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At four o'clock they heard a car pull up in front of the house. The bell rang and Patricia jumped. Peter was already going to open the door. She heard Alice's contralto tones, warm and friendly. Nicky's deeper voice. She went out to greet them and showed them into the sitting room. The guests sat down, side by side on the wingback sofa, Nicky leaning forward tensely, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. On a side chair sat a cardboard box with some vinyl records, books, a scarf and a jumper folded on top. Nicky didn't look at it.

Patricia set out tea things, passed round a plate of digestives. She saw the biscuits were chipped and crushed at the edges. She hadn't noticed when she had slid them out of the packet onto a plate. She felt her cheeks hot, tears prick her eyes. As they chatted about the journey, the weather holding, she could see that Alice had picked up on their preoccupied distraction, and she realised that Alice was uncomfortable, interpreting it as animosity. Which wasn't right, because she wanted more than anything for things to be mended between Sarah and Nicky. She'd imagined meeting with Alice again, how she would once again tell her how sorry they were for the ruined wedding, for all the trouble. She would tell them how they knew Sarah cared deeply for Nicky. She had so wanted to reassure Nicky that they were ready to do anything they could to set things right.

Nothing she could say to explain why she and Peter were frozen and stiff, unless they began to unpack the whole stinking mess. It was as if she were watching a spiteful wind spinning things further and further apart.

A silence in the room. Patricia had crumbled one of the biscuits onto her plate. Nicky sat looking washed out and bruised, the blue tinge to his pale skin, the rusty freckles unnaturally pronounced against his whiteness. Alice placed her cup in its saucer with a clink
and put them down on the small table by her chair. She looked around the room and leaned forward.

‘Since all this happened, I realised how much pressure I've been putting on Sarah, on Nicky. One has these little demons poking you with their pitchforks to do things right. I want to do everything I can to say sorry, to help sort this out.'

Patricia and Peter stared at her blankly. Then Peter looked over at Patricia. The glance of a man being carried further out by an unstoppable tide.

‘It's OK, Mum,' Nicky said. ‘Look, I just wanted to ask you both if you'd heard any more. You see, I'm thinking of driving up there and speaking to her. I know she's said not to, but I can't believe she'd mean that. I've got to speak to her face to face. I can't leave it like this.'

‘Nicky, there's something we must tell you. Sarah has asked us to tell you something in confidence. She wants you and Alice to know, to understand.' And so Peter began to tell them what had happened to Sarah, a great weariness and sorrow almost stopping the words, but he carried on. When he had finished speaking Nicky sat as if slapped. Then he seemed to shake himself awake, stood up. ‘We should go to her. Drive up.'

‘She's asked us not to go and see her,' Patricia said. ‘We don't feel we can force her to see us. Not until she's ready.'

‘I can't leave it like this. I have to see her. You don't object, if I try?'

‘I think perhaps she might see you,' said Patricia quietly.

Nicky left quickly, ran down the steps to the car. Alice glanced around the room. She stretched forward and grasped Peter's hand. ‘I'm so sorry.' Then she moved swiftly to catch up with Nicky.

Peter and Patricia could hear them talking outside on the pavement. The car started up and drove off. A few moments later the doorbell rang. Peter found Alice on the step.

‘He wants to drive up, alone, so I've let him take the car. I think they need to talk. One way or another they must talk at least.'

Peter nodded. ‘Let me drive you back.'

‘I don't think you should drive anywhere, Peter. Look, you're shaking. I can get the train.'

‘At least let me call for a taxi.'

The box of Nicky's things was still there on the chair after she had gone.

Patricia and Peter stood in the garden that evening, the disappointing town garden that no one had had time to tend, not with so many things to do in the parish. So much given up for the good of others. In faith.

Like the thief, the con man, the trickster, he had crept into their lives, his intentions hidden and smiling, and stolen and betrayed. And they had never once put up a guard or even imagined such an evil heart.

They hadn't seen. How could they not have seen?

CHAPTER 33

Birmingham, 1981

At eleven that night Peter had to walk down to the church. The day before one of the old choir members had passed away after a long illness. He had asked to have his body lie overnight in the church in the old way, instead of at the funeral parlour. There being no family members left, the new curate had done the first few hours of the vigil and would now be waiting for Peter to take over.

Peter unlocked the side door into the silent building. The curate stood up and immediately left, a new baby at home. The door locked again. The church was barely lit, the glass in the stained-glass windows now black with night. The coffin stood on trestles in front of the sanctuary. Above it a red votive light in its brass holder hung down from the roof on a long chain, moving slightly from some unseen draught.

Peter slid into a wooden pew and let the silence sink round him. Alone in the church he began to pray. First the Our Father, a prayer so familiar it was embedded into the very synapses and neural pathways of his mind – the only prayer given straight from the mouth of God's own self, his Son.

Halfway through he stopped. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.

The words dried up. But he had to say it; it was central to his faith. All men could receive forgiveness, through the cross. He believed that.
But now the words froze; now there was an exception. It would be easier to lift the stones of the church than to forgive something so unforgivable.

All he wanted now was revenge, recompense, he wanted restitution for all that had been taken from Sarah. He could kill the man. Wanted to kill him. He fought against it, tried again to say the words. His head, too heavy to hold up, slumped in his hands. After the war, through all the years, hadn't he worked tirelessly, in faith, to build a better world, a world based on love and God, based on hope and forgiveness? But he hadn't been able to rebuild the human heart. That was the error in the plan.

He knelt down in the transept, but his limbs were still too heavy. He lay down along the terracotta tiles, cold stone against his sweaty face. An hour he lay there, maybe two. Waited. Waited to feel God the Father there.

And nothing came. No one came. No answer.

He got up, with difficulty, his joints stiff, and sat back down in a pew, the wood creaking. The red votive light above the coffin still eyeing him. He should say the prayers for the dead.

On the wall behind the altar the plaster effigy of a half-naked Jesus watched, while Peter began to recite from the prayer book into the silence. God had gone from the building, left it dark and empty, but he read on. And the wounded man behind the altar, his bones broken and twisted, listened. The wounded man. Who spoke forgiveness out of ashes. Who let himself die and rot three days in the dark. Nothing but a hope to say that that man would ever rise again from the dead, walk from the tomb.

Peter put down the book. Looked at the plaster statue. Even as he wanted to shout obscenities, even though it felt like it would kill him, even though he felt sweat break out over his back with the effort, willing himself against his own will, he said the
words. He said, ‘You are forgiven. I forgive you.'

Felt his bones disintegrate, felt something crack and break open – something small and new beginning.

CHAPTER 34

Gairloch, 1981

Nicky got out of the car and looked over at the group of steadings, holding on to the door carefully since the wind felt strong enough to wrench it back. He walked along the track, the sea glinting in the distance, and saw three women in blue skirts and cardigans working in a garden sheltered by hedges of green plastic netting and bushes. He shaded his eyes, but none of them had Sarah's slight build, or her way of moving. She must be somewhere inside the low, white buildings. One of the women began walking down the track to meet him.

Sarah had gone. She hadn't wanted to leave a forwarding address. ‘I think she might have gone to look for work in a town down the way,' the woman told him, exquisitely sympathetic.

Back in the car Nicky sat dazed and unsure what to do next, the wind thumping on the car body so that it rocked every so often. Then he started the engine and began to drive back the way he had come.

He had no address or any information about where she might be, or even if she was there, but he stopped in the small cluster of houses by the sea shore that the woman had called a town. He walked around the deserted streets. The strand of sand along the shore was empty. At the far end large brown fishing nets were draped over standing poles, marking insubstantial rooms of transparent netting. Facing the sea, next to a small grocer's store, was a café with a steamed-up window.

At the counter he waited for his order, turned and looked around the room for a table where he could sit undisturbed and think. The café was half empty. There was a woman in the corner, sitting with her back to him, slowly stirring a cup of coffee. Her dark hair was lank, she wore a baggy oatmeal sweater and a navy parka hung on the back of the chair. The defeated posture was nothing like Sarah, he didn't recognise any of the clothes, and yet his heart was racing. He paid for the coffee and carried it over.

He stood by her table. She looked up. No change in her dull expression; perhaps it became a little more guarded.

‘Can I sit down?'

She nodded. ‘I'm sorry you came all this way.'

‘Of course I came. Sarah, I had to find you.'

She went back to stirring her coffee. Her eyes on the shoreline through the window. She looked tired, uncared for, someone down on their luck.

‘I've a shift at three, in the shop next door. I'll have to go.'

‘I'm so sorry. So sorry, about what happened. Why did you never tell me how hard it's been?'

She flinched.

‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to . . .'

She looked vague, scanned the room. ‘You want me to tell you all about it? I can tell you. But you won't want to hear it.'

‘Tell me. Please.'

She lowered her head, a side-to-side movement, a tired negative.

‘You can tell me.'

‘I don't think so. There's not really any point.' Her eyes went to the door. Then she jumped as Nicky slapped a hand on the table.

‘No point in explaining to me why you left? You think I can accept it, just like that? I love you, Sarah. You owe it to me to make me understand what happened here. Because I can see no reason why
you left. And unless you make me understand, then I am staying here by your side. I won't accept it, not unless you make me understand.'

She sat in silence, watching him, and he held her gaze. Then she sighed and she gave him the details, reciting them without emotion, the facts medical, unpleasant. Looked down at her hands.

‘You do ask yourself why it should change you so much. I've thought about it, and I think it's because, someone like that, they don't care if you live or die. A few times I really thought he'd go through with it – that I'd die. Walking to church he'd whisper threats. Now, just being in a church building makes me panic.

‘And you can't tell anyone, you can't tell anyone who you really are, what you've become; it's too shameful. So you're alone. You're afraid, and you're alone.'

‘I'm so sorry.' He could feel tears cold on his cheeks.

‘Then when I was thirteen we moved, and I thought it was over. I thought I could forget.'

He stretched his arm across the table, closed his hand round hers. She looked at it sadly. ‘I'd better go. I'll be late for my shift.'