Edinburgh

On 25 September 1950, she and Leonard moved into their two-bedroom home at 48 Paisley Crescent, a mile or two/two or three kilometres west of the CBD and equidistant from the Firth of Forth. At first, their time together was full of romance and passion and many small joys, like gardening at home and working together on their allotment outside the wall of Kings Park, at the foot of Arthur's Seat.

But the "dailiness" of daily life soon asserted itself, and Elizabeth discovered that Leonard was not easy to live with. He was unhappy at work, where the medicos were more interested in books that met their immediate clinical needs than in any of his historical bibliological interests or restoration/preservation enthusiasms; as well, his fears and phobias about illness and medical interventions dogged him. He was also quite controlling: he was secretive about his correspondence with Joyce, disapproved of Elizabeth writing to her old friends, and discouraged her from making new ones; he told her little about his work at the RCP, attending its social functions on his own, and he usually went off on his annual leave by himself.

Leonard Jolley also involved himself with Elizabeth's ongoing struggles with her mother, making epistolary bullets for her to fire at Margarete Knight. But Knight was an expert at the double bind, and she also had the upper hand financially. For example, her great display of attention to her granddaughter and the gifts she gave her implied blame of her daughter for the difficult circumstances Sarah had to endure because of Elizabeth's irresponsibility.

After Joyce's divorce proceedings against Leonard were concluded in late September, Leonard and Elizabeth Jolley were married at the Registry Office in Wolverhampton on 6 December 1952, not informing the Knights of the event because earlier they had said they had married in Scotland. Some time later Leonard Jolley persuaded her to start using her middle name Elizabeth instead of Monica. Their son Richard Charles Henry was born 16 June 1953 and their daughter Ruth Marion 9 September 1955.

One great freedom Elizabeth Jolley enjoyed in Edinburgh was more time to write, to the extent that she could fit it in with looking after Leonard and the children. She redrafted children's stories from Birmingham and, hopefully but unsuccessfully, sent them and Eleanor Page to several would-be publishers.

Despite some friction, the Royal College of Physicians recognised Leonard Jolley's talent and so proposed a schedule of future salary increases, but he disliked the job and realised that his long-term prospects there were too limited for a man approaching his forties. Thus, without telling his wife, in November 1954 he applied for the position of Librarian at the University of Hull, losing out to poet Philip Larkin. Then in 1956 he applied to be Deputy Librarian at the University of Glasgow. When Elizabeth Jolley heard of the application, she noted in her diary on 2 May 1956 that "it would break our hearts to leave this dear little house + garden with all its great inconveniences."

... he usually went off on his annual leave by himself ...