And the lovely young woman got to her feet, her gaze zigzagging over us. I was sat close and could see the milky cloudiness in her eyes. She was blind all right and began to tap a white cane over the floor as she made her way, as though practised, towards the artist’s easel, taking up her place by it like a sightless sentinel.

Mrs Gillyflower turned her face away from her daughter and back to us. ‘And what, my friends, is your story? Will you be found wanting when the End of Days is come? When judgement rains down upon us all? Or will you be preserved against the coming Apocalypse?’

There were groans from the crowd, tears even, and one geezer looked like he was about to be struck down by the Almighty Himself as he shook his head back and forth.

Mrs Gillyflower held up her hand. ‘Do not despair! I offer a way out! There is a different path!’ She paused – and smiled. ‘Sweetville!’

The congregation murmured with excitement. This was the stuff! This what they’d come from far and wide – from Skelmanthorpe to West Bretton – to hear about. As if on cue, Mrs Gillyflower’s daughter reached out a delicate, gloved hand and groped for the cloth that covered the easel, pulling it back and revealing a picture. It was like something you might see in a Sunday school book. A sort of ideal place. There was a factory and a bandstand and neat rows of the prettiest little cottages you ever saw. And milling around it in their Sunday best – all toppers and bonnets and kiddies with hoops – happy, smiling workers.

‘Sweetville!’ repeated Mrs Gillyflower. ‘New housing! New schools! Order. Discipline. Could you be one of our Pilgrims? Are you clean of mind, limb and conscience? What do you say to it, my friends? Is it not comely? Is it not perfection itself?’

The congregation were agog now, some even on their feet. Almost as one they chanted: ‘Yes! Yes! YES!’

‘Then join us!’ yelled Mrs Gillyflower. ‘Join us in our shining city on the hill!’