That Friday morning, one by one, the people lying on the supermarket floor in their blankets were waking up. They stretched and yawned and blinked at each other, and in every face Season saw that moment of waking realisation – Oh, I’m not at home, in my own bed. I’m here, in this besieged community of fellow refugees. She also sensed a distinct a’I’mosphere of growing hostility between the people here, a resentment at being cooped up in awkward and embarrassing contact. Before the famine, most of the members of the church had been enthusiastic about Practical Miracles because the notion was innovative, fun, and always proved to be a conversation-stopper. ‘You actually believe in miracles?’ their dinner hostesses would say. ‘You can walk on water, that kind of thing?’ And they would answer, ‘Well, it’s been done before. No reason why it shouldn’t be done again.’ They hadn’t joined the church because they were passionate and like-minded believers. They’d joined it because it was fashionable, and cute, and now the shallowness of their Christianity was beginning to show. There had been fierce arguments on the morning bathroom line already, ‘Christ – you’ve taken hours – and now the whole john stinks!’ There had been wrangles over privacy, ‘Are you staring at my wife, buddy?’ And, inevitably, there had been petty jealousies over rations, ‘How come that guy has two tomatoes and we only have the one?’

Granger Hughes, however, was untouched by his followers’ materialistic squabbling. If anything, the siege in the supermarket had made him even more spiritual than before. That morning, as everybody awoke, he walked up and down the aisles in a white cotton kaftan, his hands extended, nodding to each of his disciples and blessing their day. As he came to the end of the one-time canned vegetable counter, where Season was sitting up against the wall, watching over Sally, he paused, and stood above her, with the sun gilding his hair like a California halo.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

‘As well as can be expected,’ answered Season. ‘This isn’t exactly the Beverly Hills Hotel.’

‘The Beverly Hills Hotel is a smoking ruin,’ said Granger. ‘It was raided on Thursday night, and two famous actresses were raped and tortured to death. So just be glad that this isn’t the Beverly Hills Hotel.’

‘What’s it like outside?’ asked Season.

‘The looters are still there, waiting for us to weaken. But we won’t weaken, of course. Mike Bull calculates that we have a good five months of food in here, and I can tell you that we’ll still be eating meat and fruit while those looters out there die of starvation and disease.’

Season looked up at him narrowly. ‘You still think we’re chosen, don’t you? You still think we deserve to live while those people out there all deserve to die.’