Now Marian will decide our fate. We write to her and beg her to move back to Shibden, as it is her home too. We miss her. Anne loves her sister and we both want her here with us. We tell her that Anne wishes to go travelling and I am not well enough to go but she does not want to leave me alone. Anne believes Marian is more upset with her than with me, so may come if she believes it will only be me here.

Miss Lister

We tell her we will invite Ann’s sister Elizabeth to stay here too, with the children. It should be nice to have some children in the Hall, wouldn’t she like that? We tell Marian about the woodlands and the lake, which she must come and see in the warmth of summer. We beg her to claim her part of Shibden for herself. I enclose a sketch of the stone Lister lion and note on the back, ‘Some semblance of Father perhaps? Our Lister lion’.

I ask Marian in another letter from me alone, would she wish Ann from our lives? If she would befriend Ann again, then she never has to see me. I will sacrifice Ann to her to make her happy, so neither of them must be alone. I beg her to agree that if she will not join us now, will she at least look after Ann should anything happen to me? Do not blame Ann for any of this, I tell her, it was all my doing.

We do not hear back for weeks.

I set a date to leave, with or without Ann, as the twentieth of June; to keep on waiting is insufferable. If I do not set off by summer, I shall have the worst of journeys through winter. The desire to leave burns inside me and I know she sees it, but I cannot help it. I seem to find no satisfaction in earthly pursuits and pleasures any more. Temporarily perhaps, but never to my core, as if everything stops at my skin. Travel presents itself as the only possible source for some enjoyment.

Miss Walker

She eventually writes back and agrees to visit! All is not lost, Marian will come. But she goes on to say that she will come for Christmas time. She believes as a family we should spend Christmas together, but she will come no sooner. There are no promises to move back in; it will just be a visit. Christmas is several months away, and Anne wants to leave in June. Marian will make us wait and she gives herself ample time to change her mind. Perhaps she says this just to stop our asking and intends to refuse us later. Anne fumes and shouts cruelly, what can she possibly have to fill the next seven months in her little life?