“Why are we here, Cara?”
Again, I wanted to say, why are you here?
They all looked at Baldy, but he didn’t speak, so I went on. “You know how this usually works. Some bloke from the Foreign Office has a word with the Archbishop’s Council, then suddenly the Anglican Communion’s office is organising a conference in Israel. Why not that? I’d never have known the difference. Why the spooks?”
“We indirectly cooperate, as you know, with a number of arms of government and the intelligence service is one of those and it’s a two-way street. . .” Cara began to drone on, colouring slightly and taking the subject seriously for the first time that afternoon, I thought. Baldy let her finish.
“All that Cara says is right,” he said. “Much of the coordination for a project such as this would be done through the Middle East desk here. Nothing odd about that. It’s where the expertise lies. And then there’s your expertise, Natalie. We’d want to dovetail into that. It’s a question of excellence.” Oh, my Lord.
“And . . .” He paused for effect. “There’s something else we’d like you to do for us.” We all stayed quiet, so he had to carry on. “And this is where this meeting departs from its formal agenda.”
Cat, I noticed, had stopped tap-tapping into her laptop.
“Thank you, Cat,” said Baldy. She stood without a word and left the room. Such economy, three swift movements and she was gone.
“The women priests now outnumber you,” I said to Baldy, but what I was really wondering was why Rev Cara was still here.
“Cara has been putting much of the conference together for us. And she suggested you as the ideal candidate for this role.”
“Role?” I was struggling again to take this seriously.
“We wondered if you’d be kind enough to run an errand for us.”
Baldy was talking like a geography teacher taking an orienteering exercise.
“What sort of errand?”
“We simply need an envelope swapped with another envelope in Jerusalem. It’s quite safe and simple. It’s a simple exchange of contracts. Letters of undertaking on both sides to abide by the protocols that establish the Church in Jerusalem as a mechanism for a peace agreement. Not so much as arbitrators, not that proactive, more acting as the clearing house.”
I snorted slightly and shrugged.
“Why would you want me to do it? Why me? Why don’t you just email each other? Or why not have Cara be your postman?”
“It’s just about a degree of anonymity, Natalie. For right or wrong, people who have worked closely with the Foreign Office are perceived as people who might . . . unhelpfully recognise people on the other side of the argument. Cara is one of those people. They will similarly send someone who has had no background in negotiations or discussions. It’s just a way of acting in good faith.”
“It’s really not a big deal,” said Cara suddenly. “It’s just that both sides have to behave in the same way.”
“And what would those sides be?” I asked. There was a pause so I filled it. “Let me take a wild guess – I suppose I’m not running your errand for dispossessed Palestinians?”
“We’re hoping that Hamas will respond in kind to the initiative we’re holding out.”
“It would be a tremendous service, if you could help us,” added Baldy Roger. His forearms were on the table. He’d finished his pitch and was now sounding supplicatory.
“No,” I said, gathering myself to leave, “that’s well above my pay grade. You have ways and means. I’m an ex-aid worker, that’s all. And one who’s in trouble for nicking a lorry at that . . . but I expect you know all about that. I’d play with your conference, but I’m not about to start fronting the next American–Israeli peace process, or whatever it turns out to be. I wouldn’t know what I was doing. It’s a daft way to do it anyway.”
“Well, I hope you’ll think about it. You’re ideal and it would be a huge help,” said Baldy and Rev Cara looked sad. “But let’s talk about the conference anyway. We’ll be in touch.”
And after a bit more chit-chat I left. Toby was curiously already waiting outside in the corridor and delivered his Persephone back through the underworld. That night I looked Cara up in Crockford’s, the clergy reference log. Leeds Uni, then Westcott House, Cambridge for her training. Parish ministry in Derbyshire, then mission work for the Archbishops’ Council. That was it. It obviously didn’t tell her story. But then my entry looks as innocent as hers, too.
8
Funny, isn’t it, how looking back you remember incidents that change everything, but you don’t notice at the time how they’re changing you. These slower swings in direction are more like slow changes of season; I’d discover after a while that the climatic conditions I lived in had dramatically altered, without identifying a particular moment when my second spring had taken me to priesthood, or when autumn became winter in my marriage.
Then there are those life changes that combine the sudden and the seasonal. An event that changes everything for ever, so that we can see later that we were different people either side of that moment. I was a different woman with that ridiculous little team in the bright and shiny Vauxhall Cross office, with the forced flora under its twenty-four-hour lighting, than the woman I was subsequently. But that change wasn’t incremental. It came in a single moment. That moment of change, after which nothing ever looked the same, was just after I’d found child pornography on Adrian’s computer.
More precisely, it was the moment right after his denial. This is how it happened.
Looking back now – and it’s weird – I see myself entering my house as in a movie, an atmosphere charged with a sense that there was something waiting to be discovered. Waiting for me, to be discovered by me. I realise I’m writing that back into the story now, giving the build-up to the hideous little
