The Cure of Souls

develop a rather rigid, monastic way of life. Frugal. Steeped himself in prayer.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I can understand that fully now – why he did that.’

‘However, he was an old man. You’re a—’

‘Whatever.’ She stood up.

‘Obviously, stepping into Dobbs’s shoes, you were bound to feel you were walking on eggshells.’

‘Well… that, and for other reasons, too.’ She had a vague idea what was coming and clapped her hands together briskly. ‘Look, Bernie, I’m afraid I’ve got to be off in a minute. Have to collect Jane from the school. GCSE- time? Once they finish an exam they can go home. I don’t really want her heading down the pub.’

He nodded, not really taking it in. ‘I… we’ve never minced words, you and I. Both accept that Hunter set you up to succeed Dobbs, to appear trendy… politically correct… all that tosh. And again, in my opinion, as I’ve told you on a number of occasions, in spite of all that it was probably one of Hunter’s better moves. Not least because people who wouldn’t dare go near that gruesome old bugger Dobbs will talk to you, as a human being. Young people, for instance. It’s very important that we should help the young people.’ He screwed up his face. ‘What I’m trying to say, Merrily… I don’t want you to be scared to be a human being.’

‘Huh?’

‘I mean, there must be times when you find yourself looking at young Jane – with all of it just beginning for her. Boyfriends, parties, you know what I mean. You must feel—’

‘They’re fairly human, too, in my experience.’ Merrily raised an eyebrow. ‘Nuns.’

There was a moment of silence, then the Bishop sighed softly. ‘Well, you said it.’

‘I was trying to help you out.’

‘Bloody hell, Merrily!’ He brought his left fist down on the back of a dining chair.

Well, what was she supposed to say? She hadn’t exactly applied for the job down here on the coalface of Christianity: day-to-day confrontation with the intangible, the amorphous and the unproven, as experienced by the damaged, the vulnerable, the disturbed and the fraudulent.

Was the Bishop actually implying that she might find all this easier to cope with if she went out, got drunk, and got laid a time or two?

Probably not. He was probably just covering himself.

‘All I’m saying’ – Bernie thrust his left hand into his hip pocket, maybe to conceal the fact that he’d hurt it on the back of the chair – ‘is that Deliverance has started taking on a much higher profile than any of us imagined. I don’t want you cracking up on me, or tightening up – building some kind of impenetrable spiritual shell around yourself, the way Dobbs did.’

‘Oh, I doubt I’d have the personal strength for that, Bernie.’

‘Didn’t matter with Dobbs, because half the Hereford clergy didn’t even know what he actually did. He could go his own way. All his pressures were… inner ones.’

‘Yes.’

She noticed that a few of the little green apples had either fallen or been plucked from the orchard trees and now lay forlornly on new-mown grass that was already showing signs of sun-scorching. She wondered if there was some sinister piece of local folklore about premature windfalls.

‘Anyway,’ the Bishop said, ‘I’ll want you to email me that list by tomorrow night.’

‘I will, I will.’

‘And start helping yourself to a bit of ordinary life, Merrily. Before it gets eaten away.’

THREE Soiled Place

IT WAS LIKE some illicit members’ club for which she’d accidentally given the secret sign. One foot over the threshold, and she was pulled in and Layla Riddock had closed the door behind them. Then she heard a lock turn and Layla was pulling the key out of the door, sliding it into her skirt pocket.

What?

The two candles on the workbench made shadows rise and turned the metal handles of the oldest lawnmower into twin cobra-heads. One of the flames was reflected, magnified and distorted, in the bevelled side of a glass. It looked like one of the water glasses from the dining hall, upturned in the centre of the bench-top.

‘Welcome,’ Layla Riddock said.

If Candida Butler looked mature, Layla looked somehow old, as in seasoned, as in tainted, as in kind of corrupt – or maybe you just thought that because of what you knew about her and all the guys she’d had. Like, actual guys, not boys.

But there were no guys in here today, not even Steve the beer-gutted groundsman.

‘Take a seat, then.’ Layla pulled out some kind of oil drum, tapped on the top of it with her nails.

The other girls said nothing.

Only the chunky Kirsty Ryan, Layla’s mate, turned her spiky red head towards Jane. Kirsty was sitting on the mower’s grassbox turned on its side. The other girl, on a stool, kept on looking down at the bench-top where pieces of cardboard the size of playing cards were arranged in a circle, the candles standing outside of it, in what looked like tobacco tins.

‘Well, go on,’ Layla said.

Jane sat down on the oil drum, next to Kirsty Ryan, because… well, because when Layla told you to do something, you somehow just did it. Layla was tall and good-looking in this kind of pouting, sexual way, and she somehow had this forceful thing about her, an aura of grim authority. Her father had been a gypsy – she liked to tell people that, liked hinting she had a long tradition of secret powers behind her. The gypsy must have moved on pretty quick, though, because Layla’s mother was long-married to Allan Henry, the well-known builder and property developer – ALLAN HENRY HOMES – and they lived in this huge, crass, ranch-style bungalow, with a swimming pool and a snooker room, out near Canon Pyon. Riddock was presumably her mother’s family name… or the gypsy’s.

‘It’s Jane, right?’ Layla sat down on a stool at the head of the bench, behind the candle tins. ‘Kirsty you know, I assume. And that’s Amy. Fourth year.’ She pushed the candles further apart, so that they were arranged either side of her and she looked like some sombre, smouldering idol in an Indian temple.

The card in front of Jane said NO. The letters were printed on white paper stuck to the card. Now she had an idea what this was.

Kirsty Ryan turned to her. ‘You got the ten quid on you?’

Jane said nothing.

‘She can bring it in tomorrow,’ Layla said crisply, then looked at Jane without smiling. ‘Cheap at the price, love, you’ll find out.’

Kirsty smirked.

Jane thought she saw Amy stiffen. The kid was slight and fair-haired and was the only one in here wearing her school blazer, despite the heat. She was sitting directly opposite Jane. In front of her was the card that said YES.

Kirsty said to Jane, ‘You come with a special question? Got a problem you want sorted?’

Jane shook her head.

‘Lying little cow,’ Kirsty said.

Jane said nothing. She had to get out of here, but it would be seriously unwise to let any of them know that.

‘Told you there’d be another one along, didn’t I?’ Layla folded her arms in satisfaction.

‘There was this other kid,’ Kirsty explained, ‘but she got shit-scared and backed out, and we were worried they wouldn’t like it. There should be four.’

They? Jane cleared her throat. ‘Why?’

‘’Cause we started out with four. So, like… your mother’s a vicar, yeah?’

‘So?’

‘Oh, not just a vicar,’ Layla said, ‘is she, love?’