‘The Eldest Girls, of course.’ He pointed to the needled ground beneath them. ‘Look, they’ve left a trail to lure us.’

There were rose petals there, red and bruised, a scattering leading away from the wood.

‘Well, me,’ Michael clarified. ‘It’s men those girls are after.’

Ordinary Time: Autumn 2017

ORDINARY TIME: AUTUMN 2017

So, what were the Eldest Girls doing at the Sisters’ Stones?

This.

Britta held the book and called out the orders; she always liked to take the lead. Picture her: shoulders back, chin raised, thrusting the manual forward in one hand, looping the other arm casually across her waist. This was the stance she adopted when reading poetry aloud in class, as if she thought herself a holy orator, a female pope.

Or it was Anna who bent over the pages of that book, instilling the words with her trademark authority and reason, golden hair falling forward, shadows playing across her face. It wasn’t hard, since her tantrum in the Provisions Store, to imagine her in that dimmer light.

Or it was Jade-Marie. She could have been the one to read aloud, to call the shots, a bitten nail working its way along the words, her delivery stumbling, doused in amazement.

Whoever it was, they were in it together. One was as bad as the other.

They were united in their task, despite their disagreements about the right way to do things.

Should they loop around the Sisters’ Stones three times deosil or widdershins? they asked one another. Jade-Marie thought it unlucky to go against the way. Anna argued: how could it be? The world turns anti-clockwise and God created that.

His name came into their discussions often, never with a hint of shame.

‘It won’t matter,’ said Britta firmly. ‘It will work whichever way around, if our intentions are right.’

There was no shame in the saying of this either – the suggestion, the conviction, that what they were doing was right and good.

The circling done, they laid down knives, purposely crossed. They placed a stoppered bottle of water on the most westerly stone.

Another argument.

‘The wood is to the east, so that stone is the west.’

‘Wrong! The wood is south-west of here.’

‘No wonder you’re always getting us lost on the way back, Jade-Marie Ahearn. Do you even know your backside from your elbow?’

Nervous laughter, quickly fading out.