other academics - that saved him many years going in, because he was studying at university." She tutted and shook her head. "Someone gave him the white feather - " She broke off, remembering who, then glanced above her head.

"White feather?"

"A sign that someone thought him a coward - well, his Lordship wouldn't stand for that, burned it and called everyone together and told them that he would act if he found out anyone had done this, and would lose their jobs. It all came out later."

"And they lost their job?"

"It was - more than that," Daisy said, and held up a hand so Janet could jump down. "We need to get on with the tea, go and get the bread, Janet, there's a good girl."

And it was there, again, as if her grandmother would get to a hidden boundary and refused to cross over it. Something to do with Milo's brother, and a signal that he was a coward, and no-one would tell her.

Someone would, though. Master Georgie told her she could speak to his great aunt, who was a duchess and would be coming to visit on Friday. His grandmother Mary would be there too. Janet would just have to be patient.

The light through the glass in the pantry caught her eye, the sun at enough of an angle to pass through it and split into a spectrum.

"Hurry up, Janet dear, or the tea will go up late!"