do people have to die?’ I said, but when I looked up, the vicar was back at the chancel door.
‘Are you coming for tea at the church hall?’ he shouted.
I didn’t really want to. I would rather have gone back to Tilly. Her mother didn’t believe in organized religion and was worried we’d all be brainwashed by the vicar, but I had to agree, or it would have been a bit like turning down Jesus.
‘Okay,’ I said, and picked the blades of grass from my knees.
*
I walked behind Mrs Morton, along the lane between the church and the hall. The verge was thick with summer: stitchwort and buttercups, and towering foxgloves which blew clouds of pollen from rich, purple bells. The breeze had dropped, leaving us in a razor of heat which cut into the skin at the tops of my arms and made speaking too much of an effort. We trudged in a single line; silent pilgrims drawn towards a shrine of tea and digestives, all strapped into Sunday clothes and decorated with sweat.
When we reached the car park, Tilly was sitting on the wall. She was basted in sun cream and wore a sou’wester.
‘It was the only hat I could find,’ she said.
‘I thought your mother didn’t want you to be religious?’ I held out my hand.
‘She’s gone to stack shelves in the Co-op,’ Tilly said, and heaved herself down from the bricks.
The church hall was a low, white building, which squatted at the end of the lane and looked as though it had been put there whilst someone made their mind up about what to do with it. Inside, it rattled with teacups and efficiency. Sunday heels clicked on a parquet floor and giant, stainless-steel urns spat and hissed to us from the corner.
‘I’m going to have Bovril,’ said Tilly.
I studied Mrs Morton, as she ordered our drinks on the other side of the room. Early widowhood had forced her to weave a life from other people’s remnants, and she had baked and minded and knitted herself into a glow of indispensability. I wondered who Mrs Morton would be if she still had a husband – if Mr Morton hadn’t been searching for The New Seekers in the footwell of his car and driven himself head-first into the central reservation of the M4. There had been a female passenger (people whispered), who appeared at the funeral in ankle-length black and crimson lipstick, and who sobbed with such violence she had to be escorted from the church by an anxious sexton. I remembered none of this. I was too young. I had only ever known Mrs Morton as she was now; tweeded and scrubbed, and rattling like a pebble in a life made for two.
‘Bovril.’ Mrs Morton handed a cup to Tilly. We all knew she wouldn’t drink it, but we kept up the pretence, even Tilly, who held it to her face until steam crept over her glasses.
‘Do you believe in God, Mrs Morton?’ I looked up at her.
Tilly and I both waited.
She didn’t reply immediately, but her eyes searched for an answer in the beams of the ceiling. ‘I believe in not asking people daft questions on a Sunday morning,’ she said eventually, and went to find the toilet.
The hall filled with people. It was far more crowded than the church had been, and pairs of jeans mixed with Sunday best. It appeared that Jesus pulled a much bigger crowd if He provided garibaldis. There were people from our avenue – the Forbeses and the man who was always mowing his lawn, and the woman from the corner house, who was surrounded by a clutter of children. They clung to her hips and her legs, and I watched as she slipped biscuits into her pocket. Everyone stood with newspapers in their armpits and sunglasses on their foreheads and, in the corner, someone’s Pomeranian was having an argument with a Border Collie. People were talking about the water shortage and James Callaghan, and whether Mrs Creasy had turned up yet. She hadn’t.
No one mentioned Jesus.
In fact, I didn’t think anyone would have noticed if Jesus had walked into the room, unless He happened to be accompanied by an Arctic roll.
*
‘Do you believe in God?’ I asked Tilly.
We sat in a corner of the hall, on blue plastic chairs which pulled the sweat from our skin, Tilly sniffing her Bovril and me drawing my knees to my chest, like a shield. I could see Mrs Morton in the distance, trapped by a trestle table and two large women in flowered aprons.
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘I think God saved me when I was in hospital.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘My mum asked Him to every day.’ She frowned into her cup. ‘She went off Him after I got better.’
‘You’ve never told me. You always said you were too young to remember.’
‘I remember that,’ she said, ‘and I remember it was Christmas and the nurses wore tinsel in their hair. I don’t remember anything else.’
She didn’t. I had asked – many times. It was better for children if they didn’t know all the facts, she’d said, and the words always left her mouth in italics.
When she first told me, it was thrown into the conversation with complete indifference, like a playing card. I had never met anyone who had nearly died, and in the beginning the subject was attacked with violent curiosity. Then it became more than fascination. I needed to know everything, so that all the details might be stitched together for protection. As if hearing the truth would somehow save us from it. If I had almost died, I would have an entire speech to use at a moment’s notice, but Tilly only remembered the tinsel and something being wrong with her blood. It wasn’t enough – even when I connected all the words together, like a prayer.
After she told me, I had joined her mother in a silent conspiracy of watchfulness. Tilly was watched as we ran under a seamless August sky; a breathless look over my shoulder, waiting for her legs to catch up with mine. She was protected from a baked summer by my father’s golfing umbrella, a life lived far from the edges of kerbs and the cracks in pavements, and when September carried in mist and rain, she was placed so close to the gas fire, her legs became tartanned in red.
I watched her without end, inspecting her life for the slightest vibration of change, and yet she knew none of this. My worries were noiseless; a silent obsession that the only friend I had ever made would be taken from me, just because I hadn’t concentrated hard enough.
*
The noise in the hall drifted into a slur of voices. It was a machine, ticking over in the heat, fuelled by rumour and judgement, and we stared into an engine of cooked flesh and other people’s feet. Mr Forbes stood in front of us, sailing a cherry Bakewell through the air and giving out his opinion, as warmth crept into the material of his shirt.
‘He woke up on Monday morning and she’d gone. Vanished.’
‘Beggars belief,’ said Eric Lamb, who still had grass cuttings on the bottom of his trousers.
‘Live for the moment, that’s what I say.’ I watched Mr Forbes sail another cherry Bakewell around, as if to demonstrate his point.
Mrs Forbes didn’t speak. Instead, she shuffled her sandals on the herringbone floor, and twisted a teacup around in its saucer. Her face had worried itself into a pinch.
