Andrew had to get to the Examination Schools, but every street he started down doubled back on itself and every bus he boarded changed routes. At last he made it as far as Queen's but discovered he'd come away not only without his gown but without a stitch on aside from his flight jacket. He fled down Queen's Lane, tugging futilely at the hem of his jacket, and there, under the windows of the Warden of New College, he found Mum, Mum in the shapeless brown coat she wore for rambling in the country and the peacock-blue hat she'd had for best when Andrew was small. He stopped, aghast that he'd thought she was dead. She looked up, and saw him, and said "Andrew" in the voice that meant soap-left-in-the-water and message-not-delivered. He tried to cover himself with his hands, and woke with tears on his face.

"Mum," he said aloud to the patch of sunlight on the ceiling.

It was still early, but from the bathroom he could hear the dull cling-cling-clink of Dad tapping his shaving brush on the edge of his soap mug. Andrew waited for the sounds of morning that it seemed must follow - the kettle singing, the kitchen door creaking, Mum calling "Andrew, are you up?"

Andrew raised his own hand and stared at it. A man's hand; a pilot's hand; a veteran's hand.

An empty hand.

When he heard Dad finish he hauled himself out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown, and slipped out into the passage. The door to the front bedroom stood open, and though it was sunlight and not lamplight spilling out for a moment Andrew's ribs tightened with memories: a cold February morning and Dad's strained voice saying there's an ambulance coming, unlock the front door, a cold January night and Dad's thick rasping breaths. He steadied himself on the wall and went forward.

The bed was already made, as always. The ironing board stood between the windows where mum's dressing table had been. At the bureau Dad was buttoning his braces to his trousers. His eyes flicked up for a moment as Andrew came to sit on the side of the bed.

"Sleep all right?" he asked.

"Fine." Andrew studied the stiff line of his shoulders. "You can't have had much; do you have to go in on time?"

Dad opened a drawer. "Well, got to make an arrest first thing." He chose a pair of cufflinks and set them on the dresser top.

"It's not your friend, is it?"

"What?"

"The Yank. Sam told me he's on the committee with you."

"Umm…" Dad frowned as he fastened his cuffs. "Nnno, not arresting him."

"Oh, good."

Dad tilted his head.

Andrew fiddled with the hem of the counterpane. "Could I ask Sam to give me a lift this morning?"

"Where to?"

Andrew kept his eyes down. "Up to Hollington."

"Ah. To, um. To visit the churchyard?"

"Yeah."

"Could go together tomorrow," Dad said after a pause. "Unless you'd rather…?"

"Yeah, on my own, yeah. Maybe at the weekend, though?"

"Right."

"And. Dad. What happened to Mum's jewelry?"

Dad stopped in the act of turning up his collar for his tie to turn towards Andrew and widen his eyes.

"Just asking." Andrew stared back. "I mean, did Uncle Charles want anything for Aunt Nora, or did you put things in the bank, or…?"

Really, said Dad's face, but he finished with his collar and picked up his tie. "Wasn't much that was particularly valuable. One necklace of her mother's - we'd had it in the bank, she never wore it. That, I gave to Charles." He slid the Windsor knot into place, then turned his collar down. He opened the same drawer where he kept his cufflinks and drew out a flat white box topped with gray velvet. For an instant he stood, holding it in both hands, and then he thumbed the catch and opened the box as he set it down on the bed beside Andrew.

The velvet lining was pale blue; perhaps the cover had once been the same color and had faded from the sunlight falling across Mum's dressing table. Andrew trailed hesitant fingers over the contents: a slender gold wristwatch, a small pearl pendant he remembered her wearing often. Several brooches he had never seen. Half a dozen rings.

"I have. Her wedding ring. Also." Dad let out a breath. "Did you want to see…?" He touched his tie again.

"No. That's all right."

"Can do as you like with those." Dad turned away to shrug into his waistcoat.

Andrew turned over the rings. He didn't recognize most of them. One was so small he doubted Mum could have worn it after he'd come along, and a couple were impractically bulky. But one, old gold with a round red stone in a flat setting, he could picture on Mum's right hand as she turned pages in her sketchbook.

"You going to have a bath?" Dad asked.

Andrew looked at the clock. "Just sponge off, but I'll wipe the tub."

"Thanks. I'll get breakfast."

When Sam knocked Andrew checked, again, that his jacket pocket was buttoned securely over the battered Strepsils tin he'd found to hold the ring. He tried to school his face before he opened the door, but Sam's smile turned quickly to a slight, worried frown when she saw him. He shrugged and shook his head, trying to convey it's nothing; she nodded and turned to Dad. "Good morning, sir. How was London?"

"Morning, Sam. Useful." Dad locked the door behind them. "The Majestic first, please, and then would you mind running this one up to Hollington?" He tilted his head towards Andrew.

"Not at all." She paused for the briefest moment. "You won't need me at the hotel?"

"No, thank you. Need to look over some of the preparations on the Parade, better on foot. Do come back to the station, though."

"Of course." Sam glanced towards Andrew in the backseat as she prepared to put the car in gear. "I wouldn't miss hearing the Prime Minister with everyone there. Andrew, you should come along."

"All right." He eased his collar with a finger. In silence they delivered Dad to the hotel, and Andrew joined Sam in the front seat. Under the dashboard she put out her gloved hand, and Andrew squeezed it.

Her eyes stayed worried, but she smiled and squeezed back before putting the car in gear and setting off inland. "You don't need to tell me," Sam said. "But I have wondered why it's not at St. Clements. Your mother's grave."

"They were married at the Church in the Wood," Andrew explained. "And I think mum's grandparents… or maybe an uncle… had put up some of the money for it to be refurbished in the last century. Anyway, she liked it."

"It is lovely. I've never been to a service, though."

"I haven't for years. We used to be sure to go at Whitsunday, it's beautiful then, but after… Dad and I couldn't face it, I suppose."

"No," Sam agreed, with a sympathetic twist of her lips.

What traffic there was on the London road was going the other way, and they sailed up through Silverhill and out onto the rolling green hills. Andrew put his window down and the sweet cool morning smells of grass and earth mixed with the warm leather of the Wolseley.

"The turn comes up quick," he warned.

"Yes, I know."

"Of course you do. Sorry." Andrew touched her arm in apology. She'd have been there all the years Andrew had missed, waiting straight-backed by the car when Dad came back from his lonely visit to the churchyard.

It was cooler once they passed under the first trees shading the church lane, but the sun slipped through the leaves to make dazzling patches on the ground. Andrew closed his eyes for a moment as Sam pulled up.

"There's a bench just by the lych gate," she said, when they got out of the car. "I'll wait there."

Andrew nodded. He took a few steps, then turned back. "Sam… would you come with me?"

She looked up, her face open and surprised. "Oh! Of course. If you like. I thought you might want to be on your own."

"I thought I did. But I don't. Well. I mean, I'd like you." He put out his hand, and with a nod, she took it.

He braced himself for the vertiginous feeling of being lost in time, the feeling he'd had in the house that morning, and more than once since coming home, but the memories of the funeral were only pictures, not jolts to the gut. Here they'd followed the coffin; here Uncle Charles and the rest of the pallbearers had set it down; here had been a mound of earth that he and Dad took clods from to drop into the pit. No memories came with the sight of her name carved deep in the unadorned stone, but his eyes brimmed over silently as he crouched to touch the R with his free hand.

Sam knelt down beside him, her hand very warm around his, but she didn't speak.

"I wish…" His voice was stronger than he expected through the tears. "I wish you'd known her."

"I wish I had, too," Sam answered quietly.

He had nothing else to say, or even to think, but somehow that didn't worry him now. He crouched there, and wept, and Sam shifted closer and put her cheek against his shoulder, and that was all.

When he finally sat back on his heels the pain around his eye was back. He felt lightheaded, but also lighter than he had when he woke up. He let go of Sam's hand to get to his feet, but she stayed on her knees for a few moments more, then made a tiny cross with her thumb on the breast of her tunic before she stood.

"She'd have liked you," Andrew told her.

"Do you think so?"

He nodded. "Very much."

Sam dropped her eyes, smiling. The line of her lashes against the curve of her cheek was so lovely Andrew wanted to cry again. The box in his pocket felt as if it might burst into flame.

"Good morning!" someone called from the church porch.

Andrew almost bit his tongue swallowing a curse.

"Hello!" Sam sang back. Then, under her breath, she added, "Oh, gosh, lucky we weren't any later. It looks like a whole altar guild's here to tidy up. There must be a service planned. I'll talk to them, you take your time." She struck out between the gravestones, calling "I hope the car isn't in your way!" with the practiced cheer Andrew thought of as her vicar's-daughter voice.

Alone, he sniffed and wiped his eyes with his thumb. I do think you'd like her, Mum, he thought. I think she'd like you.

Sam's experienced eye had accurately summed up the situation: half a dozen women with a wheelbarrowload of cut flowers and another of cleaning implements and garden tools had come to make ready for a service of thanksgiving. Under their averted but interested eyes Andrew quietly urged Sam to go back to Hastings without him.

"I'm all right, but my head's a bit… I could use some air. It's only three miles."

"You'll come find me at the station?" She looked searchingly into his eyes - searching, but not worried, today.

"I will," he promised. He didn't dare to kiss her, not in front of an Altar Guild, but under the cover of the open car door he squeezed her hand, then waved as she drove off.

He took the quieter road back, through Gillmans Hill, turning the cough-sweet tin over and over in his pocket and feeling the soft dirt under his shoes. The headache faded, and in its wake he found phrases turning over in his mind the way they had years ago, in the dispersal hut or, even earlier, when he'd been meant to be doing homework. From darkness to twilight and one last 'all clear.' In the quietest stretches he tried other phrases aloud, ones that started Samantha and ended in a question, but none of them felt right.

He'd loitered more than he knew, because when he reached the Bohemia Road and stopped in a pub just up from the police station, he found the landlord tuning the wireless and a crowd already gathered to hear the Prime Minister speak. Andrew drank the glass of water he'd come in for, and declined several offers to stand him a drink, and accepted a few fervent handshakes. When Churchill's voice boomed forth and all eyes turned to the radio, Andrew was glad to melt out the door.

He'd thought, when this moment came, he'd laugh or shout, but in the end what he wanted was to stand under the quiet sky, and breathe.

Andrew pulled Sam down the steps of the police station and into the tide of people spilling out of houses and shops towards the Parade. Windows were going up and competing gramophones blaring out of them, while ahead someone had started a ragged chorus of Land of Hope and Glory. He looked to Sam, but she didn't seem to be seeing any of it. Her face was set in the same puzzled frown she'd worn when he came through the station doors.

"Did you know?" Sam asked abruptly.

"What?" Andrew bent closer to be sure he heard her through the confused noise of the crowd.

"That your father drives."

"What?!" Andrew repeated. "He can't drive. Thank God," he added, grinning.

Sam's frown didn't shift. "Last night, Milner was waiting at the station for him to get back from London, and Mrs. Milner came because he'd had a letter from the Commissioner's office and she couldn't wait any more to open it, but then the baby, I mean she…"

May be a father by now, Dad had said. "He told me they were at the hospital last night. But what…"

"He drove them!" Sam said miserably. "I was at SSAFA, and Brookie and everyone but Barton had gone over to the new station, and he took the keys and drove them there!"

"Are you sure?" Andrew stumbled as someone behind jostled them.

"I thought Brookie must have got it wrong, so I asked Mr. Foyle himself."

"And?"

Sam pulled her chin back and screwed up her eyes, "'Wulllll, never said I couldn't drive, just prefer not to.'"

"Oh, for Christ's sake." Andrew turned back towards the station, but the press of the crowd made it impossible to move in that direction.

"Don't, it's all right," Sam told him, but her voice was flat. "It's silly to care so much when it's all over, in any case. Only I... " She shook her head and looked down.

"Only what?" He touched her arm. "It's not silly to me."

Sam took his arm with both hands, but didn't raise her eyes. "I think," she said, quickly, as if tearing off a scab. "About my mother, when I was small. Even when she was ill, the thing she'd always do was hear… me say my scripture verse on Sundays, and my spelling on weekdays. And when… she was very bad… she'd sleep so much, and Dad would hear me say them but if she woke up I h-had to… do it again… to be kind, to let her feel she still…" Sam swallowed and trailed off. Then she shrugged, a small, miserable motion.

"If I was being humored," she said, after a moment, "I ought to have known it. If I had learned anything about investigation, I would have."

"You're not like your mother," Andrew said. There were a hundred logical contradictions he could offer, starting with the fact that plenty of military officers had drivers as a courtesy rather than due to inability, but he held those back. "You're not, and I've met her, remember."

Sam sighed, clearly unconvinced. "I wanted so much to be useful. But now the past feels as uncertain as the future."

"You are useful. You've been useful. The driving's been the least of it."

She wouldn't meet his eyes. "You really didn't know?"

"I didn't," he said seriously. "I've never known him to drive. It was Uncle Charles who taught me, the summer before I went up to Oxford. I never really thought about why Dad didn't drive; I suppose I thought he didn't have a chance to learn early on and didn't have the time later. It was just the way things were. But it's not like him to…"

"He didn't lie. He was so blasted careful not to. He just let me think…" Sam's fist pulled Andrew's sleeve painfully tight around his arm.

Some bloody detective you are, Dad, if you couldn't see how that would hurt her. "Let all of us think," he said. "I don't know what goes on in his head sometimes."

Sam did laugh at that, but it sounded tinny.

Andrew put his hand over hers, as steadily as he could in the crush. "It doesn't change anything you did. Whatever mysterious automotive secrets Dad's been keeping can't take away the cases you helped solve, the people you helped. That's all real, sweetheart." He studied her bent head, and took a blind shot. "As real as anything I did."

Her arm twitched in his as she gulped. "Flatterer," she said.

"No. I know better… you've taught me better… now." He waited for her to look up, then smiled hesitantly into her too-bright eyes.

She smiled back. "Thanks, then." She let out a breath and Andrew did too, almost in unison. "Come on," she said. "There must be space to dance somewhere. I still haven't taught you to jitterbug."

They danced in the Parade, and by the Town Hall, and with a great crowd by the Stade they danced and paused for beer and roasted potatoes and danced more. It was lucky they'd left their caps at the station, because they'd soon have lost them. They both loosened their ties, and Sam's hair loosened in its Victory roll, and her feet in their sensible shoes flashed over the cobbles. The little tin box weighed in his pocket, and as they whirled phrases rose and sank in his mind: would you do me the honor… it would make me so happy… you're the most wonderful… None of the words seemed quite right, but Sam's smile was bright as a searchlight and she fit in his arms as if they'd been made for her.

After dark there were fireworks and a bonfire on the West Hill, and more dancing. The band played and played - they must be taking shifts! Sam shouted in Andrew's ear. When the music finally stopped, well after midnight, and the crowd thinned, they waltzed by the fading embers of the bonfire, Sam humming snatches of hymns in 3/4 time.

"What are the words to that one?" Andrew asked, pressing his face into her hair.

Sam stopped waltzing and just swayed, leaning close against him. "It's 'King of Love,' you must know it."

"No."

"Oh, you do." She lifted her head to rest her chin on his shoulder. "The king of love my shepherd is…"

"That's not the words you were singing, though."

"No? Oh, it was another verse… oft I strayed, but yet in love he sought me/and on his shoulder gently laid/ and home, rejoicing, brought me."

Home. He remembered, suddenly and with the vividness of a film, coming into the house that night in '43 to find Sam at the head of the stairs like St Joan wearing a dressing gown and wielding a frying pan. Sam at the border between the dark and the light. Sam, with him, wherever he was.

"Sweetheart," he started, but Sam was looking over his shoulder.

"I don't suppose there'd be any potatoes left even if we went down to the Stade again," she said.

"Probably not," Andrew agreed. "But we could go back to Dad's, and there's… well, bread and quince jam. Not much else."

"All I have at my lodgings is a quarter cup of flour and a tin of pilchards. And I don't suppose even the end of the war would make Mrs. Chatfield loosen her rules about visiting hours for young men."

"Well, you'd better come over for supper, then. Breakfast. Whatever it is. Dad'll chaperone, we can probably still count on him for that."

"Do you think?" For a moment the dismay showed in her face again, but then she grinned. "All right."

Hand in hand they made their way down the hill and up Steep Lane by the glow of streetlamps more magical, now, than moonlight. There were lights burning in St. Clements' church, behind the newly-uncovered windows, but the houses on either side were dark.

At the steps of the house Andrew reached for his pocket, and his heart dropped. He had the cough-sweet tin with the ring in one pocket, but nothing at all in the other. Without much hope he tried the door, but it was, as always, locked, and not a glimmer of light showed at the windows. "I'm sorry, Sam," he said miserably. "I came away without my key."

"Did you honestly?" Sam stared at him, then fell giggling against the railings.

"Oh, hush." He knocked, hesitantly at first, then louder. "Sam! It isn't that funny, is it?"

"I suppose not… oh, don't ring the bell, let your father sleep." She sat down on the steps. "It can't be long until morning, and it'd be too bad to go in, really, on such a lovely night."

"Sorry," he said again as he sat down beside her.

She slid an arm through his."Oh, hush."

It was a mild night, but it was cooler sitting still; Andrew pulled Sam in close against his side and rubbed her arm through her jacket. "We could go in the church, it's probably open."

"If you're cold." She reached up to brush her fingers over his left temple. "Probably you oughtn't to get chilled."

"I'm all right."

"Good. I couldn't feel right doing this in a church." She slid her hand down behind his ear and pulled his head down to hers for a kiss. "I'm so glad you're home," she whispered against his lips.

"Me, too." He kissed her back.

"Really?"

"Really," Andrew said, and it was true. "I can feel it now."

"Good." She pulled him close again. Her lips were warm and insistent on his. Her fingers stroked his hair down, then roughed it up at the back of his neck, and through their two uniform jackets he could feel her heart and his speed up. Her trembling breath tickled his damp skin, and his breath caught as a warm tremor started at his very core.

For a long time, and no time at all, they kissed, until the iron railing digging into Andrew's back and the cold stone under Sam's free hand made themselves known. Then they settled on the top step, Andrew leaning against the doorjamb and Sam leaning against him, their legs out straight as they stared up at the slowly-brightening sky.

They'd met on this doorstep, Andrew thought, breathing in the smell of Sam's hair. It'd be right… on this first morning of the post-war world… to make the next step here, as well. His pulse picked up again, and Sam cocked her head.

"What are you thinking?"

"Thinking about breakfast with you." Andrew touched his lips to her hair. "Tea with you. Supper, with you. Doing the washing up with you." Going to bed with you. "Doing it all the next day, and the day after, and the day after that."

"That sounds marvelous." She trailed her fingers over the back of his hand.

"It does." His heart was going like a machine gun; she must have felt it, but she only snuggled back against him and tucked her head under his chin. "Sam?" He started to ease the tin out of his pocket, but there wasn't much room.

"Mm."

"Sam, I haven't got a nice speech, or a… any solid prospects to offer, or…"

"Wait. Andrew, what?" Sam wriggled until she could look at him. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, would you… would you think about… getting married? To me?"

"Oh. Oh. You sounded so terribly grim, I thought it must be something serious." She kissed him gently.

"Is… Sam, is that… yes?"

"Andrew." She put a hand on his cheek. "It's yes. Of course it's yes. It's been yes for ages."

"Oh." He laughed with relief and incredulity and anticlimax. "Oh. Well. That's all right, then."

"Absolutely all right." Sam kissed him again.

"Something serious?" Andrew demanded, after a moment.

She gave him a look. "You know what I mean."

"I'm not sure I do." Andrew cocked his head. "Isn't the ordination of matrimony…"

"...it's a sacrament…"

"... be entered into…"

"...utter heathen…"

"...soberly and discreetly…"

"Hold your tongue," Sam laughed, and for a time the street was quiet again.

"I have got something for you," he said at length. "I mean, if you like it…" He wrestled the tin out of his pocket at last, and opened it under Sam's wondering gaze.

"Oh…" she breathed.

"It doesn't look like much in this light..."

"It's beautiful." Hesitantly, Sam put out her left hand, and Andrew slid the ring onto her finger. It was a little tight - spanners were heavier than paintbrushes - but it went on. "Oh," Sam said again.

"The stone's…"

"Don't tell me," Sam said. "I want to see, when the sun comes up."

Above them the sky was still black, but across the road, above the terraced houses, it was the color of Andrew's jacket, and in the gap between the brick terrace to the right and the white terrace to the left, it shaded towards the blue of the gauzy dress Sam used to wear dancing, when they were stepping out in secret.

The blue at the horizon brightened to paler blue, and then to white, and then, all in an instant, to a riot of gold that forced them to look away. Light struck the wall above the door first, then crept down towards them, and Sam stretched out a hand to meet it.

"Oh," she said again, when the garnet flared. "Oh, Andrew." With her other hand she gripped his where it rested around her waist. "There's never been anything so lovely."

"Yes, there has. There's you."

Sam made a small, touched sound, and leaned back against him. "Poet," she whispered, with tears in her voice.

"Once," he whispered back, shaking his head.

"Always."

The victory banners flapped in the morning breeze, the little flags on the ribbons bobbing in and out of shadow like fish jumping for flies. Seagulls wheeled overhead against the cloudless sky.

"You must have often been up all night," Sam said. "Especially at the beginning."

"Not often. But sometimes."

"Does it always feel like this? Like… like being born?"

"No," he answered, thinking of sunrises when he was waiting with his heart in his mouth for the signal to take off, or ones when he'd been coming in on the last drop of petrol and what felt like the last of his strength . "It might from now on, though."

She laughed softly and tipped her face up to the light. Andrew did the same, closing his eyes and breathing deep. The wind picked up again, bringing a hint of salt up from the shore, but the sun was warm and Sam was warmer.

A shadow fell suddenly across Andrew's face, and a stern voice said "What's all this, then?"

He and Sam started at the same moment, then Sam gave a strangled sort of yelp and sprang to her feet.

"Sir!" she gasped.

"Dad!" Andrew said, at nearly the same moment.

Keep Dad out all night and he looked as neat as he had when they left him at the station. A little dust on his shoes, and a few smudges on his overcoat, were the only signs that he wasn't on his way to work. For several endless seconds he squinted at them. Then he pushed his hat back with one hand and rubbed a finger across his forehead. "You two look very. Um."

Sam gave a breathless syllable of a laugh. Andrew risked a sideways glance and saw her hands in fists in front of her belt, the garnet flashing on her left. He looked back to Dad, and caught the shift of his mouth from the frown of concentration to the tight-cornered inverted smile he'd had when Andrew found him at the river.

Dad ducked his head for a moment, then looked up with a twinkle in his eye. "Anything you'd like to tell me? Over breakfast, of course."

While Sam went upstairs to wash, Dad went to the boot cupboard and came out with a tin of salmon, one of peaches, and one without a label that by its shape Andrew knew must hold pineapple.

"How long have you been hiding those?" Andrew demanded.

"Long enough." He hung up his overcoat, then his jacket as well. "Bring the tins along, will you?" Dad made for the kitchen, turning up his sleeves as he went.

Andrew got the good china from the sideboard; the plates were clean but the teacups looked dusty, so he rinsed and dried them while Dad put the kettle on and produced a packet of Earl Grey from behind the spare teapot in the kitchen dresser.

Sam came down with her hair tidied and her tie done up, but her jacket off and folded over her arm. When she went to hang it up in the hall, Andrew followed, and kissed her at the foot of the stairs before going up himself.

He didn't take the time to shave, but he washed his face and put away his jacket in his bedroom. His hand lingered on his campaign ribbon for a moment before he turned away to open the window.

His notebooks still sat on the desk where he'd left them when he unpacked. He looked at them for a moment, then sat down. The pen in the desk drawer was empty, and the ink bottle dry, but he found a not-too-dull pencil, and opened a notebook to a fresh page.

No future's clear to me. I gaze
from darkness to a summer haze.
The parting of the clouds of war
leads only to uncertain days.

But I have heard the last all clear,
And by some grace have made it here
Where I

He paused, and struck out I.

Where we began; and at this door
Take hands, and banish fear.

"Andrew!" Sam called from the kitchen, and then, with Dad's voice alongside hers, "ANDREW!"

"Coming!" Andrew shouted back. He shut the notebook, and went downstairs to join them.

*FIN*