A/N: Thank you for your reviews, Irishcomplexion (yes, I agree, kids! ;D) and Elva (hint: I like happy endings) also tlcj for adding fic to Alerts. Thank you, too, sunday, for your review of chapter one, sorry I somehow missed thanking you last time!

***chapter three***

Silence. Echoing, deafening. Loneliness. Taunting, blaming, mocking with its tale of waiting in the shadows ready to snatch happiness away in a moment. The fear that stalks us deep down that one day we will wake and our love is flown.

Questions spinning without answers, uncertainty rocking his world. Has something happened to Anna? To Johnny? The baby?

He walks as swiftly as he is able, cursing his bad leg, to the door of the cottage. The sun is hidden now and rain streaming down. He gazes helplessly out at the surrounding farms, at the faraway sheep, no more than white dots in the distance, until they, too, are lost in the greying landscape of the rain falling faster and faster. The wind curls around the cottage and nearby trees lift their ravaged branches in supplication to the Heavens, the deep green grass flattened in despair. reminding him nothing and no-one is forever.

"Anna?" He calls. "Johnny?"

But his voice is hoarse and quickly stolen away by the wind.

And she is so perfect. He never deserved her. His eyes sting. His throat is raw. Has there been an accident? Has he time to hasten down to the village tram stop and fetch help from Downton Abbey? Or is Sweeney's Farm, which has a telephone too, nearer? What's happened, what's happened, what's happened? Anna, where ARE you?

Recriminations. Every single memory dusted down and analysed for where he went wrong. What he should have said and done differently. Why couldn't he have simply swallowed his pride and said sorry?

After all, it was only a room. Only a few splashes and smudges and smears of coloured paint spoiling the gleaming yellow where the sunlight liked to play. What did it matter? What small child never did something that made sense to nobody but the small child themselves? Johnny often did.

Like the time Anna was walking in and out of the cottage hanging out washing. Their toddler son, as they were soon to find out, had meanwhile been very busy collecting eight or nine dark brown-grey slugs from the garden, which he carefully placed on top of the toy drum he'd been playing a loud drumbeat on earlier (now minus the drumsticks that, to his bafflement, always mysteriously disappeared after ten minutes or so of treating his parents to some over-enthusiastic drumming) and then calling for "Mummy" proudly proffered his gift. Anna, turned, smiling, but instead of the delight the little boy anticipated, she gave an involuntary scream of disgust and dropped the washing basket and its contents in horror.*

And John had only roared with laughter at Johnny's look of bewilderment and at Anna's horrified expression. After a while, she recovered enough to give a small embarrassed laugh and Johnny chuckled too, without knowing why his mother and father were laughing, and sang some nonsense words to a song of his own invention and, the slugs having already fallen off their temporary home in the shared shock of would-be donor and would-be recipient, thudded on the drum with the palm of his hand in accompaniment in an attempt to bring matters back to his version of normality.

He had teased Anna again about her fear of the slugs when they went to bed that night. She only gave a small smile and shrugged her shoulders. Did the joke go on too long for her to think it funny? Because they cuddled only briefly and, saying she would read for a while, her kiss had barely brushed his cheek before she picked up her book.

Was that day when he lost her love forever?

XXXXX

The rain is much heavier now and Johnny can't run any faster. She sweeps him into her embrace, tucking the ball under one arm, shielding him from the worst of the weather as best she can. The extra weight slows down her own steps, but in her heart of hearts she is reluctant to hurry back.

Because John doesn't love her any more and her heart is broken. It happened. At least, she knew it happened to other couples, but never thought it would happen to them. They had always been rock solid. There was something, a spark, from the moment they met.

Only last week Mr Molesley remarked that they were Yin and Yang. She wasn't familiar with the expression and she was intrigued by the explanation when she asked him. He liked to share his knowledge of the world. Never in an arrogant way, though. Joseph Molesley believed everyone should continue learning throughout their life.

She couldn't wait to debate it with John and see what he thought about the ancient Chinese philosophy, that they were, as Mr Molesley said, two opposites complimenting each other. One strong, masculine, carefree and irritable, the other quiet, calm, feminine and thoughtful, the differences bringing perfect harmony to their relationship and the world around them..

"It seems we're Yin and Yang," she told her husband as she sat down in the armchair at the other side of the fire and rooted through the work bag that contained assorted coloured wool and knitting needles of various sizes.

"What?" He folded the newspaper and looked up at her.

She found what she was looking for and pulled out the half-finished sleeve of a new jumper she was making for Johnny. "According to Mr Molesley. It's Chinese philosophy. Yin is feminine energy and Yang masculine energy. When balanced in their relationship, apparently their interaction promotes the harmony of the Universe. I think I've got that right." She added uncertainly, trying to recollect exactly how Mr Molesley described it.

"Oh, Mrs Bates." Her husband shook his head in amusement. "Next thing you'll tell me the moon is made of green cheese."

She smiled the sad ghost of a smile at his swift dismissal of the centuries-old Chinese belief that she'd thought interesting and sweet and threw a spare ball of wool at him for his bad joke. He ducked, laughing. "When it's actually made of blue cheese," he grinned.

"I thought Yin and Yang romantic," she said, studying her stitches to hide her disappointment. John had never been one for romance, but he knew Anna was and used to indulge her. Once he visited every second-hand bookshop in Yorkshire, telling her he was looking for a rare book about the Boer War that mentioned a particular battle he'd fought in and the friends who'd fought alongside him. But on her birthday, producing a long out-of-print volume of love poetry, he told her the truth. Mrs Hughes had mentioned it being voted by readers of The Lady magazine "the most romantic ever collection of love poems" and he had searched and searched for that poetry anthology because he wanted to find the ideal present for the woman he loved.

But the romance was gone out of their marriage now and they had settled on indifference. When she looked up again, he was idly toying with the wool he had retrieved from the floor, frowning in concentration at the newspaper folded on his knee at the crossword page.

And that was the last ball of wool in the exact shade she needed to finish knitting Johnny's new jumper. "John!" she sighed. "You haven't washed the paint off your hands!"

"For Heaven's sake, Anna!" He glanced down at his hands still stained with yellow paint. He had put a final coat on the nursery walls after eating supper and ensconced himself in the arm-chair immediately afterwards. "Can't a man relax in his own home?"

He threw down the newspaper in annoyance and made a great show of tossing the wool back down into the work bag by her feet.

She felt a momentary pang of guilt. She couldn't actually see a single fleck of paint on the precious wool and he'd been working at Downton Abbey all day whereas she had only been there in the morning to ensure Lady Mary's wardrobe and Lady Mary herself were both all sorted for her weekend away before enjoying a quiet lunch of bread and cheese and a scalding hot cup of tea (tea didn't have enough time to stay hot when Johnny was around) before Phyllis arrived with Johnny and the peace was shattered once more by the tiny human whirlwind.

He stalked into the kitchen area and she heard the biscuit tin rattle as he took it down from the shelf. Wondering if it was a deliberate snub because she'd lately been talking about their need to eat more healthily. Or was she just being silly? John loved those coconut biscuits and eating one or two wouldn't do any harm.

But still the thought nagged her that in the early years of their marriage he would at least have tried to respect her wishes. Anyway, he wasn't the only one who went out to work. She may only work part-time as a lady's maid nowadays, but she never stopped working in the home and looking after little Johnny. And John may have worked hard painting the nursery, but she couldn't risk over-stretching in her condition. So why should she back down and say sorry when he was the one who was being childish.

Was that the day they fell out of love?

To be continued...

A/N: *Although it would have slowed down the theme of the story if I paused to describe it, we may assume Mr and Mrs Bates ensured Johnny learnt that slugs could carry diseases and make him very sick.