In the church I couldn’t really hear the hymns at all. Not properly. Christine was next to me on the front pew holding little Billy. He wriggled and squawked through the whole service, drowning everything out. Jimmy tried to stroke his cheek but there was nothing doing. When we stood up by the font it was worse. His face was bright red. Little legs kicking at the vicar. I nodded in all the right places. I made promises. There was something about Satan, about helping to cast out the devil. And when the vicar dripped the water on his forehead he was quiet for a blessed minute. He went still, his eyes wide in shock. He took a big breath and closed his eyes and the scream sounded worse than ever after the silence. All the saints in the stained glass windows covering their ears. We laughed when the final prayer was over. The relief. I slapped Jimmy on the back.

‘Nothing wrong with his lungs,’ the vicar said, filing out behind us down the aisle.

‘Your father,’ May’s mother says out of the blue, ‘what did he do in the war?’

I put my cup down on the table. ‘Never had a chance to do anything,’ I say, ‘he died when I was a baby.’

‘And was he a redhead too?’

I put my hand up to my hair, ‘my mother always liked to call it auburn.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with red hair,’ she says, ‘Nothing whatsoever. May’s father had hair the colour of a fox’s tail. It was so bright they used to say the criminals would see him coming in the dark. Not that that there was ever much call for chasing criminals round here.’ She points over to his photo. ‘Killed in forty-two. He was a stretcher-bearer. May will have told you?’

I nod but it’s all news to me. She’s never mentioned that he served in the war. Never talked about him much at all now I come to think of it. I look at her but she won’t meet my eye. I always thought the police was a reserved occupation.

‘Threw himself across an injured man when a shell came down. Greater love hath no man. Do you know where that’s from?’

I take a stab, ‘the Bible?’

‘John chapter five, verse thirteen. Greater love hath no man but this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. That’s the sort of thing that’ll get you straight in through the gates no matter what went on before.’