The Cure of Souls

drove out of here during—when my back was turned, but I don’t want to talk about that.’

‘She gives you Romany talismans to wear, and decorates your house accordingly.’

‘Where’s the harm?’

‘Does it have any effect?’

‘On a personal level.’ He smiled. ‘You bet.’

Merrily glanced up the bookshelf. A Manual of Sexual Magic.

‘How long have you and she been…?’

‘Longer than I’m ever going to admit to the likes of you, my dear. Like I say, they mature early, and not only physically. I have no guilt about this. She made the running, in the early stages. She knew what she was doing. And I’m a businessman, not a teacher, not a politician. I’m not obliged to set an example to anyone.’

‘But she’s still at school.’

‘And will be until she gets her four A levels. It’s a changing world, Reverend. That’s all right by me. You only have one life, live it on the outside track.’ He jabbed a finger at the window. ‘He famous, that guy?’

‘Not especially.’

‘Too old to make it now. Nobody in that business sees first-time action the wrong side of thirty. What would you want with a loser?’

‘He’s not a loser. He just doesn’t make much money. Maybe you’re the loser.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘Just my warped Christian way of looking at things.’

He shook his head irritably. ‘What do you want, anyway? Not to help the Shelbones. Nobody wants to help the Shelbones.’

‘And that would make me your enemy, wouldn’t it?’

A fist clenched. ‘Where do you get that from? The man’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of a fucking breeze-block. His colleagues don’t like him, the council doesn’t like him. He wants to turn Hereford into a museum – how many jobs are there in a museum? Do you have any idea how much money’s riding on Barnchurch, how many people go down if it crashes?’

‘It’s not going to crash because of one barn. It’ll just have to be modified.’

‘Modified?’ His face quite visibly darkened. ‘A full-conceptualized multi-million-pound project that everybody wants has to be modified because of one man’s whim? Let me tell you, an out-of-town location, it’s got to be big to work – we need the whole fucking space, we don’t need a prime plot right on the entrance clogged up with a useless pile of old bricks we aren’t even allowed to adapt. If this works – when this works – it opens up the whole Hereford Bypass corridor… and that’s mega. Let me tell you—’

‘—that it makes sense, in anybody’s language, to destroy one awkward cranky little family rather than spend a lot more money?’

Go for everything. Bleed dry. It’s the only way.

‘That’s a naive oversimplification,’ he said.

‘And that’s an admission,’ Merrily said.

Total darkness at first.

‘Amy?’ Layla called out. ‘Are you there, love?’

Then, gradually, a lozenge of light appeared high up in the furthest wall – the old ventilation slit.

They’d come in from the door at the top of the steps, into the loft where there must once have been pews, Jane figured.

‘Amy!’

There was a big echo. It was a cathedral of a place, but it didn’t smell like a cathedral. Instead, there was a crude blend of old hay and manure and engine oil and something sourish.

‘Evidently not here,’ Layla said. ‘Come on, we’ll go down. You’d better follow me. No electricity, I’m afraid.’

Eirion held Jane’s hand. He squeezed it encouragingly. But this was all going so totally, totally wrong. Layla Riddock was supposed to be furious and devastated at being exposed as some kind of spiritual abuser – not playing the affable tourist guide.

Jane remembered, with a wince, her own excruciating cockiness earlier on. Now I can take the slag, no problem. The truth was, she was feeling exactly the way she’d felt that day in Steve’s shed, when she was just a mixed-up little virgin and Layla was a mature woman, seventeen going on thirty-eight – someone who didn’t guess or fantasize, someone who knew.

Rites of passage? What a load of bollocks. It didn’t make any bloody difference at all, did it? Jane didn’t even have as much going for her as little bloody Sioned and little bloody Lowri – at least they had a culture around them. Like Layla, in fact – a Romany gypsy, with all the powers that seemed to confer. One hand on Eirion’s chest and she’d identified him as an asthmatic, something even Jane, his girlfriend, his lover, didn’t know. Where did that skill come from? Jane remembered reading somewhere that gypsies didn’t tell each other’s fortunes, because that was something they could all do – no big deal.

No big deal. Wow. If you weren’t part of an ethnic minority you were like nowhere these days.

‘The steps are quite steep,’ Layla called, ‘so you’ll need to go down one by one. There used to be stairs when this was a church, but they rotted away years ago.’

‘I’ll go first, wait at the bottom for you,’ Eirion said.

Jane could hardly see her way to the steps, which were wooden, with gaps in between, not much more than a wide ladder. At the bottom, there were stone flags.

She could see Layla’s dark form moving on confidently down what maybe was once an aisle.

‘You say your dad – Allan – owns this place?’

‘Yeah. He’s going to flatten it in a couple of months. We’re just getting some use out of it first. We needed a church. We needed to match that energy, you follow?’

‘Not really.’

‘Where were we supposed to go, Steve’s shed?’

‘I don’t understand, Layla.’

Layla was squatting by a wall. Far above her was the ventilation slit, the only light source. It was a cold light, and Layla’s silhouette was blue-grey.

‘They go through an identity crisis, Jane, adopted kids – especially when they’ve got adoptive parents like hers. Weird old fucks. But you saw them at our place, obviously.’

‘Er… yeah.’

A match was struck, yellow-white light flared, like the light in Steve’s shed: a fat candle.

‘I’m helping her to find herself, Jane. Very rewarding, for both of us.’

Another match, another fat candle. Two fat candles – on an altar.

‘Here she was, little angel in a house full of religious prints, Bible at the bedside, church twice on Sunday. Is that normal?’

Jane thought about Mum: no, not normal.

She could make out the altar now. It was obviously not the original one; it was supported on two rough pillars of old bricks, but the top was quite a big, thick piece of wood, varnished and shiny. As well as the candles, it had a chalice on it, a real churchy kind of chalice, perhaps even silver. Layla was loaded, Layla could get hold of these things, no problem.

‘And it wasn’t Amy, was it?’ Layla said. ‘Not the real Amy, whose parents got pissed and shot up. What this is all about is letting the real Amy come through. This is what her mother wants – I mean her real mother.’

As Layla stood up, Jane screamed and clutched at Eirion. A grey-white figure was standing behind the altar.