The Revelations

One

The train clattered through the darkness. It was an old train and the carriages bucked and wheezed, struggling against the buffers that stopped them flying off into the night. The sea lay in shadows to the left; to the right was a thin strip of pale blue horizon, trees, and a mountain range that rose and fell, visible only by the sudden absence of light. On the left side now a refinery on the shore. Gas flares lit the water red and gold, gold and red. Mouse pressed his nose against the window and watched the flames dance upon the water.

He slid open the window and lit a cigarette; it burnt down quickly in the blast of rich, warm air that swept into the carriage. When the cigarette was finished he sent it spinning out into the night, following the small red spark as it was whipped away by the wind. It was now entirely dark outside the hurtling train. He stared into the blackness, past the chubby ghost of his reflection, thinking ahead to London, the Course and Lee. He reached into his bag, drew out his battered mobile phone and sent her a text, grinning as he typed.

He walked from Euston, dragging his suitcase behind him. It took him over an hour, but he liked walking in London at night when there were few people around. Taxis, lights extinguished, carried tired drivers home to the suburbs. A young couple walked ahead of him, elbows linked, perhaps drunk. Their bodies swayed together and apart like fronds of seaweed. The girl tripped and the boy placed a protective arm around her shoulders. Mouse hurried past them, wheezing. He made his way into the echoing darkness under the Westway and stepped carefully along the pavement that clung to the edge of the underpass.

Little Venice dozed in the warm September night, slabs of light thrown onto the water from a handful of lit windows. A moorhen hooted somewhere out of sight. Mouse quickened his pace, his feet scuffing the stones of the towpath. Rubbish floated in the lagoon, drifting between the thin fingers of a willow tree that stirred the water absent-mindedly, picking through beer cans and polystyrene cups and plastic bags. In the shadow of Trellick Tower, he stopped to smoke a cigarette, sitting on his suitcase in the long grass that bordered the path. The vegetation was thick and dry. He plucked a stalk of grass and ran the feathery end under his round chin. He needed a shave. He wanted to look good for the Course. Flicking his cigarette into the water, he grabbed the handle of his bag and continued along the canal.

Finally, he came to the boat. It sat moored between two barges, uglier and higher than its neighbours. Gentle Ben — the name in ornate serif lettering on the stern — was an old Dawncraft Dandy, once the white weekend plaything of a pinstriped yuppie. It was now a dirty cream colour, the curtains were brown and raggy, the toilet gurgled foul smells. But the boat allowed Mouse to live in London, to exist among his friends; he loved the flap of the water against the hull at night, the dawn song of birds in Kensal Green Cemetery, the gasometers that sighed as they sank, moaned as they rose. A Jolly Roger fluttered gaily from the stern of the boat, the white skull just visible in the dim light. Mouse let himself into the cabin, turned on the generator and threw himself down on the narrow bed.

*

Lee Elek sat on her balcony, looking out over the lights of London. A book lay open on her lap, but it was too dark to read. The petals of the heavy-headed rose that climbed the trellis behind her had faded to grey in the dusk. Her hair was twisted into a bun and held in place with a pencil; a single blonde strand dropped down her cheek and she drew it into her mouth, feeling the sharp ends of the hairs, prodding at them with her tongue. Darwin was asleep beside her bare feet. The dachshund was dreaming: his short back legs galloped the air, his wet black nose twitched. Lee lit a cigarette. Music played on the stereo inside, quietly enough that single notes only emerged occasionally, hesitantly, wrenched from among the sounds of the city: taxis rushing up Kensington Church Street, aeroplanes queuing to land at Heathrow, shouts from the bars on the High Street. She drew smoke into her mouth and blew it out of her nose.

She had stumbled out of the library earlier, her breaths coming in quick gasps. It was one of her moodswung days. She couldn’t focus on the self-righteous saints and strung-out mystics she was supposed to be writing about. She skipped lunch and spent the afternoon walking purposeful diagonal paths across Holland Park. Darwin whipped along on his leash behind her like a crashed kite. An hour before the gates of the park closed, she sat down heavily on a bench in front of the Orangery. She took deep breaths, stilled her mind, and ran her hand through Darwin’s soft brown coat. She usually knew how to drag herself up from these depths, but this time she couldn’t shake the feeling of doom that smudged her vision and quickened her breath.

She walked home along the High Street, stopping to buy herself sushi from the Japanese takeout on the corner, teriyaki beef for Darwin. Up the winding staircase to her flat under the eaves of the old Kensington house. They ate dinner together on the tiny veranda and then music and wine and cigarettes and a book and slowly the warm day faded around her. At seven thirty she watched the parakeets make their way squawking overhead, flying along the faded milky rails of vapour trails. She imagined them towing the night behind them as they arrowed westwards towards Holland Park, a dark cover attached to the feathers of their tails. She had bestowed upon the birds great symbolism, looked for them desperately if they failed to appear, straining her thin frame over the balcony rail to see around the spire of St Mary Abbots. As if they were the only thing left of hope.

Darwin woke with a start, glanced up at Lee through long dark lashes, then stretched with a creaking yawn. With a last look out over the flickering city, Lee went inside, Darwin trotting behind her. Brushing her teeth in the small oval mirror, she thought ahead to the Course: tomorrow would be their first session as leaders. She shivered. Looking deep into the mirror, past the freckled remains of the summer that sat upon her nose, she imagined standing up on the stage the next day and fainting, falling face-first into the crowd of new members. She blinked and spat into the sink.

A high single bed was perched beneath the skylight in Lee’s small, untidy bedroom. An upright piano stood against one wall. Photograph albums were spread out on the floor, half-filled with black-and-white pictures. Books rose in rickety piles either side of the bed, several more sat face-down next to her pillow. She swept them to the ground. Lee peeled back the white duvet cover, took off her clothes and let them lie where they fell. She lifted Darwin onto the foot of the bed, slid under the duvet, and sat up very straight, her eyes wide open, watching the rise and fall of the sausage dog’s sleeping body. It would all be fine once Mouse was here. She pictured his face: the darting, protuberant eyes, the chubby cheeks flushed red, the shriek of blond hair. Her phone beeped. She read the text and smiled, sank back onto her pillows and stared up at the ceiling, the mobile still gripped in her small, hot hand.

*

Marcus Glass lay on his back looking up at his wife. Abby’s eyes were tightly closed. Her bottom lip, sucked between large teeth, formed a pink question mark of concentration. Her hands were pressed to her chest, flattening white breasts. She let out a series of high-pitched moans. He never felt further from her than when they were having sex. He didn’t know whether her groans were indicative of pleasure or annoyance, couldn’t tell if her pinched face meant that she was lost in the moment or boiling with frustration. He placed his hands on her large thighs and she, irritated, opening her eyes for a moment, lifted them off and resumed her grinding rhythm.

‘Don’t move.’ Her voice came thick and sharp. ‘Now, move a little bit. Just there. No. No, not there. Now come out and go back in again.’

Marcus was fairly sure that she was already pregnant. He kept a record of her periods on his calendar at work and watched for tampons in the bathroom bin. As he looked up he saw a slight heaviness around her jaw, a swelling of her nipples. But they continued to have sex as if it were a religious ritual, with the same unthinking repetition. He knew it was partly for the relief of orgasm, for those white seconds in which she could spit herself out of the world. But she didn’t enjoy any of the build-up. He saw her struggling above him.

He blamed the Course. It never used to be this bad. When they were first together it had been wonderful. Occasionally difficult but ultimately magnificent. Now it was like watching someone labouring up a hill, leaning into the wind and trudging desperately towards the top. He could see her nails digging into her chest and knew that there would be ten crescents of blood by the time they finished.

‘That’s it. You’ve almost got it. A bit faster. That’s it.’

Marcus thought about death to stop himself coming. Abby insisted that she was more likely to conceive if she came and so she pushed herself towards orgasm after increasingly joyless orgasm. As Marcus began to move more quickly beneath her, as he became aware of the friction and the warmth and the first whispers of pleasure, he thought of clay-cold death. But he had to work hard to stop himself panicking. Once, he had thrown Abby backwards, staggered to the bathroom and plunged his head into a basin of cold water until the frantic beating in his chest stopped. But now, two years into their marriage, he was able to control the rush of terror.

‘Oh, come on, Marcus. Sorry, I mean, please. Keep going. No, not that fast. Relax. Don’t come just yet.’

He pictured his father on the tennis court. It was high summer and their shadows danced beneath them. Marcus was hitting the ball well; the heavy air hummed with the whump of his ground strokes, the quiver of the strings, the skidding of quick-stopped trainers. He sent his father running from one tramline to the other, cut drop shots skimming wickedly low over the net. The day heated up around them. As Abby’s moans rose in pitch, Marcus remembered the moment he saw his father’s racquet drop to the ground; the ball he was about to hit thumped into the fence at the back of the court. His father sank to his knees. Marcus leapt the net and fell to his own knees to face his father. Through the white T-shirt, translucent with sweat, Marcus could see a dark triangle forming just below his father’s throat. He remembered thinking it looked like a vagina. A purple vagina creating itself beneath the damp cotton. Slowly, his father fell backwards. Marcus pressed at his chest, panted stale air into his lungs, screamed and shrieked until his mother came sprinting down from the house, wringing her hands and already sobbing. Marcus’s sister arrived a few moments later, by which time it was clear that their father was dead. As his sister sat down, deflated, against the cross-hatch fence of the tennis court, Marcus watched something change in her face, something irrevocable that would colour everything that followed. He recognised it because he felt the same thing himself. He was nineteen.

Bellowing, Abby came. Marcus, with a little exhausted sigh, followed. He felt himself grow limp quickly afterwards, suddenly lost within her. Abby scrunched her eyes shut, milking the last shudders. When it was over she seemed smaller, slightly ashamed. She rocked backwards and lay with her pelvis tilted upwards, a pillow thrust beneath her buttocks. Marcus got up and walked to the window. Outside there was nothing but dark sky and, in the distance, the black coffin of Trellick Tower. He pressed his hands on the cold glass, carefully arranging his left hand so that it covered the reflection of Abby’s face. After a few minutes she turned the light off, pulled the covers up over her bare shoulders and curled her knees to her chest.

*

David Nightingale sat in his study, with the stillness of the rectory at night wrapped tightly around him. The high sweep of his forehead was bathed in green light from the lamp on his desk. Behind him on the wall was a wood-framed poster. Almost a decade younger in the photograph, his hair still sandy-blond then, he smiled above that year’s advertising slogan: Come and Have a Deep and Meaningful. It had been a good Course as he remembered it. The first year they had expanded outside London. Now a map on the opposite wall showed hundreds of red flags dotted around the country: churches where the Course was taught. He shuffled the papers he had been working on, leaned back and stretched, looking up into the pleasing shadows of the high ceiling, the delicacy of the cornice-work. Occasionally he heard the distant howl of a police siren on the King’s Road. Otherwise there was nothing but the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece and the creaking of his wife preparing for bed in the room above.

He looked over the Course accounts. He had long stopped trying to follow the sophisticated investment vehicles that the Earl had set up. Money was funnelled through Cayman Island trusts, distributed among the various charities and not-for-profit organisations that came under the Course umbrella, managed by banker members who waived their fees and saved their best opportunities for the Course’s monthly investment meetings. David whistled to himself when he saw how much had been set aside for developing the Course internationally. The US remained the primary target. He and the Earl had just returned from a trip to New York, where there was standing room only for David’s speech in the ballroom of the Plaza. Eager priests had rushed to press his hands afterwards, snapping up copies of The Way of the Pilgrim and the Course DVD. It was good to be back at St Botolph’s, though. This was where it all began. This was the Course’s home.

Only on the nights before the start of a new Course did he regret giving up smoking. He picked up a pencil from his desk, gripped it between his fingers, drew it to his lips and inhaled, breathing in the sweet tang of the wood, the sharpness of the lead. He realised how ridiculous this was and chuckled quietly to himself. He hadn’t smoked since university. And this was the tenth year he had been leading the Course. Strange that he still felt the nerves, still worried that he would bound onto the stage in front of the young upturned faces to find that he was stuck for words, floundering in the glare of the bright lights and wide eyes. There would be new Course leaders tomorrow. He let his mind settle upon each of them in turn: Marcus, Abby, Mouse and Lee. He knew they would be anxious, perhaps unable to sleep, and he allowed their imagined nervousness to merge with his own. Lee’s face dwelt the longest in his mind. She was troubled — he realised this — but the air of quiet panic that hung around her was one of the reasons she’d be so good as a Course leader. Nothing pushes people away like piety. A certain fragility of faith, if kept in check, could be comforting. He would need to watch her, though.

Lying in bed later, he listened to his wife snoring. His arms were behind his head and he flexed his biceps in a nervous, monotonous rhythm. He was proud of his body. He had not developed the middle-aged dough of his peers; he jogged along the King’s Road every morning, played tennis at the houses of wealthy Course members on Saturday afternoons. Propped on his pillow, he looked down at his wife, watched the tremor that passed along her upper lip with each exhalation. She no longer dyed her hair; mousy-grey strands fell down her face and trembled in her breath. He ran over his speech one final time, frowning and smiling as he would on the stage, pausing for a ripple of laughter, glancing down for a moment and then fixing the room with the intensity of his pale blue eyes. When he had finished, he pressed his palms together, muttered a prayer, placed a hand gently upon his wife’s sleeping face and with a quiet ‘Amen’, he turned onto his side and fell asleep.

Two

It was five o’clock and the church was luminous in the late afternoon light. A gardener moved around the flower beds that lined the churchyard, carefully sinking down onto his knee pads to tend the immaculate bright borders, tempting blooms into the year’s last warmth. The banners were up on the King’s Road, tied to the black railings of the square. The wind caught them and they fluttered, compressing and expanding the C of ‘Course’ like a mouth. Aeroplanes queued to land overhead, following the path of the river, barely moving in the pale, clear air.

The spire was of tawny Portland stone, surmounted by a capstone and cross. Octagonal, the skin of the spire tapered towards the wrist-thin point, supported by dark iron bands. The four columns over which the spire was raised had settled or bent over the years, meaning that it had slipped from its true perpendicular. When completing his renovations, David Nightingale had considered rectifying the spire’s minor but noticeable misalignment. After consulting with the Course members who had raised the funds, however, it was decided that the slight wonkiness was part of St Botolph’s charm.

Inside, the glory of light that exploded through stained-glass windows illuminated a fine gold altar cloth, burnished chasubles and a coracle-sized collection plate. Everything gleamed. Someone was practising the organ: a toccata with fumbled trills. The organ pipes cascaded down the wall at the back of the nave, silver and bronze bars protruding like fangs from a rose-window mouth. Where once a rood screen would have hung, there was now a television monitor bookended by black speakers. Ten years earlier the shabby church had struggled to fill half of its dusty pews with an ancient congregation; now chairs were packed tightly along the side aisles, smaller television screens were arranged in the transept. The music stopped. Footsteps down wooden stairs, the echo of a slammed door. Then silence in the light-filled church.

*

As they walked down the gravel pathway towards the church, Lee tugged at the sleeve of Mouse’s jacket and hung back, her heels kicking up dust. She was slightly taller than him, and looked very slender next to his stout frame. Taking her hand in his and squeezing, he gave her a hopeful smile. Lee looked away. In her ears she wore stones of different colours: one lapis blue, one turquoise. Mouse dropped her hand and followed her eyes to the church’s bright spire. He decided that he liked September. It was a wistful month, a month to curse not having made more of the summer, a month when thoughts turned to night-living winter. Yet on evenings like this, when the sun slanted across the sky, picking out the wrought-iron balconies that hung like birdcages on the facades of the houses surrounding the square, September was magnificent.

‘Are you OK, Lee?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘A wee bit nervous?’

‘Oh, I suppose a bit. I’ve been working too hard. Not sleeping enough. Not sure that I’m up to being a leader.’

‘You’ll be brilliant, you know you will. The Course is going to pull you out of all this.’

‘I know. I’m hopeful, I really am.’

She squinted her blue-green eyes at him. Her legs, emerging from a frayed denim skirt, straddled the path. She was as thin and white as a wishbone. Mouse took her arm and led her past the gravestones of the ancient cemetery that encircled the church. Vines climbed over cracked graves, lichen dappled chipped stones, creeping into the cavities of letters no longer legible. They made their way into the shadow of the portico, through heavy oak doors that sighed in greeting, and into the cool church.

*

Abby was the only one who worked for the Course full-time, and she had been at the church since early that morning. She spent the first few hours of the day bustling around after Sally Nightingale, laying out copies of The Way of the Pilgrim on the chairs in the church, arranging candles in the tall brass holders that led down the aisle. When all of this was done, she made her way down into the crypt, found the room with its circle of wooden chairs and drew out her books. She made notes, read and reread the passages from The Way of the Pilgrim that would form the core of the discussion, but still she felt a jolt of nerves when she thought of herself actually teaching the Course. She rose from her seat and stood very still in the cavelike room, breathing the musty air.

She wore a tartan shirt with its sleeves rolled to the elbow and a grey vest underneath. When she stood, her black leggings seemed to cup her buttocks, holding them disdainfully away from the thighs beneath them. She knew from her mother, who told her often, that her large body would lose its bouncing firmness. That she would begin to sag and become doughy like her sisters. But for the moment, she wore her leggings with pleasure.

‘I thought you might be down here.’

She jumped and turned around. Marcus was standing in the doorway, the gloom of the crypt behind him. His black hair disappeared into shadows at the edges, his handsome face jutted out into the light cast from the spots in the ceiling. He stepped towards her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Warmth rose from her stomach to her chest and sat there until Marcus peeled himself away. His voice was quiet.

‘We should go upstairs. David wants to speak to us.’

She looked at him, frowning.

‘I’m sorry about last night. It was bad again, wasn’t it?’

‘No, it wasn’t bad. It’s too complicated to be bad. Some of it was fine.’

‘Did you think about your dad again?’

‘I wish I hadn’t told you. Not if you’re going to use it against me. .’ Marcus turned and strode across the room. She followed.

‘I wasn’t using it. Why do you think I was using it?’

Marcus looked at her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just nervous about tonight. Have you seen Mouse and Lee?’

Ignoring his question, she took both of his hands in hers until his eyes softened. She leaned forward and kissed him, her lips moist and warm.

‘I love you. You know that, don’t you? I just want to have it all go right this time.’

‘I know. I do too.’

Marcus had reluctantly left work early that afternoon. He found breaks in the routine of the week difficult. He was used to building a protective shell around himself in the office, and had to peel this shell off in layers, slowly shaping his mind for a less combative atmosphere. He hated his job at the law firm, where he helped to restructure hedge funds that had gone bust in the Crash. Abby kept urging him to quit, taking his hand in hers in the shadows of 6 a.m. and begging him to stay in bed, phone in his resignation. But they needed the money, and although Marcus had inherited a small amount upon his father’s death, it wasn’t enough to pay for the mortgage, for their booze and dinner parties. So he stayed at the law firm, and every day that he was there he imagined another little spark of his youth fizzling out. He edged his phone out of his pocket and checked to see if he had reception.

‘Have you heard from work?’ Abby asked.

‘No. I don’t think we expect a judgement until tomorrow, perhaps Thursday. If we’re lucky they’ll settle next week.’

They could hear Mouse’s voice in the church upstairs. Abby placed her hand on one of the wooden chairs, took a deep breath, and then followed Marcus out and into the dark corridor. They made their way past the gift shop, whose illuminated windows were full of Course T-shirts and copies of David’s book, The Way of the Pilgrim, with its bright green cover. They walked past the room in which Mouse and Lee would host their own discussion group later, up the narrow stone stairs, and into the echoing church.

*

A line of chairs had been arranged in the space between nave and chancel, at the foot of the steps leading up to the sanctuary. Marcus and Abby hurried down the aisle. David Nightingale was sitting on the steps, facing the chairs. A jug of squash sat at his feet. He filled two plastic glasses.

‘Mr and Mrs Glass! Here, have something to drink. We’ve been waiting for you guys. Come and take a seat.’

Marcus took a glass of squash, passed one to Abby, and sat on a chair next to Mouse. The priest leaned forward on the steps, elbows on knees, and Marcus shivered as the full force of David’s smile was turned upon him. He made himself meet the very pale eyes for a moment, and he felt lost. The priest beckoned for them to pull their chairs closer towards him. When he leaned forward his chinos rose up from his ankles, revealing pale, hairless calves above black socks. He rubbed his hands together and began to speak.

‘It’s so wonderful to have you guys here. With just over an hour to go, I imagine you must be nervous. I can understand that — it’s a huge responsibility for you. But I’ve a very good feeling about tonight. About tonight and the next few months. You lot have been crucial to the growth of the Course thus far and it’s absolutely right that you should become leaders.’

He paused and frowned.

‘We need to make sure that nothing stalls the growth of the Course. Momentum is everything; keeping Course membership growing is all-important. Even those who try to do us down can’t argue with the fact that the Course is attracting people back to Christianity. Every lost member is a tragedy — a personal tragedy for the one that leaves, but also a serious loss to the Course. It’s up to you, my representatives at ground level, to make sure that we keep our new members. It’s not always easy; some of your group will stop coming, either because they can’t be bothered or because the intensity is too much. Keep these departures to a minimum. You should remember that often the most vehement atheists, the most dogged agnostics, end up being the most committed Course members. If they have thought hard enough about faith to have strong feelings in the opposite direction, then they have opened a small gap which will let God in.

‘Try to think back to when you first joined the Course. Remember how cautious you were, how uncertain about the size of the commitment needed. I want you to be very gentle with the new members. You must treat them as I treated you — as children. By the end of the six weeks, you’ll be firm friends with the new members, but there’ll be ups and downs in the mean time. Keep your own emotions in check, keep your guard up at all times. You’re all passionate young people, but don’t let those passions distract you from doing God’s work. Now let’s tune up. May the Lord bless you all. I’m relying on you.’

He rose, turned, and strode up onto the stage. The four friends, fizzing with excitement, followed. Abby checked her microphone, ‘Bah, bah, one-two, one-two,’ then sat at the front of the stage, swinging her legs. Lee played an E chord as Marcus and David tuned their guitars. Mouse thumped the drums, adjusting the height of the snare and shifting his foot pedal slightly. Marcus put down his bass and sat on the stage next to Abby. David came and crouched behind them. The church was dim and vast. Mouse stopped drumming. Lee sat very straight at the piano, her right hand quietly picking out the melody from Pictures at an Exhibition. Chattering voices rose from the courtyard outside the church. People would be arriving soon. The Course was about to begin.

Three

David threw a switch and the main church lights came on, golden chandeliers that hummed when they were illuminated. Course members began to drift in from outside. Lee was lighting candles at the front of the church. The click of her lighter made Marcus want a cigarette. Abby stood behind a row of trestle tables at the back of the nave, a smudge of red pasta sauce on her cheek. She waved to him. Marcus walked towards the row of pews where his and Abby’s names were printed on a whiteboard, nodded at the altar, sat down and put his head in his hands as if he was praying.

Marcus had started coming to the Course because of Abby. She had made it clear that it was the only way she’d stay with him, and he attended at first in the same way that he’d gone to piano lessons as a child: resolved to perform everything asked of him as badly as possible in the hope of being swiftly excused. Only slowly did he realise that the church might offer a means of negotiating the fear that shot its bright splinters across his mind whenever he thought of death. In the quiet ritual, the music and, above all, the promise of an existence beyond the grave, Marcus found peace.

It was something to do with the high windows. He could only see sky through the windows, nothing of the grubby world outside. It enhanced the sacred feel of the place, the sense of safety. His father hadn’t believed in God, or rather he gave the impression of a man whose diary was too busy to consider something so putative, so far in the future, as an afterlife. Marcus didn’t want to die with that kind of uncertainty. And since his own death existed in a kind of eternal present for him, he needed to make sure that he was always prepared; the time he spent in church was a totem he held up against the fear. He would live on afterwards; unlike his father, whose cold, blue skin as he was heaved into the ambulance spoke of nothing but rotting and decay.

At university Marcus had attended chapel almost shamefully, happy to use Abby’s involvement in the college choir as an excuse to spend winter nights in the quivering candlelight of evensong. Still, back then, he wouldn’t have considered himself a believer. But things filter through. And slowly patterns revealed themselves until, on the first Course Retreat he had attended, he found himself more or less converted. Or, if not entirely converted, then at least able to hold in his mind at the same time the sane, rational view that belief in God was akin to belief in magic, an atavism that had no place in the bright, scientific now, and a quiet recognition that, somehow, irrationally, God was there. And the friends from his old life seemed to drop away as the Course increasingly filled his spare time with prayer weekends and charity days, and the problems and questions that his cynical rational mind raised were silenced by the sheer business of it all.

The buzz of voices in the church rose in pitch, pulling him back to the present. Marcus began to pray, the same prayer that, if he was not too tired or drunk, he repeated every night before sleeping: Lord, protect me. Give me good health. Look after my heart, my lungs, my bowels. Look after my Abby, too. Grant her the baby she wants. Don’t let me die just yet, God.

He opened his eyes to see that the room had begun to fill up. More candles had been lit and the spotlights at the back of the hall shone forward onto the stage with the altar glowing behind it. He rose and made his way to the back of the church. Abby was holding a clipboard now, directing people to different queues depending upon whether they had attended the Course before, whether they had been identified in her initial screening process as useful or prominent. Mouse and Lee were taking details of new members. Marcus thought how happy Mouse looked: his plump cheeks blushing with pleasure, his eyes goggling at the girls. He greeted each member with a broad smile, nodding and chatting as he noted down their email addresses, mobile numbers, jobs. The Course prided itself on the amount of information it had about its members.

‘Marcus, can you do something for me? Just stand in the aisle and stop old members sitting too near the front. They’ve had their time in the sun. Thanks, darling.’ Abby pushed him gently in the back and he stood and watched people stream past him, in awe of the Course’s ability to attract a constant supply of the young and wealthy.

When everyone was inside the church — perhaps seventy in total, of whom twenty were new members — the doors were shut with a deliberate bang. The lights dimmed and the candles fluttered as David stepped onto the stage. He grinned, blinking in the spotlight that leapt from the back of the church. He looked enthusiastic, friendly, youthful despite his grey hair; his eyes turned upon the congregation and there was a murmur, then total silence.

‘Welcome to the Course. If your experience of tonight is anything like that of the many hundreds of others who have attended over the years, then Tuesday nights will become an oasis for you, a way of escaping the grind and the grime of London and entering a place of peace, a sanctuary where you can explore some of the most fundamental issues, where you will be welcome, make friends, and get a free meal, if nothing else.’

He smiled and again there was a rustle of whispering followed by silence.

‘This is a community where all questions are welcome, where thought and exploration are encouraged, and hopefully where you’ll find people capable of answering your questions. My wife Sally and I are always happy to speak with you personally; you can email us; I even do a podcast thanks to my team here who are dragging me into the twenty-first century. You should also look out for our Course leaders, who will be guiding your discussions later. They are guys just like you, who a few years ago were sitting exactly where you are now, feeling and thinking exactly the same things. Although I had fewer grey hairs back then.

‘Tonight I’m going to tell you about a student at Durham University who was a committed atheist, a big fan of Pink Floyd, and the yard of ale champion of St John’s College bar. That student was me. .’

Marcus listened to the priest’s voice. David was a great performer: not only the dazzling charisma, but also the softer moments, the wry humour, the dancing hands, the quick shift between puckish and earnest. Every so often a laugh to relieve the pressure, and then gravity. And always the world of the Course held up against terrifying London. In the priest’s own story, in the anecdotes and tangents that spun off it, everything returned to the promise of repose and release offered by the Course.

‘So I came to London when I left Durham. I suppose because all of my friends did, and because all of my friends were going into the City, I thought I should too. I imagine many of you had a similar experience. I became a merchant banker, and I found it a really dark and unforgiving existence. I remember getting terribly drunk in pubs on Saturday, just drinking for the hell of it, because the week had been so tough that we felt we owed it to ourselves. And so Sunday was a day of hangovers. We’d limp down to the boozer around lunchtime just to take the edge off with a pint or two. It was really a miserable life. I even thought about suicide once or twice, during the darkest days.’

He paused for a moment and took a sip of water. He looked down at his hands which were splayed out on the lectern, inhaled deeply and continued.

‘But, partly because I had the wonderful Sally at my side, I lived through it. I survived. And why I want you to know this is because you need to be clear that I am not here to judge you, or to pry into your private lives, but only to show you one path, a path that has been very fruitful for me. We are here to talk about the meaning of life. .’

*

Lee was reciting poetry in her head. It was lines from a poem that she had studied at university and had become for her a mantra, a way of stilling her mind and dragging herself up from her slumps. She kept a notebook beside her as she worked in the library, jotting down things that seemed to carry some special meaning, that felt as if they might help. Now she wasn’t listening to David; instead she turned inwards, letting the cascade of words cleanse her mind as they passed through it. O Thou, that art the way, pity the blind, /And teach me how I may Thy dwelling find. She watched Marcus, saw the fine strong lines of his jaw, and how he glanced across at Abby, smiling, every so often. She drew in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, looking around in surprise at the noise of it. She could feel Mouse’s leg jittering against hers. She tried to ignore it, then attempted to find something soothing in the friction of her friend’s thigh. David’s voice kept intruding on her thoughts, though, and she bent her head forward and shut her eyes, laying a soft hand on Mouse’s knee.

Lee missed her dad. She spoke to him two or three times a week on the telephone, but sometimes it wasn’t enough. She felt exposed without him close by. The previous night he had rung off abruptly, and she thought she had sensed reproach in his voice. She knew he didn’t approve of her faith. She turned the conversation over in her mind, trying to work out if she had invented his coldness. She did that sometimes when she was down: saw hostility everywhere, imagined rifts with friends, heard criticism from her tutors when none was meant. She called the line of poetry back to her mind, and behind it layered the melody from one of her dad’s pieces of music. She smiled, eyes still tightly shut.

Her dad, Lazlo Elek, was a composer, the child of Hungarian dissidents who had died in jail in Budapest. He was sent to live with relatives in Suffolk at the age of nine when his parents were implicated in the 1956 uprisings. He found early fame with a cello concerto dedicated to his parents, began to be spoken of as the next Bartók. He married a girl from Ipswich and wrote prodigiously, although he never quite lived up to the promise of that early concerto. As he aged, his work became more abstract, more mathematical; he became prone to fits of depression and repeatedly burned near-finished scores. When Lee played the piano, she imagined her dad’s fingers placed over hers, guiding not only the correct note and tone, but also the feeling of the music, the touch that took a piece from a work of human creation to something divine. Only when she was playing with him did she truly live the music. She sometimes wished she had never come to London.

‘We are all looking for meaning,’ David continued. ‘Life can feel very empty sometimes. With all the rush and bustle, we can get lost, become rudderless. It’s why you’ll find yourself asking certain fundamental questions as you lie awake at four in the morning. Why am I here? Wasn’t I meant to do something more than just get up, go to work, get drunk, go to sleep, and then repeat it until death? I feel, many of us here feel, that there’s something wrong with the modern world. That our age is one of greed and grasping and selfishness. We need a new way of living, a new way of negotiating life. The Course will give you a road map, it’ll show you guys a clear and fulfilling way to make sense of life in this mad, bad world.’

*

Mouse was moving his leg frantically, bouncing on the heel of his brown loafer. He looked eagerly up and down the rows around him, noting with appreciation the delicate girls with blonde hair. A good crop of new members. He imagined what it would be like to press his tongue against the damp parts of their bodies: the nooks and declivities, the creased skin at the joints of their long limbs. Whilst his love for Lee existed as a dull but constant ache, he made sure that there were always other girls. Girls of a certain type — blonde, tall, distant. Always unavailable, they’d already have boyfriends or husbands and would treat Mouse with a kind of little-brotherly fondness that he both played up to and loathed. He’d spend long night hours on the boat fantasising about these girls, knitting their faces into surprised masks of pleasure or pain, knowing that they’d always be out of his league.

Mouse watched Lee, taking advantage of the fact that her eyes were tightly closed. Her chest rose and fell very slowly, quivering as her lungs emptied. He looked at the threads that snaked down her thighs from her frayed skirt. When she was drunk and let him stay over in her tiny flat with its air of girlish chastity, he would creep into her room in the darkness of 3 a.m. She always slept with the duvet tucked between her legs, and Mouse would stand in the pale orange light of the London night and look at whichever leg was visible. He would strain his eyes against the dimness, trying to see into the shadows where her thighs disappeared inside the frilled shorts she wore to sleep. He kicked her chair with one particularly forceful jerk of his leg. She very deliberately laid her hand on his thigh and squeezed. He smiled a broad and hopeful smile.

*

‘I always worry about doing this so early on the first evening. .’ Abby watched the priest with wide eyes as he spoke. ‘I’d like to ask everyone to be quiet for a moment. Just think about what you have heard so far. If you’d like to pray, then I encourage you to do so. But if not, just enjoy the silence here. Enjoy a bit of time away from that constant noise outside.’

Abby thought back to when she first attended the Course. She didn’t go just because Lee was a member, although she saw the change it worked on her friend: a greater seriousness, a sense of commitment. Nor did she go because she felt any profound spiritual need. It was because she had been standing in the rain on Battersea Bridge after an argument with Marcus. The rain was falling so hard it was as if the river was trying to reach up to the clouds. It was a terrible argument: they had screamed at each other until she ran from the flat, out of the front door and down to the river. She stood on Battersea Bridge and thought about jumping. Not in the way that someone seriously considering doing so would think about it, but in a way that tried to shape her mind into that of someone who might. To Abby, this was as good as doing it. She stood there, imagining the rush of the air, the downward plunge, the shock of the water. At that moment a bus had rumbled past, throwing up the contents of a large puddle, soaking her. Part of her thought that she must have jumped, she must have lost her mind and jumped. But she looked up, saw the bus, and on its back was an advert for the Course. The cool, smiling eyes of David Nightingale. Shouldn’t there be more to life than this? in bright red letters. She signed up the next day.

Abby prayed that the evening would pass well. She prayed for Marcus. She prayed that she might be pregnant. That the butterflies in her stomach might signal that something was being created. And she prayed that if she was, she might keep it this time. That in nine months she’d lie listening to a baby’s moth-flutter breath. She would make David godfather. She opened her eyes for a moment, saw him with his head bowed and closed her eyes again.

She remembered the night she had lost the first baby. Very early on. Not even a baby. A clot, a smudge of cells. She had been working late with Sally Nightingale on a proposal for exporting the Course to other Christian denominations. It had felt just like the return of her period, a pain which built from nothing into a sharp twisting of her gut. Sally had taken her into the rectory and waited outside the door of the bathroom, asking in a reedy voice what she could do. When she saw the blood Abby had known immediately. She was businesslike and brave about the whole thing, biting her lip and wincing to stop herself crying out. She found painkillers in the bathroom cabinet, bundled up tissues to stanch the flow and mopped up the bluish drops that were falling onto the tiled floor.

When she came out of the bathroom it was the priest and not his wife who was standing there. The light from the bathroom falling into the darkened hallway cut a bar across him, illuminating the whiteness of his teeth and his hair. She realised that he already knew everything and slumped into his outstretched arms. It was such a relief that nothing more needed to be said. They had descended the stairs, David’s arms still around her, and he drove her to the hospital. They sat in silence in the white light of the waiting room until the doctor had called her into the curtained cubicle, checked her over with brusque, efficient hands, and sent her home.

The priest’s tenderness had reminded her of the first time she went on the Retreat. It had been held that year at a down-at-heel hotel in the West Country whose burly proprietor was a Course member. There were chickens in the courtyard outside the rooms. Abby had heard the fox in her sleep, had dreamed the terrified shrieks of the hens, the sound of jaws snapping shut. She woke early and went out to the henhouse, which was a silent mortuary, blood and feathers. David was sitting in the dust cradling a chicken. It was still just alive, its bare neck white and raw, blood darkening its breast. David spoke to the chicken in a quiet voice, stroking the bird’s broken wings, murmuring into its feathers. He was like that with her when she miscarried; after the hospital, he drove her home. He waited until Marcus had let her in, sitting in his purring car and watching them embrace in the doorway.

*

The lights in the church brightened suddenly, and David raised his head and opened his eyes.

‘Music is the closest of the art forms to God — when you lose yourself in a piece of music, it’s a truly spiritual experience. The music here at St Botolph’s is justly famous. So sit back and enjoy. Let me introduce: The Revelations.’

Spotlights swept the stage, focusing on the band’s name which was spelled out in blue letters on the skin of Mouse’s bass drum. David stooped to pick up his guitar, nodding to one of the helpers who sat at the side of the stage adjusting the settings on his amp. The four friends rose from their seats and walked together down the aisle. The air around them hummed as they climbed the steps and took up their instruments. Mouse spun his drumsticks several times before beginning a thrusting, military beat. Then Marcus came in with a bass line that roared through the church. Lee sat at the piano, her visible cheek stained with a vivid pink blush at being so observed. The priest strummed power chords and then Abby sidled up to the front of the stage, her hips moving slightly. She hunched her large shoulders forward, brought her hands up either side of the microphone and began to sing.

The music was not spectacular in itself: choruses cribbed from stadium rock anthems, verses that strained against the weight of the meaning they attempted to impart. But there, in the warm light of the church, with some of the older members joining in at the back for the choruses, arms held out, eyes closed, it was hard not to be moved. The four young people were earnest and beautiful, still retaining enough of their youth to touch the audience. The priest played a brief and nimble guitar solo, one leg raised on his amplifier, his eyes staring up into the shadows that clustered in the roof of the church. Abby looked extraordinary on the stage. As if she was made to be seen among such expansive scenery. She didn’t seem awkward or heavy or masculine there. Marcus watched the young men in the audience stare up at his wife as she sang and tried to see her reflection in their eyes.

The second song was much softer than the first. The lights on stage were dimmed so that only Abby was clearly visible, with Marcus and David shadowy figures either side of her. Mouse and Lee were both lost in the darkness. Lee started to play a series of arpeggios, the music rising out of the silence. Mouse tapped out a gentle rhythm, the drumstick struck against the rim of the snare. Then Marcus and David came in, and Abby began to sing.

‘You are a deep sea,

You are an abyss.

The more I lose, the more I find,

So I’ll lose myself in your kiss.

You are a fire that burns

Without being consumed

That takes away the cold

And guides me safely home.’

Abby rocked sensuously on her hips as she sang, one arm twirling up towards the roof. Marcus wondered if Abby was thinking about him as she sang, or about David, or Jesus. It was a strangely ambiguous song, just a love song which, because of the setting, was interpreted by the audience as something holy, a hymn. He imagined Abby as the central pillar of a cross, with David and himself as the arms.

After the music, they ate. Sally Nightingale stood at the back of the room with other Course volunteers doling out food. Marcus was always struck by how attractive the volunteers were. The young men wore aprons over their smart-casual work clothes, smiling with large teeth that were extraordinarily white. The girls were thin and pretty and blonde, dressed in immaculate suits from the office or the expensive bohemian smocks of the stay-at-home mothers. It wasn’t only that the Course attracted its members from the wealthy roads that surrounded the church; some travelled from the other side of London to attend. The Course had links with the top universities, with major public schools, with law firms and investment banks. It was marketed to these institutions as a philosophical way into religion, as a path that encouraged the aggressive questioning of faith. So the people who attended were bright, successful, inquisitive.

A group of politicians stood at the back of the church talking to their banker friends. They would eat later, after the Course, piling into restaurants on Beauchamp Place or Walton Street. Having recently won power by a thin margin, the politicians wore about them an air of restrained celebration. They were all very young, Eton-educated, near-identical in sober suits and blue ties. They slapped the wide backs of the financiers who were laughing over-loudly at their jokes. Their haughty, exhausted wives, brandishing babies in their arms, chatted to one another in the shadows of the side aisles, discussing schools and nanny troubles. The politicians had been members of the Course since its early days and would now be instrumental in helping David and the Earl to further embed it in the nation’s consciousness.

Next to the bankers and politicians, hoping to pick up some tradable news, Marcus recognised a number of hedge-fund managers whom he had worked with over the past few years. They always looked slightly ashamed to see him: he was a reminder of the potential for failure in lives that usually never contemplated it. He sat on the Course investment committee with some of them and they shouted over one another to convince him of the brilliance of their ideas. The Earl, who chaired these investment meetings, came and stood beside Marcus as he queued for dinner.

‘See the markets today, Marcus?’

‘Yes, although I wasn’t around for the close. I had to be here. I’m a Course leader this year.’

‘So you are. David told me about it the other night in New York.’

The Earl leaned heavily on the table, looking at Marcus through narrow eyes under a low brow. He was a big man, ex-army, who wore his sleeves rolled to the elbow, revealing large forearms covered in wiry black hair. His crew cut was shot through with silver, a giant watch sat on his wrist, and a pair of large Oxfords were shined to mirrors on his feet. He edged his hands down the table towards the steaming pans of pasta. Marcus took the food he knew he was too nervous to eat, and went back to the circle of seats. The Earl walked with him.

‘I’m concerned that some of the funds aren’t positioning themselves correctly for a further slowdown. Seems like they think we’re through the worst of it. I’m not so sure. And with the expenditure required for our US expansion, I’m feeling very nervous, Marcus. David seems so focused on driving new membership that he forgets how much all this costs.’

Marcus sat down beside the Earl.

‘I could have a word with a few of the members if you think it’d help. Perhaps we should raise a bit of cash now while people are feeling bullish.’

‘I don’t want to ask until we have an idea of how well America goes. I think people might start to resent the ten per cent. I don’t want to ask them for more if we can help it.’

‘The people who pay their ten per cent already earn enough not to worry about it. And it helps them feel better about their jobs. About the moral compromises they have to make at work. Knowing that some of the cash will go to helping the Course.’

‘That’s always been the plan. I have meetings in the City all day tomorrow. I might see whether I can’t persuade a few of the bigger donors to reach into their pockets again. If we’re targeting America then we have to do it properly, and that takes obscene amounts of money. The pay-off, though, if we do get it right, will be immense. It’ll take the Course to a whole new level.’

*

When they had finished dinner, the new members were led downstairs into the crypt where the discussions would take place. David and his wife moved between the two groups, entering silently and perching like owls as the conversations developed. The first evening was spent on introductions, an overview of the six weeks ahead, the planting of seeds. The crypt was still very cool, and some of the girls wrapped scarves around long necks, the young men pulled on blazers and jumpers. In the church upstairs the chatter of the old Course members slowly faded as they filed out into the night.

In Marcus and Abby’s group there were five girls: pretty but not strikingly so, just down from university, young and nervous. Four young men sat talking in whispered voices to the girls, staring down at their loafers, ties loosened. Banker boyfriends, Marcus guessed. One of the girls suddenly looked up at Marcus, drawing back her blonde hair with one hand, passing the back of her arm across thin, pale lips. Her eyes were wide and bright and Marcus could see that she was already falling, that she was one of the ones who arrived convinced, and only needed the merest nudge to accept the Course wholeheartedly. An older man in a grey suit sat slightly withdrawn from the rest of the group; Marcus couldn’t tell whether he had moved his chair back, or chosen it because it was set apart from the others. Abby introduced herself, and the discussion began.

*

In the other room, Lee was feeling detached. Her head ached and she missed Darwin. The sense of unease that had fallen upon her in Holland Park the day before hadn’t faded. It was insane that these young, bright people should turn to her for advice, should seek her help with their existential issues. Mouse leapt to his feet, nodded to the room and smiled broadly.

‘Hi! I wanted firstly to thank you for coming. My name is Mouse and this is Lee, a very dear friend of mine. We’ll be your guides over the next six weeks. It’s going to be a brilliant time for you. And I just want to encourage you to open yourselves up. Leave all your cynicism and scepticism at the door and give this a chance. We’re doing this for the first time, too, and while that may mean we don’t know the answers to all of your questions, it does mean that we are very keen to learn, and we’ll do everything we can to make this as transformational an experience for you as it was for us. Isn’t that right, Lee?’

Lee felt as if the room was turning, as if her chair had been moved into the centre of the circle. The faces rotated around her, their grins and frowns distorting grotesquely with the beating of her heart.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Mouse and I will do our best to make this somewhere you feel terribly safe. Make this a place of refuge.’ She gulped air and tried to smile.

She looked at their group. Twins, girls with white-blonde hair and pointed features, their wide eyes over-made-up and blinking too quickly at the strangeness of it all. Next to them was a tall, pale boy with long hair falling down over dark eyes, lips that were very large and red, a black leather jacket buttoned to the neck. Two rather lost girls, mousy, hesitant, stared at their shoes and flicked through The Way of the Pilgrim. Then, next to Mouse, a Japanese girl who had bob-cut hair and wore a dark grey dress leading down to tiny trainered feet.

*

Next door, Marcus was already floundering. Everyone had been introduced. Each in turn spoke a few words about their lives, what they hoped to get from the Course. It was time for Marcus to address them. David stood in the shadows at the entrance to the room, watching. Abby’s mind had gone blank. She sat berating herself for her silence, biting down on her lower lip. Finally, knowing that David was depending on him, Marcus began to speak.

‘I encourage you not to look at The Way of the Pilgrim quite yet. Just keep it at home and spend your time between now and next week’s session thinking about the emotions that you have experienced tonight.’ Marcus was always worried that the overtly religious nature of David’s book would put some people off. He found it disconcerting that the Course insisted on marketing itself as a forum for philosophical enquiry when it was so clearly focused on pushing a fairly narrow form of evangelical Christianity. He found it stranger still that no one seemed to mind. The religious nature of the Course accelerated swiftly after the initial session, but very few members stopped coming. Perhaps David was right, that people just needed an excuse to embrace it all. The Course provided that excuse.

‘I think I should make one thing clear from the start, though,’ Marcus continued. ‘The Course has been the most positive force in my life over the years I’ve been a member. Abby and I have had some difficult times and I really don’t know what we would have done without the Course to support us. I mean, I look at young people struggling to carve out an existence in London and I just wish I could persuade them all to come along. You don’t just come here to talk about the big questions. You also find yourself at the centre of a really vibrant social scene. We have dinner at each other’s houses, we go to each other’s weddings, we are godparents to each other’s children. I really haven’t kept in touch with that many of my friends from before the Course. I haven’t needed to. The people you will meet here will be your friends for life.’

Marcus saw the priest smile at him before ducking further into the shadows. He bridled against the group that had been chosen for him and Abby. He knew that they were seen as a safe pair of hands, comfortingly conforming to the priest’s vision of a Course couple. He was certain that Mouse and Lee would get a more interesting group and he felt suddenly exhausted, astonished that life had moved so swiftly, so certainly to this point, where he was sitting in a damp room trying to convince people to accept a God the certainty of whose existence only flickered at the edge of his vision, disappearing if he stared at it straight on. The older man — whose name was Neil — moved his chair forward with a scraping sound that made everyone stop and turn to look at him.

‘Could I ask a question? About the sermon tonight. . if one calls it a sermon?’ He was perhaps fifty and what hair he had left clung perilously to his scalp above his ears; the top of his head was entirely bald. His skin was tight and tanned and seemed to constrain his jutting cheekbones with difficulty. He spoke in a sharp voice; a voice of boardrooms and corporate retreats. Marcus could see the silk lining of his suit shimmering. ‘I wondered if anyone else prayed when David asked us to be silent? I wasn’t expecting to, but I found myself praying, and it was an extraordinary experience. I haven’t prayed since school.’

There was a pause and then one of the blonde girls hesitantly raised her hand. ‘I did. I remember my mother used to pray with me when I was a child. She is very religious and I remembered one of the prayers and I said it, and I was mainly saying it for her.’

Slowly the scales of shyness began to drop away, and Abby and Marcus answered questions in voices that echoed the quiet humility of the blonde girl. Calm descended upon the room.

*

Lee found the twins extraordinary. They didn’t finish each other’s sentences so much as perform a canon, with one talking over the other, slightly ahead or behind. They blinked their large eyes at the room and reminded her of stage-school children with their bouncing enthusiasm and lisps. Lee could see that even Mouse was rather taken aback. She smiled in encouragement as they held forth.

‘And Daddy used to take us to church on Sundays when Mummy was ill. .’

‘When Mummy was ill the whole house was silent, like a church. We used to pray for Mummy to get better. .’

‘And when Mummy didn’t get better, in fact when she died, we made a pact, didn’t we, Alice. .’

‘Yes, a pact, Ele.’

‘That we wouldn’t believe in God. We’d stop praying and we’d live raucous lives. And we did. .’

‘We lived astonishing lives.’

‘But we feel it is time to come back to the church now.’

Lee cleared her throat and the group turned to face her.

‘I think that’s very important,’ she said, leaning forward, her thin shoulders hunched, her face very serious. ‘The idea that you can come back to the church. I know I’ve done some bad things in the past; I was a tearaway as a teenager and I disappointed a lot of the people around me. But what you learn is that this church is very forgiving. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone, you can be saved. I find that idea incredibly comforting. It reminds me of that line in Catherine of Siena that says “God’s forgiveness to all, to any thought or act, is more certain than our own being”. It’s a religion that recognises that we are fallible, a religion founded on forgiveness.’

Mouse smiled at her.

‘Lee is the brains of this operation. Go to her if you have any deep questions. Come to me if you want to know where the nearest drink is. Now, maybe I should say a few words about next week’s session. .’

The clock, which reminded Lee of the clock that she had watched as she sat her finals at university, a clock whose hands moved in mysterious leaps, jumped on towards nine and then David came in and thanked them and they were all out in the balmy night. The church’s lights were still on and they threw out a soft glow into the courtyard where the new members stood with their Course leaders, suddenly unwilling to leave the place and each other.

‘Does anyone want to come to the pub?’ Mouse lit a cigarette and took a long drag, blowing the smoke up so that it was caught in the light thrown from the church, a blue haze dissolving slowly into the night.

Four

Abby stared into her lemonade. The glass was old and chipped; fissures that would one day destroy it ran like veins under the surface. When Mouse banged his hand on the table to emphasise a point, the bubbles in her lemonade shuddered, some were dislodged from the side of the glass and went shooting upwards. She watched the tiny explosions as they leapt free of the liquid. She centred the glass on the beer mat, squared the beer mat to the table.

Abby’s stomach hurt. She kept telling herself it was her stomach. As fear fluttered through her mind she tried to convince herself that the pain was higher up, further back, tried to make herself burp as if that would somehow prove something. She thought back to the meal in the church, the pools of grease that shone iridescent in the spaghetti sauce, the starchy stickiness of the pasta.

Neil — the only one from her discussion group who had come to the pub — sat opposite her. They were both quiet, listening to the chatter further down the table. Neil was drinking a glass of white wine. She could hear an edge in Marcus’s voice that told her that he had passed from merriment into drunkenness. The twins had bought shots of tequila. She had handed hers to Marcus. She watched the lights of a fruit machine dance up and down Marcus’s white shirt, saw his hands move as he spoke. He threw himself back laughing, almost toppled from his stool. Now all she wanted was to lie in bed with a hot-water bottle on her stomach and Marcus, sober, asleep beside her.

She realised that Neil was speaking to her. She smiled distantly at him.

‘My daughter died last year,’ he said, placing his hands flat on the table in front of him.

‘I’m so sorry, that’s terrible,’ Abby said. She looked at his downcast eyes. ‘How did she die?’

‘She’d been ill for a long time. It was only obvious right at the very end that it was anorexia. That it was killing her.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Abby, leaning towards him.

‘You don’t expect these things, do you? Not if you’re a normal happy family. You don’t look out for them. I just thought she was thin. I keep turning over her life in my mind, looking for clues. We gave her everything: holidays, a fantastic education, a bloody pony. And her brother — completely normal. Although heartbroken about his sister, of course.’

‘Of course, I can imagine.’

‘A chap at work put me in touch with David. I suppose everyone thought that I’d gotten over it too easily. I was back on the trading floor two weeks later. It did me good to lose myself in my work like that. But quite a few of my colleagues have been to the Course over the years. And to be with young people like you, talking about very serious subjects — it’s wonderful. A bit like going back to university.’

Abby reached over and laid her hands on his, gently collecting his fingers in her own. They sat in silence for a while and then she lowered her hands back into her lap.

*

Marcus was sitting at the other end of the table talking to the twins. He had a meeting at eight o’clock the next morning with one of the senior partners. Initially, he had told himself that he would have one drink and then take Abby — who was looking tired and ill — home to bed. But Mouse’s manic conversation, and the promise of another drink, and another chaser, had kept him at the table. He had edged himself away from Abby, whose disapproving glances had only a very minor effect when he was feeling like this. He tried not to look at her and concentrated instead on the twins, whom he couldn’t tell apart, and who were talking so quickly that he only had a vague sense of what they were saying, and so instead looked into their long-lashed eyes.

*

Lee stood outside with the tall, dark-haired young man from her group. His name was Philip. He still wore his leather jacket buttoned up to the throat, even though the night was mild. They smoked in the darkness, and Lee felt tired, but peaceful. She peered inside the cars that passed down the King’s Road, saw young people heading out for the evening, tired City workers coming home, old ladies perched over their steering wheels straining their eyes into the shimmering street lights.

‘I really don’t know why I’m here,’ Philip said.

‘What? Here with me?’

‘No, at the Course. It’s not like it’ll do any good.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I thought this might be a way of making myself believe, of convincing myself that it all means something. I can see it won’t do any good. You’re all lovely people, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back next week.’ He was drinking vodka and tonic. He drained his glass and laid it gently on the window ledge. Lee turned to face him, taking his elbow firmly in her hand.

‘Give it time,’ she said, her voice suddenly sharp. ‘You’ve only been to one session.’ Her voice softened and she loosened her grip from his elbow, letting her fingers trail down his arm to take his hand. ‘You’d be surprised how it works on you. I’ve seen people who swore they were atheists at the first session speaking in tongues by the time the Retreat comes around.’

‘Oh, no, I couldn’t do that.’

‘That’s what they said, too.’

Philip smiled shyly at her.

‘I was a choirboy when I was a kid. I used to go to these wonderful cathedrals and sing. It was awesome to hear your voice rising to fill all that space. But I got so bored during the services. I couldn’t really follow the words, or at least I didn’t see how they were relevant to me. Whenever I’ve been back to church since, I still get that feeling. As if the priest is speaking a language that I don’t understand, as if the service is designed to bore you into submission.’

Lee dropped his hand and lowered her eyebrows, her cigarette held between her fingers like a baton conducting her words.

‘We’re not supposed to listen to it all. Remember it was once in Latin, all of the service sung in a language that much of the congregation wouldn’t have understood. I use it as a time to relax, to still my mind, focus on my breathing. Don’t think that you can reduce it to something easily comprehensible. The beauty of the service lies in its mysteriousness.’

Lee’s cigarette had burned down and she turned to go back inside. Philip reached out to stop her.

‘And the stuff you hear? The stuff about sex? How we’ll all go to hell if we fuck before marriage? That’s not part of the Course really, is it?’

She looked up at him, a cool indifferent smile on her lips.

‘We have to take the Bible as the basis of what we believe. It’s what the Course is founded upon. And it says sex should only be between people who are married. That homosexuality is evil. So yes, it is part of the Course. It has to be. But I think, more than anything, the Course teaches that whatever you do, you’re not beyond hope.’

She reached up, placed a kiss on his pale cheek, and then walked back inside.

*

Mouse sat talking to the Japanese girl, whose name was Maki. He laid his hand heavily on hers whenever he wished to emphasise a point.

‘And the wonderful thing about his work is that it is so bloody honest. You sit there reading him and you think. . you just think Christ this is brilliant, you know?’ He had forgotten which author they were discussing. ‘So, do you live in England? Are you over studying?’

‘Actually I work for a fashion designer on Bond Street.’ She had a slight American accent.

‘Oh, what’s that like?’

‘Shallow, depressing. It’s why I came to the Course. I heard about it from a girl at work. She’s an ex-model who now helps design the swimwear collection.’

‘Oh, yes, Pippa Walsh.’

‘That’s right. Anyway I told her I was feeling lost in London, lonely and so on, and she told me about the Course. I’m not really any religion, you see. My parents were nominally Shinto, but they got married in a Christian ceremony and when my dad died he was buried by Buddhist monks. I like the ritual of Christianity. I like the hymns.’

Mouse went to the bar to get another drink. He was looking forward to going to work the next day. He had taken the job at the library to be close to Lee, but, over time, had found himself warming to a life caught somewhere between student and academic. He had wanted to join Lee on the MA, but couldn’t afford the fees and so instead applied for a position as assistant librarian in the art deco monolith of Senate House. He saw Lee most days: she chose to study in the Special Collections Reading Room where he worked. They had lunch together. Lee regarded him as a talisman, a charm that had helped her to a distinction in the MA and would now see her through her PhD. Mouse was happy. He was able to spend much of the day fetching Lee books, watching the sun move across her or the way she frowned and sucked her pencil as she read.

On the days that Lee stayed at home, or when she had to walk to Gordon Square for lectures, Mouse would climb up to the library’s upper floors, where readers were forbidden to enter and the hundreds of rooms were used to store books. He walked along long corridors of identical wooden doors, negotiating dog-legs and corners that seemed to defy the logic of the building’s external architecture. There were certain spots that drew him to them — his favourite was the hall on the fourteenth floor that reached up to the lofty ceiling three floors above and was entirely empty. The wind always moaned there, no matter what the weather at ground level. Otherwise it was a room of absolute stillness.

The library had originally been designed to be much larger, with a second tower rising up towards the Euston Road to give the impression of a vast modernist steamship cruising through Bloomsbury. The project had run into financial problems and the building was cut off parallel with the northern edge of Russell Square. Because of the untimely foreshortening of the architect’s vision, there were corridors that led nowhere, warrens of narrow passages that culminated in brick walls, rooms with no purpose whose air was never disturbed by human breath. These orphaned spaces were Mouse’s realm: it was here that he spent his days, here that he felt at home.

He had discovered hidden rooms where collections of children’s literature of the 1920s and 30s were stored. He would sit for hours staring at copies of The Arabian Nights and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen illustrated by Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. He would take the staff lift to the fourteenth floor and search out Rackham’s Wind in the Willows and Dulac’s The Little Mermaid and then, with a cup of tea held carefully away from the friable pages, he’d allow himself to be taken into other worlds.

His life at the library complemented his existence at the Course. Not only because he was able to watch over Lee, but also because the librarian who was nominally his boss was working on a seemingly endless piece of Marxist criticism, attempting to unpick the economic coding that linked the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita and the Declaration of Independence, and was irritably shut in his office for most of the day. This meant that Mouse was able to work the hours he wanted, was able to take days off to attend Course events. He had no defined holidays but managed to get up to Scotland to see his mum regularly. He felt that his life had a fine degree of symmetry to it: of course he wanted Lee to love him, but until that time arrived, he was able to stay close to her, monitor her, stop her from doing anything drastic. He saw her come back into the pub, followed by Philip. Mouse bought himself a beer and returned to the table. Marcus was sitting with his arm around Abby, who was leaning on his shoulder, her eyes tightly closed.

‘Listen, Mouse, Abby’s knackered. Shall we finish up with a couple at ours? Abby can go to bed. I’ve got some good bottles of wine in the rack.’

‘Of course, sport. Have you got the car? Is Abby chauffeur tonight?’

*

It was ten o’clock. Neil went home. Mouse and Maki rode in the back of Marcus’s Audi while the others followed in a taxi. Abby, almost crying with tiredness and worry, drove. Mouse and Marcus played a ridiculous word game, with Marcus shouting answers over his shoulder as Maki laughed and Mouse bellowed. Abby began to sweat. There was a party being held at the Natural History Museum. Paparazzi gathered on their mopeds, shot long lenses out of car windows. The boys pressed themselves to the glass to see who was there. They continued their game, Marcus screaming now.

‘You repeated. You can’t repeat. You forfeit. Shame! Shame!’

‘I bloody didn’t. You lie! Prove it. Did I, Maki? Did I repeat, Abby?’

Abby felt as if she were floating. She gripped the steering wheel but was rising up above it, vertiginous. She leaned hard on the accelerator and sent the car rocketing along Queen’s Gate, up Kensington Church Street and on to Notting Hill Gate. When she had parked, and Marcus and Mouse had steered Maki to the front of the ugly block of flats, she rested her head on the steering wheel and allowed herself one deep sob. A growling taxi pulled up beside her and she saw the twins get out, watched Lee stagger towards the door on the arm of the tall young man with dark hair she had been talking to all night. Mouse would be jealous. Abby rose wearily from the car. Lee held the door for her and they took the lift up together.

*

Marcus had opened a bottle of wine and passed glasses around. Already there was music playing from the laptop on the table. He heard Abby slam the bedroom door; he turned the music down a little and told Mouse to blow his smoke out of the window. Mouse drew himself up onto the wide windowsill and looked down on the empty street below. The flat was on the seventh floor of a brutal square block that was notably unsightly among the cool white mansions of Notting Hill.

Marcus went to the kitchen to get some olives and saw Abby standing in the hallway, her toothbrush raised to her mouth. She reached her head into the bathroom, spat into the sink and then spoke to Marcus.

‘I thought you had a meeting tomorrow.’

‘I do. I’m fine.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m just very tired.’

‘I know you are. I won’t be much longer.’

‘Will you sleep in the spare room? And try to keep the music down?’

‘Of course I will. ’Night. Sleep well.’

‘’Night, Abby,’ Mouse yelled from the sitting room.

She shut the bedroom door softly this time, and Marcus turned the music down until it was barely audible, opened more windows and moved Mouse’s ashtray to the windowsill.

The night began to dissolve around them. Maki left after the second bottle of wine was finished. She seemed to be quite sober, even though she had drunk as much as the others. Marcus walked her to the lift, whistling as they waited for the creaking machinery to ascend. He stood looking at her in the lift; as the doors closed, she bowed very formally. He mirrored her and held the bow until the doors met.

When Marcus came back into the sitting room Mouse had opened a bottle of whisky and was pouring it into tumblers, thrusting the glasses urgently into the girls’ hands, bellowing at Lee and Philip who were sitting in the corner, talking earnestly. Mouse turned the music back up and began to dance in a strange, rhythmic shuffle, his arms twitching at his sides, his stomach wobbling, his bulging eyes rolling. Marcus took his arm and steered him over towards the window. The twins danced together, expending little energy, occasionally leaning towards each other to whisper something and laugh.

Marcus and Mouse sat along the windowsill smoking, swirling the ice in their glasses, and watching the twins dance. Lee was sitting on Philip’s lap in the corner. He moved his lips very close to her neck, whispering to her. Time passed. They saw people coming back from bars, stumbling along the middle of the street, arms around shoulders in the false bonhomie of midnight drunkenness.

*

Marcus had put a film in the DVD player — something of Abby’s in black and white that was bleak and Scandinavian. The twins were half-asleep, slumped across the sofa. He was still sitting in the window with Mouse, cold but not wishing to move or recognise the stiffness of his joints and the iciness that was creeping through the glass. Philip and Lee continued to talk in soft, serious voices in the corner. Marcus tried to follow the film. The camera swooped low over a lake, a man looked out to a range of mountains, a girl cried in her room, the film ended. Marcus stood up.

‘I’ve got to get to bed. It’s two. I can sleep for four hours. Five if I don’t go for a swim. Feel free to stay. Or go. I mean, do whatever.’

Mouse looked up at him, stretched out his short legs and lit a cigarette. The twins woke at the same time and yawned, rubbing their eyes and smiling as colour crept back into their cheeks.

‘We have to leave now,’ said Lee suddenly. Her eyes were watery, red lines clustered in the milky corners. She groped on the floor for her bag, stumbled as she slipped on her heels and leaned over to place a wet kiss on Mouse’s lips. She stood back, grinning.

‘I’m shitfaced,’ she said proudly.

Marcus felt very tired. ‘Bye, Lee. G’night, Mouse. Hang around as long as you like. There’s more booze in the kitchen.’

He undressed in the spare room and walked down the hall in his boxer shorts to brush his teeth. Philip and Lee were already on their way out, his arm around her thin shoulders. Marcus realised that Philip hadn’t taken off the leather jacket all night. Lee turned and waved unsteadily as they left. Marcus looked into the sitting room, where Mouse and the twins were playing some sort of drinking game involving the last of the whisky and a pack of cards. Marcus nodded at them and turned back down the hall.

Drunk, unthinking, he walked past the spare room towards his own bedroom. He opened the door and saw Abby sitting on the end of the bed, her shadow thrown across the room by the bedside lamp behind her. She was naked with her knees drawn up to her chest. She didn’t move when he came in. She was looking at herself in the ancient free-standing mirror that she had inherited from her grandmother. It was liver-spotted with age and misty in the corners. The white sheet beneath her was stained a deep red. She had stripped off the duvet and the blood had slowly spread out, soaking through to the mattress, and was now dripping where she sat at the foot of the bed, a single drop every few seconds that landed in a pool on the cream carpet with a noise like a ticking clock. She let out a sob.

‘Oh, Abby.’ He was suddenly sober.

He went to the bathroom and found a towel. Very gently he lifted her to sit upon it. Then he climbed up behind Abby and placed his arms around her, looking at their reflection in the mirror. He saw a thin mist over her face; long-dried tear-tracks led down from her eyes. Neither of them moved for a long while. Then, very slowly, he helped her to stand, holding the towel in place. She watched as he stripped off the sheet and used the unstained corners to soak up the blood on the mattress. Holding the towel between her legs, Abby waddled to the other side of the bed. She lay down on the clean stretch of mattress and Marcus lifted the duvet over her, tucking it in tightly as his mother had done for him as a child. He found some painkillers in a bedside drawer and held the water glass as she swallowed them. Finally, he left the room to fill a hot-water bottle in the kitchen. By the time he returned she was already asleep. He pulled a chair beside the bed and sat watching her gentle breaths which hardly stirred the thick duvet cocoon. He placed the hot-water bottle at her feet. He heard Mouse and the twins leave, heard the girls’ high young voices in the street below.

Marcus sat until the first fingers of light crept into the sky outside the window. A star shivered above the rooftops of the houses opposite, then faded into the dawn. Abby occasionally drew in the sharp yelped breaths of one who had recently been crying. Marcus smoothed his hand over her brow and mumbled soft words to her. He was still in his boxer shorts and he realised that he was very cold, his feet numb and clammy. Abby’s blood stained his fingers and was turning brown under his nails.

Marcus had known Abby for so long that when he looked at her face it was not like looking at a real person. Her face had the ridiculous familiarity of his own reflection, such that when he did try to consider her objectively, he found it both fascinating and frightening. Her skin was tanned, her dark hair unravelled on the pillow. She was striking-looking, but her size and the sharp intelligence of her manner meant that boys had avoided her during her teens. It had left her lacking confidence, nervous and suspicious when Marcus first started paying attention to her. But slowly she had fallen for him, and, despite the rows, he loved her. He felt a sudden rush of pleasure. He was proud to have her. He knew the child would arrive, and when he did — it was always a he in Marcus’s mind — they would raise him with boundless love.

He jumped as his alarm went off. Abby opened her eyes as he slammed down his hand on the trilling clock. He watched as she remembered, wishing that he could keep her trapped in the fog of waking, draw her back from the revelation that caused her lip to quiver, her eyes to widen as she peeled the duvet from around her and saw the umber towel knotted between her pale thighs.

‘I’m so sorry, Abby.’

She smiled weakly. He couldn’t find anything else to say. He crawled into the bed and drew her against him. He held her for twenty minutes until, regretfully, he lifted himself up and went to the bathroom to shower. He stepped into the glass cubicle and turned on the jet of water, feeling the hot needles stinging his skin. After a few minutes Abby joined him. The shower wasn’t really large enough for both of them, but they pressed closely together, slick with soap and shampoo. They helped each other clean away the traces of blood. Marcus rubbed at the back of her legs with a flannel and saw the skin redden under his touch. When they came out of the bathroom, the sun was coming into the flat and Marcus didn’t mind the wreckage of the sitting room and the kitchen, found he could ignore the brown stains on the mattress in their bedroom. He made them both tea and they sat and watched planes cut across the fragile morning sky.

‘Do you want me to stay? I don’t want you to be alone. Do you need to go to the hospital?’

‘No, I’m fine. This is just what happens. I’ll take the day off. I’m OK now, really I am. You’ve got that meeting. You should be going.’

He left her sitting on the sofa, the tea growing cold in her mug, the shadows of birds flashing across her as they passed on the way to the seed feeder that Abby hung outside the kitchen window. In the lift on the way down he adjusted his tie, picked at a spot and smoothed down the hair of his sideburns. Out on the street he looked up and saw Abby was watching him, the mug held out in front of her like a chalice. He turned and, walking backwards, raised his arm. She smiled as he tripped, regained his balance and finally disappeared around the corner.

Five

There were no curtains in Lee’s flat. She always woke early, with the first whitening of the sky outside her window. Philip was still sleeping. She reached for a glass of water and pinched her fingers to the bridge of her nose, frowning. Darwin regarded her with lazy dark eyes. The dog had climbed onto the bed soon after the noise and the movement stopped, and Philip had drawn his knees up to his chest to avoid kicking him. Now Philip’s legs half-hung over the edge of the bed. He gripped one corner of the duvet in his fingers and pressed it against his cheek. Otherwise he was naked. He groaned in his sleep.

She knew that she should fight the distaste that she felt whenever she brought a boy home. Or rather whenever she woke next to a boy. She wished she could persuade them to leave while she was still drunk. They violated the beauty of mornings in her flat, the privacy and serenity of feeling that she was the only person awake in the whole of Kensington. Their foul breath, stubble, demands for tea or — far worse — more sex left her feeling shot through with guilt, disgusted with herself, lonely.

Once, sex was all she thought about. In her last two years of school she had a string of boyfriends, all unsuitable, all much older than her. Her boyfriends would drive her to house parties around town where she’d sleep with them on badly stuffed sofas, cheat on them with their friends in dark spare rooms, dance with them on tables wearing only her pants. She was always drunker and louder than any other girl there, but she got away with it because she was also the youngest and prettiest. At the end of the parties, she would sit and rearrange her underwear beneath her jeans as the sun rose from the sea and the milk floats and fishermen and other early-morning movers made their way through the streets of the little town on the Suffolk coast.

She’d given up boys when she started the Course. Four years of near-celibacy. The occasional kiss, certainly. A few hands slipping under the waistband of her pants, but nothing more. Then, around the time she began her PhD, she’d started fucking again. Looking for the rush she’d felt as a teenager, the illicit coital glow. But now she couldn’t look at them when they came: she squeezed her eyes tightly shut when their breath quickened to a pant, terrified of the masks their faces became at the point of orgasm, unrestrained and beastly. She knew that she didn’t have a bad reputation at the Course yet. Her delicacy, the austere beauty of her features protected her against that, for the moment. But David was aware. She could feel him watching her, could sense the silent hum of his antennae tuned towards her.

Lee eased herself slowly out of bed and stood naked in the soft blue glow of the morning. She was still wearing her earrings: lapis in the left ear, turquoise in the right. The hair between her legs was the colour of damp sand. The floorboards were ancient beneath her bare feet; she could feel the circling grain of the wood through her soles. She lifted Darwin to the floor and stepped quietly over to her desk in the corner of the room. It was 5 a.m. She was careful not to knock the pile of books that sat on the desk: reading for her PhD that she had been putting off for weeks. A new life of Julian of Norwich and a collection of essays on Anglo-Saxon literature that she had ordered from a Midwestern university press. She picked up her camera and checked the lens, adjusting the settings for the dim light. Then, moving silently, she approached the bed, lifted the duvet, and took photographs of Philip.

His cock looked like a baby mouse. Not that it was small. It was not large but she had seen smaller. It was the colour that did it, the vulnerability, the sense of something not yet ready to see the world. It was curled back on itself, hiding beneath the tightly wound coils of hair that tapered in a line up to his belly button. His toenails were too long. She remembered that he had scratched her legs with them when they first went to bed. He had a tattoo on one shoulder — a Chinese symbol that looked like an insect. She could see how the ridged pigment protruded from the skin; she had to fight to stop herself touching it. Checking the pictures on her camera’s monitor, she judged that she had taken enough, and replaced the camera on the cluttered desk. She picked up her clothes from the floor and, followed by Darwin, made her way through to the sitting room to dress.

Only one boy had surprised her in the act of photographing him, six months earlier. He was a softly spoken black boy from her critical theory seminar group called Paul. She had dropped the camera when he opened his eyes, those dark brown eyes that reminded her of Darwin. His nipples were the most extraordinary violet colour. It was the nipples that had made her linger too long over him, trying to get a shot that did them justice. Even in her morning-after guilt she recognised that Paul was very beautiful. They had stared at each other for several moments before Lee backed away, picking up the camera and holding it in front of her as if it might hide her nakedness and shame.

‘Why are you doing that?’ He had still been half-asleep. She thought later that she might have been able to pretend that he was dreaming, but she liked Paul, and had tried to explain.

‘I’m sorry. You scared me. It’s. . It’s just that it helps me try to understand why I’m doing it, when I can see it in the third person.’ She looked down at the camera and saw that her hands were trembling. Paul lifted himself up and rested his head on his palm, his elbow pressing into the pillow.

‘Was I that bad?’

‘No, it isn’t that. But I’m a Christian. I’m supposed to believe in not having sex before marriage. But I keep doing this.’ She went over to the desk and drew out a large red photograph album. She held it out to Paul and he spent some minutes flicking through it. Twenty-five men in all. Each of them had his own page with his name and the date inscribed in Lee’s neat, looping handwriting. The first was her supervisor at university, an older man, thickset with wispy grey hair, the date just over two years earlier. Paul handed it back to her with a raised eyebrow.

‘So you want to remember the boys you fuck? I can understand that. I’d like a photograph of you, too. Something to carry around and look at when I’m down. Remind me I’d done it with a girl like you.’

‘No, that’s not it. I mean, maybe a little bit. I just feel like I need to keep a record of this, that’s all. This time in my life. I tried to stop it when I first went to church. Had this bizarre period of celibacy. But it didn’t work. I just couldn’t do it.’

What she didn’t admit to Paul, barely even expressed to herself, was that she needed the guilt. She had been the first of them to attend the Course. She went with friends from school one Wednesday night in the summer holidays before she started university. An unassuming church sat on a hill above the harbour in her home town. One of her childhood friends was the daughter of the vicar and Lee and a few others had gone that evening out of solidarity. She sat in the hall of the church and listened to the gentle words of the priest. When they were asked to pray Lee could hear the sea in the distance booming against the breakwaters along the front. She thought of all the boys, all the ugly drunken writhing, all the cheating and the guilt and suddenly she found herself sobbing.

In the discussion group afterwards, Lee sat and listened to her friends talking about how they prayed in secret, how they felt that they needed to believe in something, how the modern world disappointed them. She realised that she had given them little credit for their intelligence. Her friends would sit and listen as she played the piano, stare down at their plates while she and her parents indulged in long and spirited dinner-table conversations; she shone so brightly that they never got the chance. She felt ashamed as she looked into their kind, open faces and saw a huge amount of love for her. The priest sat and smiled as Lee spoke. She told them everything. Every sin and slip and all of the shame that stained her. All of the boys — too many to count — but never any love. The boys who she knew were in love with other girls, the boys whom other girls loved deeply. Her friends waited for her to finish and then they all hugged her. Finally, the priest put his hand down on the soft pile of her golden hair and blessed her.

She had walked from the church glowing. She felt new-made, humble. Her wickedness seemed a thing of adolescence, meaningless in the light of her new-found faith. But slowly it came back. And she got drunk and fucked more boys and she needed to be cleansed again. So she went back to see the priest and slowly she began to believe very deeply, grew to feel that she had a personal and precious relationship with God. The priest gave her the details of a Course session that took place in the chapel of one of the neighbouring colleges when she went up to university. For several years she followed the rules of the Course with great seriousness. But then the slumps set in, and she found her bad old ways returning. And this was why Philip, long and bony, was lying in her bed, snoring gently.

Lee dressed, fed Darwin and sat on the balcony drinking coffee until Philip stumbled out in his boxer shorts, his skin very pale in the first rays of the sun.

‘Hi,’ he said, looking past Lee and out over the city, hands clasped to his shoulders in the fresh morning air.

‘Hi.’ She left a pause. ‘Do you want coffee?’ Her voice was cold and there was only one chair out on the balcony, expressly to discourage any early-morning company.

‘No, I’d better. . I should just go. I’ll see you at the Course next week. It was good to meet you.’

‘Yes. Can you show yourself out? Mind Darwin doesn’t follow you.’

*

She knew that it would be awkward during their next discussion session, and it was. The following Tuesday night, when a warm rain wrapped the church in a swirling veil, she saw him watching her as she walked down the aisle to take her place for David’s speech. She was wearing a black jumper over a white T-shirt, black jeans and trainers. She could feel Philip’s gaze across her back, in the nerves of her neck, in her hair. She thumbed through The Way of the Pilgrim. Mouse came to sit beside her and she hugged him gratefully, then turned to the pulpit, still vaguely aware of Philip’s gaze. David looked down at her and smiled, then out to the rest of the room, his grin widening as he took in the rows of eager, upward-looking faces.

‘Good evening, my children,’ he said, holding his arms out and stepping forward to the microphone. ‘You are now part of our family. And as you attend the Course over the next few weeks and, I hope, over the years to come, you will find yourself feeling increasingly that your family is here. Some of you may have come to the service on Sunday. Doesn’t matter if you didn’t, but those who were here will have got a measure of the intensity of the bond between us, the strength of this community. It feels sometimes like intensity isn’t approved of in the outside world, as if it somehow isn’t cool. Well here at St Botolph’s, intensity is very cool. We encourage it.’ He smiled and took a sip of water. The lights dimmed slightly. Lee rested her head on Mouse’s shoulder.

‘I hope that, over the past week, you might have noticed some changes in yourself. Maybe you haven’t. Often we’re too caught up in the business of our lives and we don’t have time to think about how we’re feeling. Sometimes it’s hard to make space for God. But if you have felt something different, if you have found yourself praying, and maybe you’ve read some pages of the Bible, well, that’s all great.’ His smile faded and Lee noticed a subtle shift in the atmosphere. The light around the priest grew colder, wind whistled in the roof. She shivered. David clasped his hands together.

‘Now I mentioned that this is a family. And families work best with rules. So today I’m going to talk about some of these rules and about why we have them. I used to leave this part until the end of the Course. No one likes hearing about rules. We are always being told what to do: mind the gap, don’t walk on the grass, get to work on time. So I’m only going to talk about the really major ones. There are signs all along Beachy Head which say stay away from the cliff edge. Well, the rules I’m going to talk about tonight are like that — life-savers.’

Lee found herself zoning out as David spoke about the need to attend church on a regular basis, the necessity of nightly prayer, the fact that they were now missionaries for the Course and had to think about how others would view them. She was due to go up to her parents’ house the weekend after the Retreat. She would sit and play the piano all day Saturday in her dad’s music room at the top of the house. You could see the sea through the window if you leaned out a little as you played. A grand piano sat in the centre of the room, sheet music was piled in corners, there was a desk at the back beside which stood a wire basket full of crumpled paper. She would often kneel by the basket with her dad looking for melodies that he had abandoned during his fits of frustrated rage. A mobile made of piano keys hung in the window, black and yellow-white keys that clunked together like bones when they were stirred by a breeze.

She was worried that her dad might commit suicide. It had started as a passing fancy and then grew in her mind until she couldn’t drive from her head the picture of him slumped at his desk, an empty bottle of pills clutched in his delicate hand, his long white hair flowing out across the wood. He was terribly fragile, Lee knew this. Disappointed in the gradual diminuendo of his career. He had never been close to Lee’s mother, a quiet and efficient woman who worked in an administrative role at a teacher training college in Ipswich. Her parents hadn’t shared beds since Lee was a child. Now Lee wasn’t there to look after him, and her trips home were less frequent than before she’d moved to London. She recognised that her own demons were handed down from him and she hated the thought of him battling them alone.

She and her dad would take a long walk by the sea on the Saturday evening while her mum watched telly. He always asked her to tell him about her university work. He loved to hear her stories about mystics and visionaries, martyred virgins and ancient anchoresses. Lee enjoyed reciting the Old English poems most of all. On stormy days, her dad would rise from his chair and pull on his coat, helping her into her Barbour as she slipped a scarf around her throat. They’d march along the tideline, eyelashes pearled by the salty spray from breakers, the sky so low that the highest waves seemed to grab handfuls of the dark grey clouds. Lee would quote poetry at her dad in a lilting voice, occasionally tripping as she forced the words into her mind, but always full of drama and tragedy: The Seafarer, The Wanderer, Deor. Her dad would repeat verses that struck him as particularly moving, his voice still heavily accented as he stumbled to shape his mouth around the unfamiliar sound of the ancient language. They’d hold hands as all brightness leached from the day and return, cheeks red, to the warmly glowing house.

The night before, her dad had emailed her a piece of music that they had worked on together during her last visit home. Drawing on her translation of the Old English love poem Wulf and Eadwacer, it was a desolate, minimalist piece, built around a series of distant notes that developed tentatively into the refrain, sung by a soprano: A difference exists between us. Her dad had tried to convey the loneliness of the original poem, the sexual longing, the betrayal. She had sat at her computer and played the piece time after time. With Darwin curled at her feet, she listened to the haunting, austere music and cried: for herself, for the nameless author of the poem, for her dad.

Lee realised that David was looking at her. Mouse had his hand upon her knee and was tapping out a jittery rhythm with his fingers. David blinked as she met his eyes. The church was utterly silent.

‘Now for the reason I decided to talk about our rules tonight. One of the things I hope that you guys have discovered about the Course is that we aren’t exclusive. All who come here are welcome. All those who join our family, who respect that family by acknowledging and abiding by the rules that keep us together, are welcome. You may have heard things about the Course — there have been newspaper articles, disaffected former members, rival priests who envy our crowded pews.’ He smiled sadly.

‘The Course isn’t for everyone, and I’m afraid some of you will leave. Some of you will feel that we ask too much of you, that you can’t cope with the pressure of living up to Christ’s ideal. What I say to you is this: embrace that pressure, strive for the perfection that Christ achieved and when you slip, the Course will be there to help you up. And you will find that all the other pressures in your life, the things we were discussing last week, fall away when you start abiding by the rules of the Course. We have been described as being outmoded and old-fashioned. I disagree firmly with the idea that our teachings don’t have any relevance to the modern world. Quite the opposite. But when I hear that people think us old-fashioned, I say yes, that’s probably true.

‘We believe that the best family, the most stable and enduring family, is one where a man and a woman come together in love. And when that love is recognised in the eyes of God. Sally and I weren’t blessed with children — in many ways our children are you lot — but, back when we were planning for a family, we felt very strongly that a mother and a father, living together as man and wife, was by far the best way to raise kids. And I know this isn’t a cool or a politically correct viewpoint, I know it is very old-fashioned. But look at the statistics, think about it logically. It’s what nature intended, it’s what God intended.’ The light softened now and David smiled out at the congregation.

‘Weddings are wonderful. It’s still the happiest day of my life, the day when I turned to watch Sally walk down the aisle. And weddings have become as important a part of the Course as our Tuesday-night sessions. They’re a place we can all get together and celebrate the wonder of love, the joyous pact between a man and a woman. And all I’m saying here is that this is our ideal. If you don’t want to get married, fine. If you’re gay, that’s OK too. You’re still welcome here, although you might find that you don’t always feel entirely comfortable. Because we believe that it is when sex is twinned with married love that it’s at its most intense and holy, it’s only then that it’s truly a gift from God. I have many unmarried friends who say that their partnership is every bit as strong as a proper marriage; I have many gay friends who believe that their love is blessed by God. I can only say what I truly believe, what I’d tell my own son. Marry a woman who will love and cherish you. Save sex until after you’re married. It’s the path to happiness, to fulfilment. Some of the most depressed, disappointed people I know are those who chose to be gay in their younger years and realised, too late, that it is a dead-end lifestyle. Now they are old and full of regret. Sex is a gift of God serving two purposes: it represents the joy of love between a man and a woman, and it brings forth new life. Don’t lose sight of these things. Struggle against temptation. Often the most difficult battles end in the most magnificent victories.’ He shuffled some papers on the lectern and stepped down from the pulpit. The applause built slowly from the back of the room. Lee clapped very gently, and her palms were damp with sweat.

She emptied her mind during the music, trying not to think of David or Philip. It was why she loved the piano. The mathematical precision of the notes, the complex feats of dexterity needed to execute the pieces perfectly; all of this helped her to step away from herself. But then they were sitting in the discussion group, and Mouse was beginning to talk about chastity and purity and guilt. David was standing in the shadows of the doorway, and she could again feel his eyes upon her.

‘We all get urges.’ Mouse’s voice was clipped and firm and droplets of spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke. ‘But we control them. Or we hold them in as best we can until our love is blessed. I’ve lost girlfriends because of this. Of course I have. But I know I’m right. Saving something so precious for the right girl seems only sensible. And when I do find her, when we’re married and one in the eyes of God, well, then it will all be worthwhile. It will be something incredibly special and powerful.’ The twins sat forward, their heads bobbing; every so often one of them would giggle. Lee could see that Mouse hadn’t shaved for a few days. A light dusting of blond hairs, not thick enough to be called stubble, fuzzed beneath his round cheeks.

‘Don’t you think that some of the people who need the Course most might be put off by all this?’ Philip asked, chewing the end of his pencil. ‘I mean, the Course is targeted at young people, and young people struggle with their sexuality, they struggle to keep their emotions in check. It just feels like it’s a very negative way of putting it. Very unforgiving when you compare it to the rest of the Course.’ Lee realised that Philip was looking at her.

‘The Course will welcome anyone,’ she said, quietly. ‘And particularly if they’re struggling with these kinds of issues. But David’s right: promiscuity leads to a very lonely existence.’

A silence descended. Philip continued to look at Lee. She stared at the ground and then desperately towards David in the doorway. The priest moved forward into the light and was about to address the room when Mouse, his cheeks very red, began to speak.

‘It’s like so much of modern life,’ he said. ‘Always looking for the next fix, constantly jumping from one cheap thrill to the next. A stable marriage between a man and a woman may seem unglamorous, but it’s the key to a happy life. It’s why the Course insists upon this above all else. It’s for our own good.’ Mouse was standing now, pacing within the circle of chairs, one tightly balled fist smacking into the other palm. Lee thought he looked unhinged, but then she saw the twins leaning forward and blinking their long-lashed eyes and she realised that Mouse was just copying David. Even his voice was growing to sound like David’s. A voice that had been so different when Lee first discovered him, tubby and awkward, hiding in his tiny room high above the college quadrangle.

Lee talked very little during the discussion; her eyes were blank and distant. Philip smiled at her, nodded when she did speak, tried to make his own comments enthusiastic and endearing. When the session was finished, he stood at the door, looking over at Lee as she gathered up her Bible and her papers. Mouse had already left for the pub with the twins and Maki. Lee pretended to read a passage in The Way of the Pilgrim, hoping that Philip would go on without her. David coughed quietly in the shadows behind Philip.

‘Hi, Philip, would you mind if I had a quick word with Lee? Just some administrative stuff we need to go through.’

Lee looked up, smiling coolly.

‘Oh, Philip, were you waiting for me? I’m so sorry. I’ll catch you up.’

Philip nodded and waved, backing out of the room. David stepped in and sat on the chair beside Lee. Lee was still tracing her finger across the lines of the green book, not seeing the words, a feeling of dread building in her stomach.

‘I wanted to speak to you after the discussion tonight. I saw the way Philip was looking at you.’ David’s voice was very gentle. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m prying, or judging you. But you’re a Course leader now, and that carries with it certain responsibilities. I don’t want to lose you, or him.’

Lee closed the book and folded her hands on top of it, staring down at her nails. She felt blood rising to her cheeks.

‘When Sally and I were first together,’ David continued, ‘it wasn’t the done thing to be exclusive in relationships. It was our first year at Durham, and it was that part of the seventies that still wanted very much to be the sixties. So whilst it was very clear to me from the start that Sally was the one I wanted to be with, we slept around. Or rather I did. I used to get drunk and when I woke up next to the girls, I’d barely recognise them. I always hoped that when the bare back I was squashed up against turned over, it’d be Sally. But Sally was the only one who wouldn’t sleep with me. I can’t tell you how empty it all made me feel. Walking home in the early mornings after those one-night stands, I really hated myself.

‘It was a bit like religion. That same era, it was trendy to get involved in all sorts of different religions. Buddhism, Jainism, Sufism — anything Eastern and enlightened worked. And even though we were all brought up Christian, and we went to sing carols at Christmas, it felt like Christianity was the one religion you really weren’t allowed to go in for. I remember these ridiculous meditation parties — some people would be smoking marijuana, and others would be chanting nonsense. I always felt very awkward, but wasn’t sure enough of myself to follow my own path.’

David reached over and placed his hand on Lee’s. She looked up at him, shyly, strands of blonde hair falling in front of her eyes.

‘I proposed to Sally after finals. I took her for a picnic by Prebend’s Bridge, on the Wear. I produced the ring with a bottle of champagne. It was perfect. We were married the following spring. And perhaps a year later, with Sally’s help, I became a Christian. I still feel that the two were very much linked. Both were like coming home for me. The joy of sharing my bed with the one woman I loved above all others was so much like finally accepting the one true God. I hope this makes sense to you.’

She looked at him, frowning.

‘Yes. Yes, it does make sense.’

‘Take Marcus and Abby. You should use them as a model. I know that they have had their troubles, but there is something indestructible at the heart of that marriage. They’ll be able to face anything together, because that union is so extraordinarily strong. I see Marcus looking at Abby sometimes and the love in his eyes is frightening.’

He lifted his hand from her lap and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger.

‘You are such a beautiful, intelligent girl, Lee. You don’t need to be doing this, to be giving yourself away so easily. You will make somebody a wonderful wife one day. In the meantime you must just try to control yourself. You know that I think wine is a wonderful thing, one of God’s great gifts. But all of you drink too much, and it’s much harder to keep your passions in check when you’re drunk.’

He drew his hand up, across her cheek, brushing the strands of hair away from her mouth and tucking them behind her ear.

‘I will try, David, I really will. I want you to be proud of me. Sometimes, though, it feels like it takes everything I have just to get through the day. Like I’m leaning against a door, trying to keep it shut, trying to stop something terribly frightening from coming out. It’s why I’m always so tired.’

‘And what’s behind this door?’

‘I don’t know. I just know that it’s dark and horrible and scares me. I start to panic just thinking about it.’

‘You must fight against it. The Course will be there for you when you come out the other side of this phase you’re going through. But if you backslide too far, if you let the Devil come too close to you, it may be that you are too distant for even the Course to reach you. If you become known as a slut, Lee, I might have to ask you to leave. For the good of the Course.’ These last words were like glass pressed into her skin, each word pearled blood on her pale skin. Tears began to run down her cheeks and David’s voice became softer.

‘I understand what you’ve been going through. And I don’t want to turn away from you — you’re a key member of our community. I’m just trying to warn you. You know I see myself as a father to you lot. The four of you need to stick together. There’s something about you guys that is quite astonishing. On stage, obviously, but also when you move around the church, when you speak to Course members. I don’t want to lose that. It’s why I wanted to speak to you now, before things get any worse. Have a think about what I’ve said. Come and see me any time if you’d like to chat.’

He rose and placed his hand on her hair. Lee bowed her head, feeling the joyful shiver of forgiveness. When the echoes of his footsteps had disappeared from the church above, she made her way upstairs, put on her coat, pulled her hat down so that it nearly covered her eyes, and walked out into the damp night.

Mouse had saved her a seat next to him in the pub. Philip was watching from the corner as Lee moved her chair closer towards Mouse, linked her arm through his, and whispered in his ear that she loved him. He blushed and smiled. When they had finished their drinks, they made their way out into the damp night. Philip grabbed her shoulder as Mouse scampered ahead to hail a taxi.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he said. I had a really good time with you the other night. But I got the feeling you were ignoring me this evening. Please tell me you aren’t upset with me.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Lee looked genuinely distraught. ‘I can be a bitch sometimes, I know I can. I really didn’t mean to hurt you.’

‘You didn’t hurt me, or rather you haven’t yet.’ Philip tried to laugh, his lips peeling back from his teeth. ‘Listen, could I get your number? I’d really like to see you again, just the two of us.’

She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. Her hat sat on the line of her brow and the rain collected in droplets on the cotton. Her lips were bloodless lines, unkissable.

‘No, Philip. I’m so sorry. You understand, don’t you? It’s just a really difficult time for me. I have to go. It’s wet and Mouse is waiting for me. I’m sorry, I really am.’

She ran, leaping over puddles, to where Mouse was standing, holding the door of a taxi. Looking out of the fogged back window, she saw Philip watching the cab move out of sight, the rain swirling around his tall frame. She took hold of Mouse’s hot, plump hand and squeezed it tightly.

Six

It rained every day for a week as the heat of September gave way to a bleak and wintry October. It was cold rain, the kind of rain that slants under umbrellas, soaks through the soles of shoes and explodes off paving stones. Marcus and Abby turned in on themselves, giving way to stillness and reflection. Two of the boys in their discussion group had left after the first week, though their girlfriends remained. Marcus had phoned the boys, emailed them, talked to their girlfriends, but to no avail. In the shadow of these departures, their second session had been a downbeat affair. Neil had spoken about his daughter, tears streaming down his face.

‘One of the reasons I find the idea of God so attractive, one of the reasons that I hope beyond hope that it’s all true, is so that I know that Phoebe isn’t just rotting there in her grave, that she’s somewhere she’ll be looked after by someone who really understands her. I listened to David’s speech tonight about sex and I thought — I didn’t even know if Phoebe was still a virgin, if she’d been hurt in love, if that was maybe why she became ill.’

Abby had crossed the room to embrace him. They’d only briefly touched on the topic of the evening’s talk. Marcus could tell that there was little risk of the prim girls in their group giving way to their baser passions. He could hear Mouse holding forth next door and envied his friend his fluency and his conviction.

They hadn’t stayed long at the pub afterwards, and when they got home Marcus made them Horlicks which they drank in bed, chatting with the duvet pulled up to their chins. They both guessed what had happened between Lee and Philip, and wondered whether they should mention it to David. If Philip left because of Lee, it would mean that they were three members down after the first two weeks. They didn’t blame her, though. They could see how fragile she was, how lost. Marcus reached over and stroked Abby’s soft, wide cheek. Since the miscarriage, Abby had insisted they sleep in the spare room and Marcus liked the change. There were no pictures on the walls; it was like a hotel room, quiet and anonymous. During the week they telephoned each other regularly, softened their voices and murmured until Marcus had to hang up because his boss was standing over him, or Abby saw Sally struggling with a pile of hymnals and rang off.

They made a nest of the apartment during the weekend. Marcus scuttled out to buy newspapers and small luxuries: croissants and wine. They held hands at church on Sunday morning. Abby sang more quietly than usual, leaning on the pew in front of her. She stayed at the altar rail for a few seconds after taking communion and Marcus waited beside her, watching her lips move silently. When they came back to their seats, she knelt again and prayed until the final hymn was sung. They left as soon as the service was over and spent the afternoon lying on the sofa with a duvet over them, watching sentimental old films.

Abby telephoned her mother that Sunday afternoon. She didn’t tell her exactly what had happened, and Abby’s mother pretended that she had misunderstood, rather than face the embarrassment of talking to her daughter about her feelings. Abby had two older sisters. All three of them had been star performers at the local grammar school, had shone at university. But Abby knew that her mother worried that the girls had inherited her own fatal flaw: they married badly. Abby’s parents had divorced when she was eleven. At the time she only read Jilly Cooper novels and found the drama and the heartache of the divorce rather glamorous. But she missed her father, who had subsequently married a small, thin woman in a direct reproach to Abby’s increasingly vast mother. Abby’s eldest sister had already been married twice, the first time for under a year. Susie, the middle child, was in a spectacularly loveless union with a maths teacher, ghosted by a pair of silent children. Her mother always looked at Marcus through eyes hard with suspicion.

On Sunday night they forced themselves out to a pizza joint on Westbourne Grove. The restaurant was full of couples like themselves: bankers and their wives who wouldn’t see each other all week, younger hedge-fund managers with trophy girlfriends who talked too loudly and laughed too easily, one of the partners from Marcus’s law firm. But Marcus liked the pizza, and he squeezed Abby’s knee under the table and spoke to her about his childhood; she had heard the stories a hundred times before, but Marcus knew they soothed her. He could see her fighting to stay brave, to force the dark thoughts from her mind, and it reminded him of Lee, how she would bite her lip as she struggled against her slumps.

As the day of the third session of the Course dawned, Marcus rose very quietly from the bed and changed in the hallway. He knew Abby had had a bad night. He had woken in blackness to find her clutching her pillow, twisting and grasping it and then forcing it down onto her belly. She screamed silently for a moment before sitting up very straight, her eyes open, her chest rising. Marcus had taken her in his arms and held her until she fell back asleep. He lay beside her, unable to find sleep himself, until he saw the hand of the alarm clock creep round towards six.

The pool in the chrome and frosted-glass gym behind Moorgate was almost empty. The traders from the surrounding banks tended to work out in the evenings; their wives came in for Pilates at lunch. One older man swam a slow, dignified breaststroke, his head squeezed tightly by the swimming cap and goggles. He sank beneath the water with each stroke and then, surfacing, seemed surprised to emerge into the same, still world. Marcus stood on the side of the pool and felt the ridges of the tiles beneath his feet, the rush of blood as he drew in great lungfuls of air, the pinch of his own goggles at the bridge of his nose. Then he plunged into the water, which was always colder than he remembered, and he was all motion, his legs thundering in his wake, his arms grasping the water and pulling him through it, a breath every three strokes on alternate sides. Sometimes he let it go for longer before breathing, waiting until his lungs were screaming, his neck straining. He loved the way sound was deadened beneath the water. He could pretend that he lived in that easy liquid world, where, while he was moving, nothing could touch him, and all the dirt of existence was washed away by the rushing water.

Later that day he sat in his office and thought about Abby. He had turned his chair to face out of the window, hoping to give the impression of one lost in the intricacies of a case. He watched the rain tracing patterns down the glass, drops gathering others in their wake as they slithered downwards, dividing their transparent bodies like amoebae viewed on a microscope slide. He knew that he took Abby for granted, knew that the complexity of their history together, the fact that they had come through so much, made him think they were invincible. But she had moved from sadness into something more forlorn over the past few days, and he felt powerless. He was so used to turning to her when he was strung out, so used to her being the strong one. It disturbed his sense of the order of things for her to be laid so low. Her face, younger, smiling, came to hover in front of his half-closed eyes.

He was doing this with increasing regularity, allowing himself to drift off into nostalgia, layering one memory upon another until his present-day self almost disappeared into the shadows cast by those former Marcuses, who always seemed brighter and more alive, still enchanted by life. His dreams always centred on the others — on Lee before her sadness set in, or Mouse back at university, or Abby in the first days of their love. It was when the memories tumbled on top of each other, interlacing so that he could barely separate them, that he realised how lucky he was to have the three of them. How, perhaps, the Course was just a way of making sure that they were always together, sealing fast the bond of their friendship. He wished sometimes that their four lives could be as ordered and synchronised as when they were on stage. It was only when they were playing music now that they seemed to work well together.

He remembered Abby walking down the aisle at their wedding. A small, sparsely furnished church near her Derbyshire home. She had arrived at the church early and the blast of Mendelssohn had caught him by surprise. He felt his heart leap in his chest and Mouse, standing beside him, had put an arm around his shoulder. Marcus had turned and looked into the white arch of light coming through doors that let the spring afternoon into the church. At first he could see nothing but the glare of the light, which seemed to him somehow linked to the bellowing of the organ. Then, coming out of the light, he saw Abby walking with slow, dainty footsteps down the aisle. Her wedding dress hung cobwebby over her chest, the veil smudged her features. She clasped a posy of wild flowers tightly in her hands. Marcus could see that they were already wilting. Her father seemed to be leaning against her as they made their way down the aisle. Behind her now, almost blocking out the light, came the bridesmaids.

The oldest sister had reacted badly to foundation applied that morning by the make-up artist and her face was a wide, red beacon glowing behind Abby’s shoulder. Susie, the middle sister, who was ashamed of her size, drooped down the aisle, shyly looking out for her husband in the crowd and then turning her eyes back to the worn stones of the floor. Lee looked stunning. Bone-thin, but poised and delicate between the two hulking sisters. Marcus watched Abby’s father scuttle to stand beside his diminutive wife. He was a history teacher at Matlock College of Further Education, disappointed-looking, cowed by his wives, ex- and present. But he stared at his youngest daughter with eyes that brimmed with love.

Abby’s mother, sitting beside Marcus’s as if somehow wishing to claim for her solitary state the reflected decency of widowhood, fanned herself with the service sheet. David and Sally Nightingale sat in the aisle behind them. Only a few of the congregation were not Course members. Daffy from university; a couple of Marcus’s friends from school — now bankers — who looked terrifyingly old, their stomachs straining against their morning-suit jackets, thin-lipped wives on their arms; Abby’s frail-looking aunts and her gruff cousins who wore their suits with the resentful air of petty criminals in court. The rest of the congregation bore the healthy glow of spiritual enlightenment. The Course members always brought their children to weddings and the men took turns to pace up and down at the back of the church with the toddlers, while mothers jogged babies or retreated demurely to the side aisles to breastfeed.

When the organ stopped and the local vicar lisped his welcome, Marcus began to panic. There was a pigeon trapped in the roof of the church. It made circles of the low roof, trying to find a way out; its hysterical wingbeats kept time with Marcus’s heart. Marcus looked at Abby and, behind her, the sisters who seemed like a dreadful premonition of her future. Lee smiled wickedly at him. He saw Abby’s mother glaring with tiny black eyes at her ex-husband and his wife. Marcus’s own mother was already sobbing quietly into a handkerchief, his sister looking over at him with something like pity.

Marcus tried to slow his breathing as he stepped forward to join Abby in front of the altar, but his heart thumped violently in his chest and his palms were coated with cold, sticky sweat. He felt as if he had entirely lost control of his life, as if he had abjured any sense of agency when he joined the Course, and he was now about to marry at the age of twenty-five, to tie himself for life to a girl and a religion he felt that he had stumbled upon by accident. He stammered his way through the service, looking at Abby as if she were a stranger, feeling no sense of the holiness of the occasion, of the joy that he saw in the faces of the Course members looking up at him. When Mouse jokily patted his pockets searching for the ring, Marcus felt the panic rising into his throat. He was convinced that he would pass out, that he would have a heart attack like his father and die, there, in front of his family. The church held none of its usual comfort. He felt terrified and alone standing up in front of people who suddenly seemed very distant; he saw something cold in the clear eyes of the Course members. Then, very quickly, the service was over, and Marcus and Abby walked out into the wide, bright day through a cheering crowd.

Abby took his hand in hers as they sat in the Rolls-Royce outside the church. There was confetti in her hair and her palms were as cold and moist as his own. She looked at him with nervous, hopeful eyes, a smile twitching the corners of her mouth. He reached over and kissed her as the car pulled away and he heard cheering behind them. They sat in silence for the remainder of the journey to the venue. Marcus couldn’t shake the butterflies in his stomach, the feeling that he didn’t have the final say in his own life any more. He cracked his knuckles and wondered when he would be able to smoke.

The venue was a four-star hotel on the outskirts of Derby, twenty minutes’ drive from the church. Marcus looked out of the window of the car as they passed rows of down-at-heel shops, council estates and abandoned factories. His mother had wanted them to get married in Surrey, where there would have been room to hold the reception in the garden. But after a series of negotiations in which he had not been involved, but which had clearly led to some chilliness between their respective mothers, it was decided that the wedding would take place near Abby’s home in Derbyshire.

The driveway that led to the hotel wove between the pristine fairways of a nine-hole golf course. The car stopped to allow four pastel-clad golfers to cross. Their silver hair shimmered in the sunlight and one of them turned to give Marcus a thumbs-up. He smiled wanly back. The hotel was an old manor house built of dark stone that seemed to absorb the day’s bright light. Attached to the main building was a low modern wing that housed the swimming pool and gym. When they had come to visit the venue with Abby’s mother, the hotel manager had insisted on showing them the sports complex, which she assured them was unrivalled in the whole of the East Midlands. The manager was now waiting, hands linked in front of her, outside the entrance to welcome them. A marquee had been attached to the hotel and French doors led out from the dining tables to the dance floor. A gentle breeze ruffled the tent’s white fabric as they stepped from the car.

Later, as the sun sank slowly over the trees that blocked the grey council high-rises of Derby, Mouse and Marcus stood on the putting green smoking. The hours had raced by, aided by gin-and-tonics and the champagne that Marcus’s mother had paid for.

‘I can’t quite believe you’ve done it,’ said Mouse.

‘There were a couple of times when I thought I might not make it. You were an excellent best man. To tell you the truth, today has been one long panic attack for me.’

They stood and watched the sun disappear.

‘Abby looked grand.’

‘Yes, she did. I was proud to be marrying her.’

‘She’s not like her family. You know that, don’t you, sport?’

‘Of course.’

‘You know what it made me think of, standing there with you today?’

‘What?’

‘It reminded me of when we’d go to listen to Abby sing in the choir at university. It occurred to me today how none of her family ever came along. If I had a child who had that kind of talent I’d want to be there for every performance, you know? It’s strange that neither of her parents came to hear her, even for Christmas carols.’

‘Mmm. I don’t think any of them really like her very much. It’s funny, we spent a lot of time in church back then. I mean, given that it was before the Course. I suppose I must have gone at least once a week all the way through university.’

Mouse took a drag on his cigarette and turned to Marcus with serious eyes.

‘I wonder sometimes if those days laid the foundations of our faith. Even though we were drunk or stoned some of the time — most of the time — and even though I never listened to the words really, it did give us an appreciation for that kind of beauty, set in our minds the idea that there was something better, purer, than the life we were leading.’

They stubbed out their cigarettes and made their way into the marquee. Dinner had finished and it was time for the first dance. Toddlers were strewn like obstacles across the dance floor; blitzed on ice cream and wedding cake, they screamed and stamped and roared. ‘Love Cats’ began to play, and Marcus bashfully held out his hand to Abby, who took it and allowed herself to be guided to a clear space of dance floor. Marcus was a bad dancer. It didn’t help that he and Abby were more or less the same height. Neither of them seemed able to decide who would lead. His feet grew independently shy of the rest of his body, curled themselves up bashfully when called upon, tried to hide under the hem of Abby’s dress. She was drunk and threw herself gamely into the dancing, but her enthusiasm merely served to highlight Marcus’s own awkwardness. Finally, as the song jittered towards its end, Marcus felt a hand on his waist and Mouse stepped in to dance with Abby.

Even though Mouse was much smaller than Marcus, he seemed to be able to reach above Abby, to harness her energy and turn the two of them into a swirling image of graceful recklessness. Marcus felt a small shot of jealousy as he watched them. Abby let out howls of delight and continued to dance wildly with Mouse as the next song came in and others stepped onto the dance floor to join them. Lee was slow-dancing with Daffy even though it was an upbeat number. Marcus could see Daffy’s thigh working itself slowly between her legs. Course dads danced with their children, who, having worked off their sugar rushes, now nuzzled sleepy chocolate-stained faces into their fathers’ crisp white collars. David and Sally Nightingale jitterbugged together, eyes locked, revelling in the weight of shared history conferred by the vintage of their perfectly synchronised dancing. Marcus stood holding his glass of champagne until his sister came and dragged him onto the dance floor, her small white face turned up lovingly to his as they danced.

Much later, Mouse and Marcus were again out on the putting green smoking. One of Abby’s cousins was sleeping on the first tee behind them. Mouse had grabbed the last two bottles of champagne as they made their way out of the marquee. He passed one to Lee and Abby, who were in drunken conversation at a table in the corner, and opened the other as they strode across the squares of light thrown from the hotel windows onto the wide lawn. Marcus had found a golf ball in the bushes and dribbled it from one side of the putting green to the other, finally punting the ball as far as he could into the distance, hopping and holding his foot in pain as the white ball flew off into the black night.

‘Did you see Lee kissing Daffy?’ Mouse asked.

‘Was it a kiss? I wouldn’t really call it a kiss.’

‘It was a kiss. Nightingale saw her. I was watching him.’

‘Poor Lee. You mustn’t think badly of her for it.’

‘I thought she was better. She seemed almost like her old self the past few weeks.’

There was the sound of breaking glass from inside the marquee. Marcus saw that Mouse was looking at him intently.

‘I thought you did well today. I can tell you now that I was worried beforehand. You’ve been acting strangely for the past few weeks. And you seemed so nervous in the church.’

‘I was nervous. I still am, I suppose.’

‘I had taken a few wee precautions.’ Smiling, Mouse reached into the pocket of his suit and pulled out a white cylinder. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger and then brought it up to his nose, inhaling deeply.

‘Is that a joint?’ Marcus was laughing.

‘Just, as I say, a precaution. I thought about smoking it with you before we went into the church. Then I thought you might want it to get you through the reception. But you didn’t need it. Seems a bit of a waste now.’ He looked at the joint and then up at Marcus.

‘Oh, come on, let’s smoke it. For old times’ sake.’ Marcus reached into his pocket for a lighter and then looked back at the marquee. ‘I just can’t let Abby see me. I promised her I wouldn’t do drugs again once we were married. It would look bad if she caught me the day of our wedding.’

They walked into the shadow of the hotel, skirting flower beds and balconies. Mouse led the way while Marcus followed, stopping occasionally to sip from the champagne bottle. They came to the low square bulk of the sports complex. A door stood open, emitting a faint blue light, the smell of chlorine. The swimming pool was lit from beneath, white lights shining upwards through the water, the gently rippling surface dappling the roof. Marcus imagined that they were in a cave, that the fake rubber trees in the corner were ferns, the pipes hanging from the ceiling stalactites. In one corner of the hall there was a sauna, pale wood bleached almost white. Mouse stepped inside.

‘There won’t be a fire alarm in here. Close the door.’

Marcus stepped into the small room that smelt of pencil wood and sweat. It was warmer than the rest of the hall. He pulled the glass door shut behind him and looked through it to the pool, whose surface was now quite still. He sat down on the lower of the two benches that lined the back wall. Mouse was perched above him and reached down for the cigarette lighter. It was almost entirely dark inside the sauna and the sudden flaming of the lighter hurt Marcus’s eyes. Soon the small room was filled with the warm, woody smell of dope.

After a while, Marcus stood up to clear his head. A smile was strung out across his face. Mouse was leaning back against the wooden wall, his eyes closed, the last of the joint burning down between his fingers. Marcus retrieved the stub, took a long drag and then extinguished it in the dregs of the champagne bottle.

‘I’m going to miss that,’ he said, his words coming out very slowly.

‘I’m going to miss you.’ Mouse’s voice was suddenly very serious and Marcus felt the smile fade from his lips. He could only just make out his friend in the darkness and sat clumsily down beside him. He put an arm around Mouse’s shoulders and tried to find words suitable for the moment.

‘You’re a good friend. The best I’ve got.’

There was a noise in the pool outside. Marcus lifted his arm from around Mouse and crossed to the glass door of the sauna. In the dim blue glow of the pool, he could see someone swimming. The long white body barely ruffled the water as it moved through it. A length underwater, then a length of graceful breaststroke, then a fluid and powerful crawl.

‘Mouse, come and look.’

Mouse rose and pressed himself alongside his friend.

‘It’s Lee,’ he said.

The swimmer moved to the steps at the edge of the pool and rose slowly from the water. It was the dimmest corner of the pool, but Marcus could see that Mouse was right. Water fell from Lee’s skinny naked body as she walked along the tiles beside the pool. Standing for a moment, her arms raised up, stretching her skin tightly over accordion ribs, nipples flattening across high breasts, she took a deep breath and dived back in. In a strange way, Marcus thought she seemed to know that she was being watched. She deliberately swam over the underwater lights so that her body was a dark silhouette, barely bulging at the buttocks, moving quickly as her legs began to froth the water. She was pushing herself faster and faster, as if racing against herself or attempting to work out some hidden rage. Finally, she stopped in the shallow end, standing up in the corner nearest to where Marcus and Mouse were watching her. The water lapped just below her waist; the dip of each wave revealed the small damp tangle of her pussy. She stretched her arms up again and then lay back in the water, her hips pushed upwards, her legs and arms gently paddling to keep her afloat.

Marcus had been so focused on Lee, on trying to sear the image of her onto his mind, that he hadn’t noticed Mouse. Half-turned away from him, his face pressed to the glass, Mouse’s body trembled every so often. One of Mouse’s hands had disappeared into the front of his grey trousers. Marcus was about to say something, but then Lee began to swim again, this time backstroke. She swam slowly, her white body held high, the water cascading over her stomach and chest. Marcus, ignoring his embarrassment, unzipped his flies and drew out his cock. He saw Mouse look over at him, and could just make out an encouraging smile on his friend’s lips. With their faces close together, looking out through the glass and breathing heavily, they lost themselves in the image of the girl cutting through the water. Marcus came first, shooting out a white gobbet that landed with a splut on the glass door. Mouse followed almost immediately afterwards, letting out a half-sigh as he pulled himself off. Marcus watched his friend’s face twist and then relax in the dim light. They were both panting, their breath steaming the glass. Marcus reached down to zip his flies.

As if she knew exactly what was going on inside the sauna, Lee swam to the edge of the pool and lifted herself out. She took a towel from a pile lying on a deckchair, dried herself slowly and then pulled on the bridesmaid’s dress that was hanging over the arm of the chair. Marcus and Mouse smoked a cigarette together, wanting to allow some time before leaving the building. When the cigarette had burned down to a stub, they made their way quietly back to the marquee.

Marcus kept the image of Lee in his mind throughout his honeymoon. She must have gone to bed immediately after her swim, because he didn’t see her again before he and Abby were whisked off to the bridal suite and then, early the next morning, to Gatwick. And when they made love on the starched white sheets of their Corsican chalet, when they swam naked together in the hidden coves around Propriano, when Abby lay back for him in a hollow on a wooded headland outside Bonifacio, Marcus felt that they were somehow paying homage to Lee. As if they were pursuing an ideal that she had created during her midnight swim.

*

Marcus jumped. Someone had come into his office. He had an erection and he realised that he had fallen asleep. It was still raining; the drops were racing down the glass. Whoever was behind him cleared his throat again. Marcus swung his chair around. Michael Faraday, one of the senior partners, was standing with his eyebrows raised and his hands in his pockets.

‘Michael, good to see you,’ Marcus babbled. ‘I was just thinking about the Crystal Capital situation. Well, actually that’s a lie. I had been thinking about Crystal Capital but then I started thinking about rain, and why we don’t hear about acid rain any more. Whether it’s because it isn’t a problem any more, or if it’s because we have much bigger ecological things to worry about now.’

Marcus shimmered his most winning smile at the grey-haired partner.

‘No idea. Don’t give a fuck either. I want you to drop Crystal and come with me. I’ve a case I think will really grab you. Fascinating business and needs your brain on it. A Chinese bank is trying to sue Plantagenet Partners. It’s going to be a massive job. Hope you’re not busy over the next few weeks. I’m going to need you to run through walls on this one. Most complicated buggeration of a case I’ve seen.’

Marcus tried to adjust his cock under the desk, stood awkwardly, and followed the partner out. They walked down the corridor together.

‘The first thing you should know is that the Chinese have a bloody strong case. You’re going to need to be pretty tricksy on this one. I’ve already made sure that the boys at Plantagenet have got rid of all the records relating to the transaction that they don’t absolutely have to keep. You might want to encourage them to lose a few more. Software issues, or something. This case will teach you that being a good lawyer means always being one step ahead of the law. Hope I’m making myself clear. .’

Marcus was late for the Course that night. He had slipped away as soon as Faraday went to buy his dinner, but the Tube chuntered slowly, pausing ominously with flickering lights between stations. When he finally arrived at Sloane Square, he ran flat out down the middle of the King’s Road. He came to the familiar black railings and sprinted up the gravel driveway and into the church. David’s voice was very low, very intense, and stopped Marcus as he slipped inside the heavy wooden door.

‘Hopefully some of you will have felt something when we prayed at the end of the last session. If you didn’t feel anything, then don’t worry. It happens at different speeds and with different intensities for different people. But just keep on praying, keep on asking God to come into your life. And he will come. I remember a Course member several years back who approached me on the final day of the Course. He said that he had been asking God to come in and was beginning to despair when he sat in the church silently after one Tuesday-night session. And what he realised, he told me, was that God had been there all along, that he simply needed to open his mind a little more to see that.’

Here he put his hand on the Bible that sat on his lectern, closed his eyes and nodded. From his vantage point at the back of the church, Marcus could see Leo, the lighting and sound engineer, slowly increasing the intensity of the white light until it looked as though the priest had a halo. David opened his eyes suddenly and fixed the room with a fierce gaze.

‘What happens when it gets difficult? When the doubts that we — quite naturally — feel grow into something more fundamental, more painful? What happens when we lose our ability to speak to God? For me, it was to do with suffering. You may know that the Course runs a charity out in South Africa that buys a Bible for every schoolchild in Soweto when they reach the age of twelve. I went out there seven years ago and it was quite wonderful to see the joy on the faces of those young people as they were handed their Bibles and given a blessing. But I also saw some very painful things. I went with a group of the children to visit their parents in an AIDS clinic. I took two of the kids to get tested there themselves. One of them had the disease. I spent time talking with this wide-eyed, happy little girl, and I knew that, because her mother was sick and she had no other family, she wouldn’t be able to get hold of drugs to treat her condition and would very likely die young and alone.’

David looked up, his pale eyes moist.

‘I found myself assaulted by some very serious doubts. What were we doing giving these children Bibles, I asked myself, when there were things they needed so much more? And how could my God, the God I’d given my life to serve, allow this to happen? These doubts caught me quite by surprise. I think that many of us feel that once we have filled that God-shaped hole that we all feel inside us, that we’re there, that we’ve done all of the hard work. But faith requires constant attention. It took me a lot of prayer, a lot of late-night discussions with Sally, and the Bishop and other Course members, before I found my faith again. The problem of suffering is one of the great struggles for the believer, and it’s one you must continue to fight. Now let us pray.’

Marcus made his way tiptoeing down the aisle and took up his seat beside Abby, who was bent over in prayer, her hair hanging down in fronds that were caught in the candlelight. After a few moments he was standing again as they made their way to the stage. He hadn’t been able to attend the last band practice and knew that he was going to struggle to keep up. His fingers felt fat and lethargic, he was still thinking about the case Michael Faraday had brought him in on, was still mentally outside the church, unprepared for the shift away from the everyday world.

As the weeks passed, Course regulars were allowed to move further forward in the church, so that the new members grew used to the sense of being part of a revelation, a happening. Marcus looked at the congregation as his guitar stumbled its way through the first song. Three blonde girls stood with their faces turned upwards, broad smiles unleashed at the stage. They sang along with Abby, swaying as they sang. They were the wives of three of the Course’s largest donors — a trio of hedge-fund entrepreneurs who were millionaires by twenty-seven. One of the girls was enormously pregnant. Her belly rocked from side to side as she moved. Marcus could see the outline of her belly button pressing against her black T-shirt.

Abby had sung the first song standing very still, her hands pressed together in prayer, her eyes closed, her face turned upwards. The next song was faster and Marcus had to lean over his bass and watch his fingers, looking up every so often to try to work out which chords David was playing. Marcus felt that the band was only a small step away from catastrophe. He was certain he was about to lose track of the music altogether. Lee was slumped at the piano, dejection hovering in a cloud over her, her chords thin and without feeling. Mouse was spinning his sticks in the air, half an eye on the three girls in the front row. Only David held them together, his rhythm guitar accelerating as the song moved towards the chorus.

It was then that Abby started to dance. David approved of dancing. He believed that it helped the congregation draw closer to a state of ecstasy. But Abby was really moving, lifting the microphone stand off the ground and slamming it back down, kicking her legs up in the air and whooping between the lines of the chorus. Slowly, the audience picked up on her energy, and the three girls in the front row raised their hands above their heads. Neil, Maki and Philip, standing in the pew behind the girls, began to shuffle awkwardly. Some of the younger members off to the side stood on their chairs, people moved to the open spaces of the aisle and the Lady Chapel and danced wildly, shaking their heads and holding their hands up to the stage, which was now flooded with bright white light. The twins spun in a tight circle in the centre of the aisle, gripping each other by the elbows. The stained-glass window behind the band was luminous, the altar cloth glowed gold. When the final chorus arrived everyone was singing, the music pounded with the rhythm of their hearts, the dancing reached a frenzy and the three girls at the front were shrieking, thumping their chests and then screaming out. Then the final chord and the last echoes swirled up into the high silence of the roof.

Abby bent double, her arms hanging down at her sides. Marcus was breathing heavily. His fingers were numb from playing, small blood blisters grew in the channels that ran across his fingertips. The cheering started. Throughout the church they applauded, calling out and laughing and shouting their approval. Even Lee was smiling. Mouse was juggling his drumsticks and then played a quick roll on the snare. When the cheering stopped, they left the stage and made their way downstairs for the discussions.

Marcus and Abby were still flushed, their cheeks red and their chests rising. Marcus knew that it was in music that he came closest to God, came nearest to the appreciation of the divine that Abby seemed to find so easy. It allowed him to escape himself and the cynicism that questioned religion in a mocking voice, that laughed at Abby’s credulousness. There was another round of applause from their group when they walked into the small room in the crypt. Marcus took Abby’s hand and they bowed together.

‘Thanks, guys,’ Marcus said, sitting down. ‘I enjoyed that. Now tonight I’d like to talk to you about the issue of suffering. Because, as David said earlier, it’s one of the biggest questions we face. I almost ended up leaving the first time I did the Course, just because I couldn’t get my head around it. And I still have trouble with it. I still have doubts. So I’m going to ask my lovely wife to help out if I go slightly off-message.’ He looked at Abby and smiled. She still seemed wired: she was sitting on her hands and rocking forward on the balls of her feet, leaning into the centre of the circle.

‘You heard David refer to it in his speech, the fact that there are much easier ways of explaining away suffering. Either that God isn’t able to stop children getting leukaemia or whatever, or that He can’t be everywhere at once and helps some but not all, or that He doesn’t want to end their suffering. And when you watch the news at night it makes it very difficult to believe that an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists.’

Marcus saw David in the doorway watching him. He paused for a moment, looked at the faces all turned towards him, saw that Abby was still sitting on her hands, although she was now rocking her chair backwards, coming perilously close to falling. Marcus rose and stood behind his wife, his hands upon her shoulders. He knew he was mimicking David’s tone, his modulation.

‘When Eve ate the fruit in the Garden she took a decision that would affect everything that came after. She acted with her own will rather than being a slave. And thus the moment of Original Sin was also the moment when we gained freedom. And every small victory, every freely willed act, is a celebration of that first rebellion. God punishes us through the suffering in the world. He punishes us because that is the natural balance of things: we had the chance to stay in Eden, to live a life of comfortable slavery, but we chose freedom. And how much richer even the most tragic life, even a life cut short, knowing that we have the freedom to make our own choices, to carve our own way through that life. .’

Marcus felt like he was growing, inflating to fill the room. It was not a feeling that he enjoyed. He stared down at the faces of the members of the group, the young blonde girls and their boyfriends, Neil, Abby; he looked over to David, who was smiling broadly in the doorway. He continued to speak and there were no questions, no interruptions, just the purity of thought expressed in clear, calm words. But all the time there was humming at the back of his mind the static of hypocrisy. He knew he sounded slick, knew they were all hanging on his words, that Abby would be proud of him. But he felt fraudulent and spivvy.

When the session was over he tried to slip away from the group. He wanted to sit in the car in darkness until Abby had finished helping Sally clear up the dinner pans, then drive them back to the flat to continue their reclusive life. As he climbed the pale stone stairs into the church he felt an arm around his shoulders. It was David.

‘That was wonderful, tonight. You seemed inspired. Did you feel like the Spirit was moving in you?’

Marcus paused. David began to rub his thumb gently down the line of Marcus’s collarbone. Marcus shivered.

‘I don’t know. It felt very fluent and easy, but I don’t know if it was spiritual. You know that I had a problem with this part of the Course, and so I’ve worked really hard to make sure that I’m on top of it, that I know all of the arguments and can regurgitate them almost without thinking.’

They were now walking down the aisle together. Their voices were distorted by the height above them. Marcus watched Abby collecting forks in a bowl; Sally followed after her throwing paper plates into a black plastic bag. The priest dropped his hand from Marcus’s shoulder. They sat down together facing the altar. Marcus tried to explain himself, but he felt his words were now muddled and fumbling.

‘When I was speaking earlier it felt a lot like it does when I’m arguing a case at work. You know it’s very rare that anyone I’m defending is innocent. We’re expensive, so we usually get the guilty guys. I don’t ever get to do anything as glamorous as speaking in court. But I always get sent in to speak to the other side’s legal team. And it’s because I can speak like that, with that fluency, giving the impression of being totally in charge, totally on top of things. When, in fact, I’m peddling half-truths and relying on intimidation and legal sleight of hand. It was like that tonight. All that stuff about Original Sin and Free Will — it’s not enough. It’s not enough of an excuse for the bad stuff that happens in the world. And I know it’s bullshit, but I spout it anyway.’

The priest was silent for a moment, then stood up slowly. He hovered over Marcus. Marcus could see the muscles in David’s jaw working. He watched the priest’s hands. The right hand seized the fingers of the left and squeezed until they were white, corpselike.

‘I’ve built something astonishing here, something that will outlast all of us.’ David’s voice was icy. ‘I’ve been watching you very carefully. I’m worried that I made the wrong choice when I decided to bring you into the inner circle of this church. Look around you. You could be someone here, really make something of yourself. The Course is exploding. It’s going global.’ He focused his eyes on Marcus’s and extended his cold, thin hand to Marcus’s shoulder again. He pressed his thumb on the collarbone.

‘I’m trying. I just thought that I should tell you if I was having these doubts, rather than keep them to myself.’

David continued as if he hadn’t heard, increasing the pressure on Marcus’s collarbone.

‘Have you stopped to think about why two of your members left after the first week? Because it certainly wasn’t Abby’s fault. People can sense the contradictions in you, how you struggle against yourself. You drink too much, you smoke too much. I watch you; I can see all that excess. I see the flames of hell lapping at your feet. Remember that the Devil is always there. He is desperate for me to fail, for the Course to fail. So I have to look for him at every turn. Don’t let the Devil work through you, Marcus. Don’t let it be you that he uses to bring this all down. I am watching you.’ The priest dropped his hand from Marcus’s shoulder and began to walk away from him. Course members scuttled in the shadows of the north and south aisles. David turned back towards him, his hand held in the air, fingers still in pincer grip.

‘I’ll see you on Sunday. Remember what I said.’ David’s voice had returned to its public register. Marcus watched the priest make his way to the door and out into the night.

Marcus sat for a while longer, feeling flat and confused, his collarbone throbbing. Then the lights began to go out, and he was sitting in darkness. He knew the layout of the church and found his way in blindness to the door and out into the damp autumn night. He sat in the Audi and listened to the radio until Abby’s outline appeared against the warm yellow of the open rectory door. She bounded towards the car, climbed into the passenger seat, and let out a long, contented sigh.

‘That was just marvellous. I’m still buzzing.’ She fiddled with the radio as they pulled out onto the King’s Road. Marcus stared ahead into the dark.

‘It’s the first time I’ve felt really properly alive since the baby,’ she continued, speaking over a stuttering procession of different radio stations. ‘It’s amazing how music can lift you out of yourself. It’s what David always says, isn’t it? That we’re nearest to God in music and silence.’

Marcus accelerated through an amber light, clenching the steering wheel hard. Abby found a channel that played buoyant dance music and sang along happily as they made their way through thick traffic homewards.

*

Marcus reached for a bottle of red wine as soon as they walked in the door, slumped on the sofa and opened a copy of the New Statesman. Abby knew he had read it weeks before. She watched his eyes, which didn’t move with the text but instead seemed to stare through the paper into the distance. He slurped the wine as he drank it, rolling it in his mouth and sucking air over it on his tongue. It sounded disgusting but Abby sat at the table watching him and didn’t say anything. She felt suddenly terribly far from him, unable to bridge the distance between them. When they brushed their teeth she saw him spit purple into the sink and noticed that his lips were still stained black from the wine.

Later in bed she tried to talk to him. She knew he had drunk enough to make him irritable, but she needed to connect with him. She needed to let him know how proud she was of his preaching — because that was what it was, he had preached and it sounded just like David. She pressed herself against him, felt the familiar boniness of his body, the muscles under his armpits and along his neck, the hard curve of his arse.

‘You were amazing tonight, darling. I know you must be exhausted, but I want you to know how proud I am of you.’

Marcus stopped himself speaking for a moment. He knew he was irrationally angry. He hadn’t eaten dinner and had drunk just enough to pull a black veil over his mind. He always regretted these rages in the morning, even though in the moment he felt such enormous clarity, felt as though the world was transparent and he could finally see the workings of the machine. But he loved Abby, and he struggled to keep his thoughts inside.

‘I’m so tired. Please, let’s just go to sleep.’

‘But I can’t. I want to talk about it with you. Did you feel my energy? I mean, the way I danced in that song it was like I was full of something burning. I think we’re going to do an amazing job this year. It’s sad that we’ve lost a couple already, but I really think the rest of them will stick it out. Wouldn’t that be marvellous?’

‘Yes, that’d be great. ’Night.’

She was quiet for a moment. Then, slipping her hand slowly inside the tracksuit bottoms he wore to bed, she took hold of his cock.

‘Let’s have sex, darling. I really want you. And I think what happened tonight might have been a message. I think it’s maybe a sign that if we do it tonight it’ll all work out.’

She felt Marcus growing hard, wrestled her nightie over her head and switched on the bedside light. When she turned back to him she saw Marcus lying staring up at the ceiling. He was cracking his knuckles.

‘What is it?’ She placed her hand on his stomach.

‘I don’t want to have sex. Not after tonight.’

‘Come on, darling. You were just like David in that discussion group, magnetic.’ She took his cock in her hand again and found it small and limp.

‘I’m sorry. I just don’t find things as easy as you do.’

She began to tug gently at his penis, taking his hand and placing it over her pussy.

‘I don’t find it easy, darling. But it gets easier the more you do it.’ She began to move herself back and forward, pressing herself against his fingers.

‘But I get the impression that with you it’s instinctual, something that comes naturally. It’s a real struggle for me.’

Abby was panting slightly. Marcus’s cock was still small and shrewlike in her hand.

‘Why do you always have to make everything so difficult, darling? Just relax and go with the flow. Good things will happen, I promise.’

Marcus pulled his hand away from her and sat up in bed.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Jesus, I don’t know if I can handle this.’ He wouldn’t look at her as he spoke.

‘What do you mean, this?’

‘I mean us, a baby, the life you have chosen for us. I’m beginning to wonder how we got old so quickly.’

She stood up, clasping her nightie in a ball at her chest. Her voice came out very clear and controlled.

‘It’s not my fault. Your life is not my fault.’

‘What does that mean?’

Her voice when it came was still soft, but cold and spiked.

‘It means I think sometimes that I’m making the same mistake my sisters made. Marrying weak men. My mother always said that we would never be happy together. I think she might have been right.’

She was breathing heavily, twisting the soft cotton nightie into a ball. Marcus still wouldn’t look at her. She tried to take his hand, but he drew it away.

‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean it. I love you. That’s my problem, I just love you so much. And I need for us to be together, for us to have a child. I’ll try very hard to make things better for you.’

But Marcus was already gone. Whenever they argued like this he would retreat into himself, draw up his defences and become as still and silent as a monk, lost to Abby.

‘Don’t do this, please don’t do this. Speak to me. What are you thinking?’ He sat immobile as she stroked his hair. Abby began to cry, large hot tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘Why are you crying?’ he asked, his voice very cold.

She looked down at him as she stood, her nightie clutched to her chest. ‘Because you’re not,’ she said, and ran from the room. She slammed the door as she left.

Marcus sat on the bed and watched the windows of the high Edwardian houses opposite. Scattered yellow squares of light glowed against the dim white walls like the doors of an advent calendar. A train rattled somewhere. When he went to look for Abby he found her sitting very still on the sofa, her nightie on, the main lights in the room casting her shadow on the wall behind her. Marcus sat down next to her and placed a kiss on her wrinkled brow.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, too.’ She turned to him and draped her arms around his shoulders. He felt her hot breath on the skin of his neck.

‘All I want is for you to be happy. I know I haven’t always been there for you, but this time I am. We’re going to make a baby, and you’ll be an amazing mother. And I’ll love the baby all the more because half of it is you.’

‘Oh, darling,’ she said, and pressed her wet face into the hollow of his neck.

They made their way back to the bed in the spare room. A bird was singing somewhere in the darkness outside the window. They slept tightly curled together that night as they had done when they shared his single bed at university, and he fell asleep with the beating of her heart thumping against his cheek, the words of a prayer circling his mind. Don’t let me die just yet, Lord. I don’t want to die.

Seven

This girl was very good. Mouse liked her expressionless face, the clinical air she had about her. Once he had walked out without speaking to the masseuse. There had been a lasciviousness in the way she greeted him, something sluttish in her clothing and smile, something that suggested she was open to going further than a massage. But this one clearly understood what he was looking for. When her fingers rested on his perineum, he allowed himself a brief sigh of contentment, encouraging her to stay there. She was naked. There was a long mirror down one wall of the room and he watched her breasts move as she ran her hands up the inside of his thighs. Dark nipples. She sucked her lip in concentration. She looked a little like Lee. Brown hair but the same sense of seriousness. He thought she was Swedish, but didn’t want to ask.

Mouse had slipped out of work early and made his way to the large Georgian house on Gloucester Place. He was always staggered by the economics of it, that a place of such grandeur could be maintained by six or seven masseuses and their balding, unthreatening male receptionist. He paid one hundred pounds for his forty-five-minute session. Something soothing and Eastern played on a hidden stereo. A gamelan, a sitar. She sat astride one of his thighs as she massaged his arse and he could feel the soft slick hair of her pussy on his skin. It amused him that these girls — some of whom were English and well-spoken, a step above the sex-trafficked skag addicts in the brothel next door — fooled themselves into thinking that what they did was somehow better than prostitution. Eastern mysticism was in high vogue, and they must have felt that it lent dignity to their compromised lives. He had found the place through a website that promised ‘enhanced consciousness’ and ‘a way to rebalance the chakras’. Of course it was nothing more than a posh handjob. But the pretence suited Mouse, who didn’t want to have sex with these girls, just needed an hour of being touched, an hour when he could lose himself in physical pleasure without feeling that he was breaking the rules of the Course.

He had argued with Lee earlier that day. It was not a serious disagreement, just one of the small moments of friction that invigorated their relationship. He knew he had been staring at her too much in the library earlier. Perched behind his desk, he had been conjuring a daydream of exquisite beauty starring Lee against a deserted rocky beach and pine trees growing down to the sea. He stared at her and imagined her naked back pressed to the rough bark of the pine, her feet in the water and her arms stretched above her, her breasts falling forward as she dived in. She smiled at him the first few times she caught his eye, but then her expression grew increasingly irritated. A tall and aristocratic-looking student sitting next to Lee kept glancing at Mouse, whispering in her ear and then looking back at him with a frown. By this time Mouse was imagining Lee in the empty hall high above them in the tower of Senate House, her clothes scattered on the parquet floor, her hair falling down over her shoulders like Dulac’s Little Mermaid.

Lee had refused to have lunch with him and had disappeared towards the Brunswick Centre on the arm of her newly appointed protector. She didn’t come back that afternoon. After a sad sandwich in the staff cafeteria, Mouse went back to the library, found where the tall boy had been working and removed three pages of notes from his desk, folding them and placing them at the bottom of the bin as he made his way to the lift. He called ahead and booked his massage and then set out along the Euston Road.

As he lay on the bed with its sheet that was bobbled from too many washes, too many attempts to rinse out the oil and come and sweat, he felt the heaviness that had dogged his day lifting. He had been to a dinner party at the house of an older girl from the Course the night before. A girl who had once seemed to offer an escape from his obsession with Lee. Three years ago, he had taken her to the theatre, and then on to a bar, spending money he didn’t have getting her drunk. He had tried to kiss her in the taxi back west, and she laughed at him, told him that he was a dear pal, but she had a boyfriend, didn’t he know? Now the boyfriend had become a husband, the girl’s stomach strained against the material of her maternity dress, and her cheeks glowed every time she looked at her wealthy, successful mate. Mouse had played his part during dinner — the doting, unthreatening friend, laughing at her jokes and reaching out to touch the taut skin of her stomach to feel — there! — a kick. But he raged as he walked home, shouted prayers into the night sky, screamed at the desperate unfairness of it all.

The masseuse asked him to turn onto his back and he did so. He could see her looking at him, at the large belly that sat above his short, skinny legs, giving his body the appearance of a toffee apple abandoned on the bed. His cock stood straining, pulsing against the bulge of his stomach. She began to massage his feet, rubbing warm oil onto the hard pads of his soles.

He was worried about his friends. Lee was a constant concern, but now Marcus and Abby seemed argumentative, strung out. They rarely came to the pub after the Course. Dark pouches hung beneath Marcus’s eyes. The Retreat was like a beacon ahead. Only three more days and then they’d be together for the weekend, and all things would be well again. David had told him that the Retreat would be held at the Earl’s country house on the edge of the Cotswolds, Lancing Manor. Each year it was somewhere different, the exact location never revealed to the new members until the night before. Mouse thought back to the Retreats he had been on so far: some of the best days of his life. He didn’t know what he’d do without the Course.

The girl began to move her way up his body. First his calves; resting her arse on his foot, she ran her oiled fingers up one leg and then the next, kneading the muscle, moving her thumbs in circles around his knees. Then his thighs, which she pulled and stretched, making her way slowly up to the join of leg and groin, the fold of skin where his pubic hair started. She brushed his cock by accident and he felt it thrill.

*

Lee had discovered him. Three weeks into term and he had only left his room in college for lectures and meals. Sitting on his own in the wood-panelled dining hall under badly painted pictures of morally upright fellows, he would shovel the food into his mouth as quickly as he could, reading a novel to discourage any of the other outcasts from claiming him as one of their own. He watched the surrounding tables with bored scorn. Marcus’s voice was always the loudest, his laugh audible from the quadrangle below. Everyone knew Marcus. And Abby at his side, striking and statuesque, but Mouse could see her in fifteen years’ time when she’d be hulking and matronly. Daffy and all of the other laddish types who followed Marcus around were not the sort of people Mouse had come to university to meet. So he sat reading the novels of André Gide, with his blond hair flopping in front of his eyes, and left when his plate was clean.

One evening, scurrying across the quad after dinner, he saw a girl watching him from a window high in the wide blank wall of the college’s main building. He recognised her vaguely. She was friends with Marcus and his crowd. Her face looked young and lost as she peered out into the misty air. The face disappeared into darkness and Mouse climbed the spiral staircase to his own room, the smallest room in college. His clothes were still in his suitcase, perched at the foot of his bed. Books were everywhere, reaching in perilous piles towards the ceiling, three deep on the windowsill, filling the drawers of his dresser. He opened the window and stared out across the college lawn towards the parks. Only a small desk lamp lit the room behind him and he felt somehow powerful up there in his cupboard of a room, looking down over the world.

He watched people walking back to their rooms after dinner, heard brief snatches of conversation. Then there was a knock on his door. Mouse panicked for a moment, stared around his room and thrust handfuls of dirty socks and boxer shorts into drawers, stuffing them between tightly packed books. When he opened the door he saw the girl who had been watching him from the high window earlier. He stepped forward and tried to pull the door closed behind him to block her view inside. She placed one hand on the door frame. She wore a hooded sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms, scuffed trainers on her feet.

‘Can I come in? You’re Alastair, right?’ Her voice was deep and cool.

Mouse looked behind him and sucked his stomach in as she squeezed past him.

‘Wow, this room is tiny. Bad luck. My name is Lee, by the way.’

She took off her shoes and sat down on his bed, lifting his suitcase onto the floor. He saw her eyes scanning the piles of books. She reached over and picked up a tattered copy of The Wind in the Willows.

‘Oh, I love this. I had forgotten how much I did, but then I read it over the summer. It’s magic.’

Mouse’s eyes bulged even more. He sat down in his desk chair, knocking a pile of books over as he swung round to face her. They were only a foot apart and Mouse could smell her shampoo.

‘Do you really like it? I think it’s a serious work. I mean really very spiritual. It’s my favourite. I read it when I can’t sleep.’

Lee looked around the room. Treasure Island lay open on top of a copy of Eugénie Grandet, The Famous Five rubbed shoulders with La Vie mode d’emploi, Struwwelpeter with Les Fleurs du mal.

‘What are you studying?’ she asked.

‘French.’

‘So why all the kids’ books?’

Mouse blew his fringe upwards and spun a pencil on his desk.

‘I’ve always taken them with me. My dad is in the army and we travelled around a lot when I was young. I just got used to having my books around me. All I have to do is read the beginning of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and I feel. . I don’t know, safe. It’s a wee bit sad, I suppose, but no worse than television.’

She set down The Wind in the Willows on top of the Bible that lay beside his bed. She took off her jumper; her singlet rode up as she lifted it, revealing a flat white stomach. Mouse tried not to look at the softness of her breasts under the vest, the black bra straps on her shoulders. She leaned over suddenly and, very close, breathed a question at him. He felt a flutter of panic, felt time slowing, making the air around them heavy.

‘What’s your accent? Where are you from?’

She stroked his flushed, fleshy cheek with cold fingers. He spoke quickly, stumbling on his words.

‘I’m from Scotland. Well, I grew up in Germany and then came back over here when I was thirteen. We were in Shropshire for a wee while and then my dad was posted to Barry, outside of Dundee. It’s where his family are from. I don’t really know what my accent is. I try to make it as ordinary as possible. It’s just how I speak, you know?’

With the light cutting along her cheek, he thought she was very beautiful. He could see fading summer freckles across her forehead, lying like stars along her arms. He noticed that she wore different-coloured earrings in her ears. He wondered if she knew that they didn’t match. Her tracksuit bottoms were frayed around the heel. He felt suddenly ashamed of his body, the way his stomach pushed out beneath his T-shirt, his goggling eyes.

‘What are you doing here? I mean, I’m glad you came over, but I didn’t think people like you mixed with people like me. Why aren’t you out with Abby and Marcus?’

She drew back a little and smiled at him.

‘I saw you at dinner the other night and I thought you looked nice. I don’t want to hang out with just those people. I want to meet people like you. I think we could be friends.’

‘Well I don’t. I didn’t ask you to come over. I just want to get on with my work. All of the other students in my tutorials have spent every holiday since they were kids in France. They worked in Paris on their gap years, have pretentious parents who insist on French at the dinner table once a week, you know? I’m at a disadvantage from the start and so I am going to need to work really hard to keep up. I think you’re grand, Lee, and I’m pleased to have met you, but maybe you should go. I can’t really deal with this now.’

She looked at him with a frown, knitting her eyebrows together, then pulled back the duvet and slipped into his bed. He watched her wriggle like a fish for a moment and then saw the tracksuit trousers slither slowly to the floor.

‘Will you read me a story, Alastair?’

‘Um. . OK. Call me Mouse. People call me Mouse.’

So he opened The Wind in the Willows, took a deep breath, and began to read.

‘The Willow-Wren was twittering his thin little song, hidden himself in the dark selvedge of the river bank. Though it was past ten o’clock at night, the sky still clung to and retained some lingering skirts of light. .’

Lee slept in his bed that night. She wore one of his T-shirts and they lay in the close darkness hugging, talking in whispered voices. He massaged her thin back with his thumbs, feeling the closeness of the bones under her skin. She let him kiss her lips, but kept them tightly closed when he tried to move his tongue inside. He was also allowed to feel her breasts and her arse through her clothes, but she pushed him away when he tried to slip his hands under the waistband of her pants. Neither of them slept, and when the sun rose he sat on the windowsill reading aloud from The Wind in the Willows again. She lay back with her eyes closed, smiling.

*

It was the closest he had come to something sexual with Lee. And it was why he went for these massages. He had enough self-knowledge to realise that it was in pursuit of those early nights with Lee that he went to the tall Georgian house in Marylebone. He slid back to the present, away from memory, as the girl massaging him started to apply oil to her naked body. Her breasts shimmered, her stomach glistened. She began to chant.

‘Om, shanti, om. .’

Pressing her breasts together, she slid over his body, rubbing herself against him, all of the slippery warmth of her vibrating with her chanting. He began to intone the mantra and allowed his mind to empty entirely, felt the world centre on his groin. She moved faster, flinging her body over his; she was panting. Mouse’s voice rose to a wail as he came hot shots over his own belly, over hers. She mopped at herself with a towel and then handed him some tissues. In the aftermath he felt empty. His breath came tightly into his chest, escaping with a high wheeze. The girl dressed in the mirror and then left the room. Mouse made his way out into the afternoon. He was carrying his drumsticks.

He decided to walk down to the church. He wasn’t due there for another few hours and the massages always filled him with a strange energy. He couldn’t go more than once a month, though. The emotional and financial expense precluded it. He always felt a heady sense of guilt afterwards. He nurtured it, enjoyed it as one can enjoy any pain that is rare and self-inflicted. It helped to give shape to his time at the Course knowing what it was like to sin.

He dived through the underpass at Marble Arch and came out into the north-eastern corner of Hyde Park. It had been a cut-glass autumn day, the leaves threw a multicoloured net over damp grass. Now with the light fading over them, two boys flew a kite which was silhouetted against the rich blue of the western sky. He watched the kite shudder for a moment in the high air, whip in the wind and then crash to earth. He walked along the avenue of trees down towards Knightsbridge, imagining those who once rode alongside him, Victorian ladies with their bodies hot under stiff-collared clothes perching side-saddle as gentlemen with enormous sculpted moustaches raised their hats and bowed. Mouse ran up the hillock upon which Achilles was perched and placed his hand on the cold bronze of the statue’s calf. Then along the south side of the park, past the rose gardens and the last dying games of football, until he came out by the lake.

*

Those first few weeks with Lee were bright in his mind. When it had all seemed ahead of him, when it had promised so much. He wasn’t to know that he wouldn’t get any further, that her coldness was something more than the initial prudishness of a sensitive teenage girl. They spent all of their time together during that wonderful autumn, and it felt to Mouse that he lived under two skies: the natural sky above and the artificial sky that Lee cast over him. Mouse carried her books to the English faculty and left her with a lip-kiss at the door before running to his own lectures. They’d walk to dinner together and then sit and smoke cigarettes until it was time to go to the pub, or to Marcus’s room to hang out with Abby and the others. Marcus had the biggest room in college and there was always booze and often drugs on offer. Mouse didn’t mind that Lee described him as her discovery, presented him to the others with a note of possession in her voice. He wanted to be owned by her.

They were generous with him. For his nineteenth birthday Marcus and Abby bought him an early edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe inscribed to him with their love. Lee gave him a golden signet ring and had an invented coat of arms engraved upon it. She placed it upon Mouse’s finger as they lay in bed the night of his birthday. He held it to the light, looked at the engraving of a turret with what he thought was a mouse rampant atop it. He laid his hand down on the bulge of his bare stomach and saw the ring shimmer, then placed it gently over Lee’s left breast. They slept in the same bed for the first term. She said she was lonely in her room alone. She would let him take his clothes off and press himself against her, sighing with pleasure as he ran his hands over her flannel pyjamas, circled her nipples through the soft cloth, ground his groin against her thighs. But still she wouldn’t let him go any further; she kept her pants on under her pyjamas, and threatened to leave when he insisted too vehemently.

Lee had asked Mouse along to the Course one night in December. A freezing wind nudged them along the wide high street as they walked out after supper. Lee wore a coat with a sandy fur collar and clung hard to Mouse’s arm as they reached the dark quadrangle of the graduate college. They had made their way into the dimly lit chapel where candles flickered above carved wooden choir stalls and chairs were set out in a circle on the ornate mosaic floor. Mouse sat and watched Lee, contributing little to the conversation. When they sang he mouthed the words silently, preferring to listen to Lee’s rich, low voice rising to fill the small chapel. When they came out into a night made suddenly bright with snow, breathlessly cold, she had turned to him, eyes streaming.

‘So what did you think?’

‘I thought it was brilliant,’ he replied. ‘Really moving.’

‘Do you think you’d like to come again? I’d love it if you would.’

He thought for a moment. ‘I’ll give it a try. I’ve been thinking for a wee while that I needed something new, some way of negotiating life. Life just seems. . it seems unfair at a very deep level. Not just the inequalities in society, but the way that the most successful people also seem to be the most awful. Something isn’t right with the world and I need a way of dealing with it. I’m not sure that this is it, but if you believe in it, I’ll come with you.’

‘I saw a Bible in your room.’

‘I’ve been trying to read it a little bit every night. It’s a cultural document, you know? It all makes a bit more sense now.’

At the next service, a guest speaker had stood in the centre of the circle of chairs and fixed each of them in turn with his pale eyes. His sandy hair was flecked with grey and he wore a white shirt, chinos and a blue blazer. Mouse thought he looked like a banker. But when he spoke, the small chapel came alive. He had talked about the emptiness of modern life, the way that everything had lost meaning in a world cheapened by consumerism and sex. He marched up and down the room as he spoke, slamming his fist into his hand for emphasis, and Mouse, who hadn’t been to church since his mum took him to Christmas services as a child, was hooked. He and Lee had gone to the pub with the speaker afterwards. His name was David Nightingale.

*

A bicycle screeched to a halt behind Mouse. He dropped his drumsticks and scrabbled in the gutter to retrieve them.

‘Watch where the fuck you’re going!’

Mouse had stepped into the road without looking. He had crossed the park and was walking down Queen’s Gate. The sun had sunk from the sky and now it was almost dark. The yellow taxi lights that flashed past seemed like the warmest lights he had ever seen. Finally, he was on the King’s Road and he could see St Botolph’s spire black against the dusk sky. Mouse rapped out a tattoo with his drumsticks on a wheelie bin. He was looking forward to playing later.

He made his way past the vicarage, keeping to the shadows. He could see Abby and Sally Nightingale in the rectory’s kitchen. Abby was talking and helping to roll out sheets of pastry, while Sally nodded and smiled every so often. The church was empty when he went into it. A flickering lamp glowed in the Lady Chapel, and the ceiling was lit by the spotlights that illuminated the church from the outside. He relished being in the church on his own. He reached down and pulled out a prayer cushion, knelt upon it and rested his head in his hands.

‘O, God, protect my mum. I’m sorry that I’m not always there for my friends. I’m sorry that I sometimes think and do things that I know disappoint you.’ He spoke the words out loud in a small, soft voice, more Scottish than his everyday accent. ‘Please, Lord, I pray that I might achieve all the things that David asks of me. I pray that the Course might grow and flourish. O, Lord, let all be well.’

He bent forward until he was almost lying flat and pressed his hands to the cold stone floor. He felt safe in the darkness of the old church. He understood the age of the place, recognised the terms for its distinguishing features, knew the faces of the saints in the main altar window as he knew those of his friends. He had a photograph of the inside of the church pinned to a cork board on the wall of the boat. Lee had taken the picture just before the start of a Course evening, looking up through the candles towards the spotlit altar. He liked to line up his eyes with the shot when he came into the church. He laid his cheek against the stone floor, shut one eye, made a soft clicking noise and then slowly rose to his feet.

He felt islanded that evening: very distant from the other members of the Course; not scornful, or resentful of their privilege, but as if they were from a reality so profoundly different from his own that they might as well have been characters from a novel. He sat slightly apart from Lee as David stood to introduce the guest speaker — a well-known artist who had been a heroin addict until he was persuaded to attend the Course. Mouse half-listened to him, keen to get on with the music and the discussion session when they would talk about the Retreat.

It was Lee who had suggested they form a band. She used to take Mouse to the college music rooms late at night when neither of them could sleep that first cold winter at university. She’d play the ‘Promenade’ from Pictures at an Exhibition in the dark, and Mouse would sit very still as Lee rocked backwards and forwards, humming softly behind the music. Marcus was a decent guitarist and played after dinner parties when everyone would smoke and sing, Abby’s voice standing out above the others, high and clear. Mouse had learned to play the drums. He was co-ordinated and had a good sense of rhythm, and Lee was endlessly patient playing alongside him as he bashed away on the college’s kit until one of the serious musicians came and told them to stop. For Christmas that year Lee gave him a snare and a high-hat which he carried up to Scotland on the train and practised as the snow built up outside his window.

They played gigs in bars and clubs throughout university, had a regular slot in a pub on Sunday afternoons, did friends’ birthdays, the wedding receptions of their friends’ older siblings. It was another way to spend time together. It was only when Lee introduced Mouse to the Course, and they met David, that they realised that music was a way to God. When they moved to London, and Abby and Marcus joined the Course, David persuaded Marcus to take up the bass, implementing a stricter regime of band practices. It was David who chose the name of the band and had The Revelations printed across Mouse’s drum kit. David and Lee had regular songwriting sessions, where Lee would adapt lyrics from the religious texts she studied at university and David would set them to music.

That evening at the Course they played one of these songs. The older Course members knew the words and stood with their arms wide and their faces towards the roof, singing. Staring out over the candlelight, Mouse found himself mouthing along as he drummed. Lee had taken the lyrics from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love; he remembered her scribbling them in an old exercise book one afternoon at her flat, thumbing through a tattered copy of the mystical text as she wrote. Now the ancient words were new-made, sung over driving rock music.

‘In falling and rising again,

We’re always kept in that same precious love.

Between God and the soul there is no in between,

So we pray and our prayers fill our hearts

with your endless love.’

He thumped his foot down on the bass drum, smashed the cymbal and tapped away at the high-hat: it was the perfect instrument for him. Only when he was playing the drums did he lose the feeling of jittery energy that had once sent him running in mad bursts around the quads at university, that caused him to fiddle and jiggle and jerk his way through life.

In the discussion group they talked about the Retreat. Mouse stood up immediately as the group settled in the room in the crypt.

‘It’s the most brilliant experience. It should really be viewed as the pinnacle of your time here. Although there are sessions afterwards, they draw heavily upon what you learn at the Retreat. It’s a time for us to bond, for us to really talk — not in the way we do here, but with real depth. There’ll be a few wee services to go to, but the rest of the time is yours to speak with David, speak with us. I have to say I’m jealous of you. I’d love to have my first Retreat all over again.’

‘My first Retreat’, said Lee, ‘made me feel like a child.’ Her voice took on a dreamy note. ‘It was all so simple, and so perfect. Beautiful autumn weather and time to spend with friends. And they’ve all been like that, ever since. The Retreat is an oasis.’ She was wearing a short denim skirt over dark tights and her hair was tied with an elastic band in an untidy pile on her head. Mouse could smell something rich and unwashed when he moved close to her. He noticed that her tights were laddered.

‘Do you ever get anyone who freaks out? I’ve heard it can be pretty intense.’ Philip was looking at Lee, but Mouse answered him.

‘It’s such a friendly atmosphere. We’ll all be there, you know. It’s like a massive, brilliant sleep-over.’ He smiled.

‘But someone told me you have to speak in tongues. I don’t know if I want to do that. It sounds a bit weird.’ Maki looked at Mouse with her eyebrows raised, but he just smiled and nodded. David had prepared them for this.

‘Don’t worry too much about what you hear. The whole speaking in tongues thing is just a small part of the Retreat. It’s. . it’s a bit like those Magic Eye books. Some people find it really easy, some people just don’t get it. If you let yourself go with the flow, you’ll get there. Just don’t fight it.’

Lee nodded.

‘You know David is always going on about how empty the world feels?’ she said. ‘How our lives are so fragmented and superficial? When you hear the tongues, this beautiful, eerie music, and everyone is chanting together, it makes all of that go away for a while. It’s this most extraordinary feeling of release, as if everything suddenly makes sense. And the silence afterwards, it just blows you away. .’

When the discussion groups were finished, Marcus and Abby said goodbye. Mouse watched them walk off towards the car, Marcus’s arm around Abby’s broad shoulders. A police siren wailed down by the river and Mouse shivered. Lee came up behind him and slipped her arm through his. Huddled together, giving the impression of one body, so closely were they linked, they made their way to the pub under misty cones of light that hung down from the street lamps.

Mouse kept her clasped closely to him as they sat in a dimly lit corner. At first, they were quiet, and he felt her breaths rise and fall under thin ribs, let her pale, drawn face rest on his shoulder as they watched people go to the bar and play fruit machines and walk out to smoke cigarettes. Lee sighed.

‘You know that image from Bede?’ she said.

‘Hmm?’ He had been enjoying the silence and now brought her into focus with difficulty.

‘The one that says our lives are like the flight of a sparrow through the night into a bright mead hall? We fly from darkness into light and laughter and then out again into darkness. Sometimes I feel like I’ve already come out the other side. That my teenage years were my real life, when I lived everything so intensely, when I was completely carefree and wild. And these days I’m just in darkness, flying along without any idea of where I’m going.’

Mouse took a sip of her drink and lifted his arm from around her shoulders. He turned to face her, frowning.

‘Honestly, cheer up, will you? The Retreat’s almost here. Things can’t be as bad as all that now, surely?’

‘I’m afraid they are.’ Her voice was very low.

‘Jesus, Lee, will you get a grip? This self-pity, this constant misery, it’s just exhausting. I could strangle you sometimes.’ His voice rose in pitch and Lee winced. ‘You’re young, you’re very beautiful, you’re scarily clever. A lot of girls would die to have what you have. You need to pull yourself together. This can’t go on.’

‘Please don’t do this. I’m really tightroping at the moment. I need you to keep me steady.’ Lee was knitting her hands in her lap.

Mouse could see that Philip and Maki, who were standing at the bar, had stopped talking and were watching them. He lowered his voice.

‘Your problem, you know, is that you have forged this identity for yourself around religion. Lee the sexy little party girl has been replaced by Lee the pious saint. But it’s not a good religion, not a real one. It’s based upon those hysterical women you are such an expert on.’

‘I’m going to go. . I’m leaving now.’

Mouse gripped her wrist and spoke in a violent whisper.

‘No you’re not, you’re going to sit here and listen to me. What you believe is a heavily mediated, crackpot version of religion. Two hours, two short hours is all we have of Jesus, if you read out everything that he actually says in the Bible. Our entire religion is founded on those two hours. Your problem is that you concentrate too little on Christ’s words and too much on the hysterical writings of a bunch of madwomen.’

‘Some of their stuff is amazing. You’ve said so yourself.’ His hand still gripped her wrist painfully.

‘Some of it is beautiful poetry. I can see how it’s helpful alongside the real thing. But not as a replacement. I’ve met some girls in the Course over the years who seem to have based their belief on St Francis, St Augustine. Both heavily mediated versions of real faith. But at least those saints were adepts, at least they were fully schooled in the doctrine, and could serve as reasonable proxies for Christ. Your women are just early incarnations of Christina Rossetti, wringing their hands and moaning and pretending it’s a religious experience rather than just frustrated sexuality and thwarted ambition. Hildegard, Catherine of Siena, Margery Kempe — hysteria and weeping were to them what sex was to the Wife of Bath. They won’t help you.’

‘But they do help me. They make a huge difference to me. And you didn’t mention Julian of Norwich. She’s no hysteric.’

‘Julian spent all her days locked in a cell meditating on Christ’s suffering on the cross, fixated on his wounds. This is exactly why you’re such a mess. You’ve put suffering and guilt at the very centre of your conception of faith. These women were writing about their religious feelings, but they were also conveying the very painful truth of what it was like to be a woman in fifteenth-century England. Don’t confuse the two. They’re leading you in completely the wrong direction. Faith should be a comfort, not an ordeal.’

‘They’re my role models, and I won’t have you talk about them like this. It’s fucking hard to say how I feel. When I’m right down in my slumps, I can’t find my own words to express it. And not only do the women mystics help me say how I feel, they rephrase my unhappiness as something positive. They make me feel that there might be something good the other side of all this pain.’ Her eyes were bright with angry tears.

Mouse let go of her wrist, a little ashamed.

‘Do you remember when those boys slapped me?’ Lee said, looking at him sharply.

Mouse did remember. They had been walking down the King’s Road on the way to the Course the previous summer when two gym-inflated bankers stumbled out of a pub and stood blocking the pavement ahead of them. The bankers had taken their suit jackets off and their ties hung loosely around thick necks. They were sweating and Mouse could see their muscular chests pressing wetly against shirt fabric. As Mouse and Lee passed, he heard one whisper to the other and then, so quickly that he could hardly register it, the banker had turned and slapped Lee hard on the arse. The two men stood, laughing, as Mouse and Lee continued up the road.

‘Just keep walking,’ Mouse had said, clutching Lee’s arm. ‘It’s not worth it.’ Shame and fear sent blood to his round cheeks and goggled his eyes. Lee’s mouth hung open and he could see her mind whirring. The bankers’ laughter still reached them through the warm summer air. Suddenly, her mouth set in a hard line, Lee had ripped her arm from Mouse’s grip, turned, and started running back down the road towards the bankers, rummaging through her handbag as she went. The one who had slapped her, his thinning hair gleaming in the early evening sunshine, looked bemused at the sight of the madly rushing girl, her blonde hair flying out behind her like smoke from the fire of her rage.

As she reached the banker, her pace unchecked, he half-raised his arms to fend her off, an uncertain smile on his lips. At the last minute before impact, Lee leapt into the air, at the same time drawing something out of her handbag with her right hand and plunging it into the banker’s neck. Mouse started running towards them, his heart thumping. The banker sat down heavily as Lee rolled away from him, picked herself up, and turned to look at Mouse, a triumphant grin stretched across her face. The second banker was bent over his friend, slowly drawing what Mouse could now see was a black and yellow Staedtler pencil out of the knot of muscle that ran between the banker’s neck and his shoulder. A thin plume of blood darkened his white collar. The two men, one crouching, twirling the pencil in his fingers, the other leaning back and breathing heavily, looked at Lee as she walked away from them, awe in their eyes.

‘Of course I remember,’ Mouse said, taking his signet ring off and spinning it on the table. ‘How could I forget?’

‘Well, when I was running towards them, all I could think of was Judith slaying Holofernes. How none of the men around her would protect her, and so she had to become a hero herself.’ She looked at him pointedly, and he felt again the shame of that evening when she had expected him to protect her and he had only felt how plump and childlike his body was next to those brawny bankers. ‘And while not all of the women I study are as physically heroic as Judith, they do show you how to act in the world. That enduring can be a heroic act in itself.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Mouse said. Lee hugged him towards her, her voice softer now.

‘I’ve got my demons at the moment. I need you to help me fight them. If the Retreat goes well, I’m sure it’ll pull me out of this slump. It has to. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’ll do.’

They finished their drinks, waved to Philip and Maki who were still talking at the bar, and walked out into the cold night. Mouse escorted her to her bicycle and then strolled home, up through Holland Park and past the tree-hushed squares of Notting Hill.

The boat rocked him slowly to sleep that night as he lay with the Retreat bright in his mind. He pictured Lee running laughing ahead of him, saw David standing above him and looking down with pride. There was a sudden stab of guilt as he recalled the massage earlier, but then he remembered standing in the church at the last Retreat and hearing the heavenly chanting of the Course members, the tongues and the tears and the happy loss of control. Mouse slept as the moon passed through the sky, its reflection crossing the water of the canal. The boat sighed as a breeze whipped up early in the morning and then dropped again, leaving the water very clear and still in the first brightness of dawn.