‘From the ghost of Orla?’ I was confused.

‘I can’t surrender,’ Miss Hahn murmured, rubbing distractedly at her cheek with the back of her fingers. ‘I saw what happened to that poor girl close at hand. Just being near her …’ She shuddered. ‘At the end. I saw how …’

She was silent for a while. I waited, nerves jangling.

‘Religion – faith, for Orla – was, is all about forcing yourself to do the things you don’t want to do,’ she finally continued, ‘for God. For souls. All about suffering, guilt, surrender. And I can’t. I can’t. Not more than I already have. I won’t. Because … Because it scares me. To obliterate the self, so joyously, the way she did. The way a child does. Can an adult do that? Should they? Because when will it ever end, Mr Huff? What are the boundaries? When does it ever stop?’

‘Are you … Are you suggesting … Are … Are …’

(Hold it together, Franklin!)

‘Are you saying that you think we may have common cause here, Miss Hahn?’ I stuttered, slightly breathless. ‘Because I’m not entirely sure …’

‘There was this passage from the Bible Orla always loved to quote.’ She smiled as she remembered. ‘Whenever her actions provoked any kind of an argument, she’d murmur, “Our Lord said, ‘Do you suppose that I came to give peace on Earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division.’”’

She slowly shook her head. ‘I always found that so … so confusing. I honestly used to believe – before, before Orla – that the New Testament was all about everybody just … just loving one another! Jesus suffering so that the rest of us didn’t really need to.’

‘Jesus as the Get Out Of Jail Free card!’ I panted, grinning, slightly ghoulishly.

‘The truth is that when God gives you something’ – she scowled – ‘it’s a kind of … a kind of … I suppose the word I’m thinking of is bribe, but it’s not quite so …’

I quietly watched her talking – struggling to amass her thoughts – in profile. She looked straight ahead of her. She seemed almost … almost compelled to speak. To explain. It was as though my abundant discomfort, my strange, pulsing anxiety (I was deafened – utterly deafened – by my own heartbeat!) had somehow released (untapped!) this little geyser of words from within her. But the more she spoke the more intense my claustrophobia grew. As if the very information I had craved all along was acting as some kind of … of tinder to my soul. It wasn’t quenching me, satisfying me, but rather setting me on fire. Lighting up my fear. But of … of what exactly?

‘“For everyone to whom much is given,”’ she finally quoted, ‘“from him much will be required: and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.”’

She turned and gazed at me, intently.

I was perplexed. Confused. Terrified. I slowly shook my head.