That night I dreamed again. Em and I were on the Ridgeway, hurrying along the track in broad daylight. She was two steps ahead and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t draw level with her.

“We’re not going to the manor, are we?”

She shook her head, half turning toward me so that I caught a glimpse of her face in profile.

“Where then?”

“You’ll see.” In her voice, I heard the smile I could not see.

But Em went ahead, her feet barely touching the earth, till she was ten steps in front, then a hundred, then a thousand. And no matter how I struggled I couldn’t keep up.

The day before I left, I found the vicar in his study among his books. Patricia was out. The years hung on him. There was talk of a bungalow. Always spare, his long limbs put in mind dry branches. I put a cup of tea down beside him and he looked up from the page.

“Are you leaving, Andy?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Ah. A holiday then?”

“To France, to see a friend.”

“We will miss you. Patricia and I are very fond of you.” He closed the book. Plato. He had always had a weakness for the ancient Greeks. Patricia had referred to them as his old pagans, as though they were a rabble of unshaven, rowdy pub drinkers.

“I never felt quite up to Patricia’s standards.”

“Well, that goes for all of us.” He picked up his book and then put it down again. What alcohol had been to my mother, books were to the vicar. Always the sense that even when he was with you, he was aching for them. He sighed and his eyes wandered away out over the lawn.

“It was a different time. Her family was very poor. Her brother died when he was five. Before the NHS and not enough money for the doctor. Always haunted by relatives who’d ended up in the poor house. Her mother wouldn’t let her visit the library, said it was above them. Class, the rubbish about class. Her family had nothing, but they were respectable. Even so, my family opposed us getting married. It’s so easy to love the past, as long as you don’t actually look at it. And so easy to regret it, of course. I do, Andy. There are things I regret, failures … I failed you and Peter, and I have known it for a very long time.”

My throat was very thick. I didn’t want him to think he had failed. This anxious, shy man, laboring over his sermons, greeting the children and adults at Harvest Festival with a great booming welcome, hands shaking, but why always God the Father, God the Son? Why not God the Mother, God the Daughter, why not marry the gays? I tried to say as much.