‘Well you’d better go and …’

‘Yes.’

Pause.

‘Although I’m quite worried about you now,’ she sighs.

‘Don’t worry about me!’

(I’m very eager not to be worried about.)

‘I’m just worried that your resolve might finally be loosening, and at the worst, possible time …’

‘Don’t worry about me!’ I repeat.

(Although – to be perfectly frank – I’m slightly worried about me, now.)

‘Ah. Smoking candles,’ she says, enigmatically.

‘Sorry?’

‘That’s what she called the bad people. The sinful. Smoking candles. I always thought it was quite … quite lovely.’

‘Smoking candles,’ I repeat, remembering.

‘Your initial impulses were right,’ she commends me, ‘I really do think our Mr Huff might be a serious threat to little Orla’s legacy: a con-artist; a bad egg; a smoking candle. I’m only sorry that it’s taken me so long to realize – to follow your lead. Just remember that he’s extremely clever and subtle, Carla. So be very, very sure you don’t get … get … blinded – overpowered – by all the fumes. Promise me that. Please.’

‘Of course,’ I promise (who can deny sweet Alys anything?). ‘I’ll be very careful. Don’t worry. Not on my account.’

Having exacted her promise, Alys rushes off – slightly mollified – to rescue her supper.

I put down the receiver. I stand still for a moment, scowling, and then quite suddenly I open my mouth and I’m saying:

Holy Queen, Most Joyful Mother, we are sinful weeds in your fragrant garden. Please bind us in your gentle hands and offer us all in a daisy crown of love to your merciful Son, and to God the Father.

It’s come back to me! The prayer! Orla’s prayer. For sinners.

I say it again:

Holy Queen, Most Joyful Mother, we are sinful weeds in your fragrant garden. Please bind us in your gentle hands and offer us all in a daisy crown of love to your merciful Son, and to God the Father.

It’s as though I have been saying it all my life! The way it rolls off the tongue! It feels so … so good … so familiar! And I start to imagine … to wonder whether just saying it twice like that, quite casually, quite idly, might have saved a poor, lost soul – suspended somewhere, like a trapped butterfly – from immortal agony. But then I counter-wonder whether I even believe in souls. Or immortal agony. And then another part of me starts to argue that even the … even the slightest hope … the vaguest possibility that it might have … that it might be … that it might possess the tiniest bit of power to save someone – a lost someone – from unspeakable torment …

So I say it again. Then I say it again, emphatically. And the more I say it, the more readily it comes. And then I begin to wonder whether the soul I am saying it for is actually my own. I start thinking about my own soul. And I remember Orla telling me about how the soul is like a tiny, beautifully mirrored globe situated somewhere close to where the heart is, and that sometimes the mirrors are darkened, as if by smoke (The smoking candle! The smoking candle of sin! But of course. Of course …), and that each time you pray for your own soul – or, better still, for someone else’s – Jesus sends down an angel to shine one of the mirrors. But the stain of the smoke is very dense, very thick. So sometimes the angel needs to rub at the mirrors very hard so that they can … so they can truly shine, and clearly reflect back … reflect back all the … all the …