There was a parlour just five minutes’ walk from the house where I rented a room. I passed it on my way to the small high-street supermarket where products – cereals, rice, tea – were offered in endless flavours and brands, but all in tiny quantities designed to last just a week, not months. It was peculiar to hand over cash in return for these goods, my biscuit tin fund supporting me until I garnered the strength to work out how to extract money from my bank account. Stranger still was having my groceries run through the till by a woman who knew nothing about me, and sought no blessings from the blackness of my hair. I saw her eyes flicker upwards, though, when she thought I wasn’t looking, no doubt assuming that such an unusual colour must have come from a bottle.

To find a church, I had to walk several miles. The first one I came upon had the flintstone grandeur and spire of a religious building, but inside it was set out with tables where people drank wine and ate steak. Further afield was the Church of Our Lady, whose services felt similar to those at home and so became a small comfort to me in this unfathomable, new world. I sat in the back pew, greeted the smiles that came my way and shook hands when it was time to pass peace amongst us, but I stayed seated for the Eucharist, unsure if the baptism of my previous life held good there.

My teaching qualification, I had decided without any investigation, was worthless, nothing but a piece of decorated paper.

The night before Pentecost, as I ate dinner alone in the small shared kitchen, a strong breeze blew the window from its prop, making it bang against the outside wall. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. I should have been fasting that evening, so rightly deserved no such sign, but still I took it as one – a guiding spirit. I wore a bright red scarf on Sunday, sat three rows from the front and offered my tongue for the host.

In the choosing of a tattoo, I was more forthright. I leafed through books of designs as I drank tea made by a young woman with the kind of white-blonde hair that certainly came from a bottle. There was a bright stone in her nose and inkings climbed her neck, richer in detail and more vibrant in colour than the ones that marked Margaritte’s silvery skin.

I considered angels and eagles, lions and bulls, and the woman with the white hair suggested a mandala.

‘I could combine the elements of all those animals,’ she said. ‘They’re like your four selves. In the square structure of a mandala it will work really well.’