The Wine of Angels

that?’

‘No. Just Alison. Alison wanted to come here, and I was the guy who could afford to take on a mortgage. Nice place, no special sense of destiny.’

‘I thought there was. Then, in a matter of weeks, the whole edifice is developing cracks. I don’t know why that is. Something I did, something I didn’t do? Maybe women really aren’t strong enough for this job. Shit, wash my mouth out.’

‘Was that why you were ill in church?’

‘Because I was feeling like a fraud? That doesn’t matter any more, didn’t you know? There’s now a whole bunch of ministers within the Anglican Church ready to tell you the Virgin birth and the Christmas story and the resurrection are all myths and God as we know Him is just Father Christmas. No, I don’t know why I was sick.’

A lie. Because she couldn’t talk about the worst of it: that while her prayers had become flat and dead, while she was getting no comfort, no response, no sense of resonance, she was also becoming prey to cold visions from the other side of the demarcation line. Visions which began in dreams and finally made it. Finally got into the church.

Superstition. Mental illness.

‘You know what occurred to me ...’ Lol hesitated, playing with the sleeve of his alien sweatshirt, winding it like a tourniquet around his forefinger, ‘when you were on about the blue and gold?’

‘Go on.’

‘I thought of Jane’s room. The ceiling. See, the night we brought Jane out of the orchard she was rambling about little golden lanterns.’

‘She was drunk.’

‘I don’t think she was. I think she was ... heavy word coming up, Merrily. Can you handle this?’

‘Hit me.’

‘Enchanted. She was enchanted. Everything that word says to you. All the different meanings ... like, elated. Like, under a spell.’

‘You’re right,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s a big word.’

‘And what about you, when you were in the little church?’

‘That,’ she said mock-primly, ‘was what we like to call a religious experience.’

‘There you go. Something’s happened to Jane and you’re in denial about it because she’s just a kid and you’re an ordained minister. Lucy would say that was a fairly primitive attitude – everything not connected with God must be ...’

‘Yeah,’ Merrily said. ‘I get the message.’

‘I’m sorry. You’ve been really good to me and I’m insulting you.’

‘Listen, I’m ... OK, maybe what happened to Jane – and to you – was just ... Lucy.’

‘No,’ Lol said.

‘She was a very persuasive woman.’

‘It wasn’t just Lucy.’

‘There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you talked about to Lucy Devenish.’

‘Tried to,’ he said cautiously.

‘You and Lucy talked about my daughter and something that happened to her?’

‘Kind of.’

‘All right.’ She put up both hands. ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. But it relates to what you told me before? About the girls?’

‘Everything relates to that,’ Lol said. ‘But this was scary.’

‘It was scary, but nobody thought to tell me.’

‘Like you said, I suppose it was because of what you are. Lucy said that when you were ready to hear this stuff, you’d go to her.’

‘And now it’s too late for that.’ Merrily stood up. ‘So let’s go and ask Jane.’

‘Both of us?’

‘Oh yes. I think so.’

Together, in silence, they walked up to the Apartment. They were nearing the top of the second staircase when the radio came on in the sitting room/study. Newstime on Radio Hereford and Worcester.

‘The search for a Herefordshire schoolgirl has been stepped up following the discovery of clothing in a ditch two miles from her home. Police say they’re now very concerned for the safety of Colette Cassidy, who disappeared from her sixteenth birthday party in the village of Ledwardine. This report from Bella Ford.’

Bella Ford said over a telephone line, ‘The items of clothing were found by a farmer about midday at King’s Oak Corner between Ledwardine and Madley. Police have declined to say what exactly they were but confirm that they’ve been identified by Colette’s parents as belonging to their daughter and probably worn by her when she disappeared.’

‘Oh God, that means underwear,’ Merrily whispered, ‘or they’d be sure she was wearing them.’

‘Detective Inspector Annie Howe, who’s leading the search for Colette, says they now have to be worried for her safety and are appealing to the public for any information. It was around two o’clock this morning when Colette, a student at the Hereford Cathedral School—’

‘It’s him,’ Lol said. ‘It has to be.’

‘—elderly woman has died in a road accident—

‘You don’t know that. Hang on. Lucy.’

‘—country lane near Ledwardine. The dead woman, who was riding a moped, has not yet been officially identified. No other vehicles were involved.’

They heard Jane moan. ‘You don’t know. You don’t know anything!’

‘—Meanwhile, a man who died when his car left the Hereford to Abergavenny road and smashed into a stone wall at Wormbridge late last night has been identified as Anthony Karl Windling, from Abingdon, near Oxford. There’s been a mixed reaction to the news that fifty thousand pounds of National Lottery money is to go to—’

The radio went off. Merrily turned to find Lol sitting on the stairs. She looked up to see Jane in the doorway of the sitting room/study. Nobody spoke.

35 The Little Golden Lights

LOL LOOKED UP at her from his stair, like one of those small dogs that quivered. He was still institutionalized, Merrily thought. Looking, with Lucy gone, for someone else to administer the drug of reassurance. Mutely asking what he was supposed to feel.

‘Where’s Wormbridge?’ he said at last.

‘It’s a place you pass through when you’re heading for Abergavenny and the M4.’

‘So he was leaving.’

‘He must have been very drunk,’ she said. ‘That’s the usual reason cars go out of control when no other vehicles are involved.’

‘Yes.’

He shook his head slowly, like a boxer coming up after being knocked to his knees, only to be told that he might still win on points. Some part of him trying to equate the random, meaningless deaths of his mentor and his tormentor within the same twenty-four hours, both in road accidents with nobody else involved. Punch-drunk. Not sure what any of it meant.

‘So Colette ...’

‘Ruled out, Lol. According to that report, he died last night. When she was still at the party. They never met. It’s all a bitterly ironic coincidence.’

I’ve been there, she wanted to say, sensing Sean moving towards her across bare,