“There’ll be more Joans there than priests. He’ll be perfectly safe.” She stared at Petrovitch. “You realize that sanctuary was abolished in the seventeenth century.”

He shivered uncontrollably under her gaze and wrapped his arms around himself. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I thought you had a plan for everything,” she said, then added quietly: “You also said I’d never see you again.”

She took a step forward, and for the briefest of moments he thought she was going to enfold him in her own robes. The look of utter panic on both their faces forced them apart.

She whirled around on the pretense of searching for something. “Doesn’t take a genius to pack a raincoat.”

“I had planned to be at the airport. Then something happened, and I found I needed to hang around after all.”

She found an old two-bar electric fire and dragged it to the center of the room, frayed flex trailing behind it. “Needed to, or wanted to?” She crouched low down by the skirting board and forced the yellowed plug into a wall socket. The wires on the fire fizzed sparks and started to glow red.

“I can still go. Walk out, never come back.”

She straightened up, faced him down. “Why don’t you then? Why don’t you just go away and leave me alone?”

“Because I made a promise I have to keep. I made a vow: you know what that’s like, don’t you? A vow so terrible, so final, that it turns you from a human being into an expendable weapon. I’ve burned my bridges, cast my dice, crossed the Rubicon. Whatever metaphor you choose, that’s it.”

She took several deep breaths. “So what is it that you’re going to do? Die of pneumonia at someone?”

“Yeah. Thanks for that. It’d be nice if somebody took me seriously some time soon.” He peeled off his jacket and dumped it on the threadbare carpet, then tried to bend down to unlace his boots. His canvas trousers had become so stiff, and his fingers so weak, that he couldn’t make any impact on the rain-shrunk knots.

Sister Madeleine got to her knees and bent low, worrying at the laces until she’d loosened first one, then the other. She looked up, face framed by her veil. “Can you manage now?”

“I’ll cope.”

“There are some choir robes in that cupboard. Put on as many as you want. It’s not like we have a choir to offend.” She pointed, then strode to the vestry door. “Look, Petrovitch…”

“Sam. It’s Sam.”

She leaned her head against the door frame. “We can be grown-ups about this, right?”

“Yes,” he said, less convincingly than he’d hoped.

“Give me a shout when you’re ready and I’ll make some coffee.”

“We can’t make a start on the communion wine, then?”