The setting of a curfew in the midst of Advent was no way to prepare for a cheerful Christmas.

All had been well on the last Sunday. Three candles were lit on the wreath by a youngster of the congregation, Victoria Totten from the juniors being chosen for the task. Everyone in the congregation congratulated the girl on how confidently she had held the taper – less a compliment and more a reference to the previous year when Sapphira Dean had fallen to weeping, spooked by the way the flame crept closer to her hand and the wax dripped hot down her wrist.

Father Daniel wore brand-new vestments, beetroot-dyed and French-seamed by Martha Signal, with holly and ivy embroidery added afterwards by the handful of older ladies of the nursing home. The robes were a deep pink for the bringing in of joy, and Father Daniel’s reading spoke of a radiance in the dark, of how John had borne witness to the light so all men, through him, might come to believe.

‘John was not that light,’ Father Daniel told the gathered, the words accorded the emphasis of a tiny printed clause in an otherwise straightforward contract, ‘but was sent to bear witness of that Light.’

This talk of ‘witnesses’ should have resonated with the Eldest Girls as they sat together in a pew, their white Sunday-best crisply ironed beneath their coats.

They themselves had been witnessed.

They had been seen moving away from the light and closer to the dark. They had been observed going naked in this descent. Photographic proof existed, according to whispers. Pictures had been taken for the purposes of confirmation and the administration of justice. (For what other purposes could there be?) Though it was not known who had pointed the camera, and who now held the images; these were details only the prurient would request.

The girls kept any shame they felt well concealed. They lifted their voices uncharacteristically high for the hymn ‘Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus’, and during the second verse, as if taking their lead from Barbara Stanney’s organ flourishes, they slipped spontaneously into beautiful counter-melodies, smothering Diana Crane’s routine efforts to mark herself out.

‘A perfect three-part harmony, it was,’ Hope Ainsley remarked at the post-service gathering in the nave.

‘It was, in fact, a four-part harmony,’ Miriam Calder cut in, sipping delicately at her tea. ‘Rather like it is with the four gospels.’ There was a glance here to Father Daniel for his approval of the analogy. ‘The gospels are like harmonies colliding to provide us with one complete and uninterrupted meaning.’

Hope’s voice came back sharply. ‘How it can it have been a four-part harmony, Miriam, when there’s only three of them?’

‘Oh, did you not realise?’ Miriam smiled sympathetically at the Lark hairdresser. ‘The red-haired girl was joining in at the back. I could make her out clearly, but perhaps I just have an ear for these things.’