Northern Ireland is the destination of James Frobisher’s next posting, a three-month period of duty beginning in January. Though the place itself is not described, the assignment reshapes the immediate arrangements for Fern and their newborn daughter, Sophie: James will go, while they stay behind.

The Posting and the Decision

James receives news of the posting shortly before Christmas. Fern asks whether he can exchange assignments with someone else, but her mother decides that Fern and the baby will not go, and her father agrees. Their stated reason is the family’s previous loss of Elise and their fear of losing Fern as well. Fern laughs at the suggestion that she might be blown up, but recognizes that staying makes practical life easier because her mother can help care for Sophie.

The decision also carries a cost for Fern. An increasingly audible voice in her thoughts warns that staying could mean never leaving home and becoming trapped there. Her mother proposes that Fern, James, and the baby use the spare bedroom above the dining room during his Christmas leave; its twin beds are presented as a manageable detail, but Fern says nothing. The proposed arrangement makes the separation feel close even before James departs.

Family Life During the Absence

James has a week off at Christmas, which Fern’s mother frames as an opportunity for the couple to get to know their baby. After Christmas, Fern imagines leaving Sophie in the care of her mother and Mrs Bibby and returning to college, where she could drink with Jill and Rob and eat Felicity’s notoriously uneaten leftover macaroni cheese. The fantasy gives shape to Fern’s wish for a life beyond the house, even as the family’s plan assumes she will remain there with the baby.

A letter from Araminta Landreth later confirms that Sophie was born two weeks earlier and that Fern and her daughter are living at Three Paddocks with Fern’s mother, Rosemarie Woolbright, while Fern’s husband is on duty in Northern Ireland. The letter supplies the lived outcome of the Christmas discussion: the posting has separated James from his wife and infant daughter, leaving Rosemarie in the household as a source of help, though not without strain.

Narrative Significance

Northern Ireland functions in this episode as the specific destination that turns a posting into a domestic separation. The family’s fear is shaped by Elise’s death, while Fern’s reaction reveals the tension between practical support and the possibility of becoming confined to her parents’ home. The location is thus tied less to a depicted landscape than to the distance it creates and the uncertain future Fern imagines in James’s absence.