I feel for the postcard in my pocket and wonder what Lorna’s doing at this very moment. I can’t help myself. Pull it out and the corners are all dog-eared, the paper splitting and curling over. I know it off by heart. Thomas Gainsborough, Cornard Wood. Murky trees in oil paint. I can just see her in the shop at the National Gallery picking it out. Her writing on the back, tiny and perfect, taking up every inch of space so there is almost no room for the stamp. The gathering of trees, it says, the poplars; the durmast oak; the soft lime-tree; the virgin sweet bay; laurel; the hazel, frail; the ash tree used for spears and on and on. It could mean anything. There’s no return address. Just like her to try and be mysterious. Quoting obscure lines from her set texts to feel clever. Sending me coded messages when she knows I was never good at reading between the lines. Today it feels like she’s taking the piss. The sweeping silver-fir; pleasant plane-tree; the many-coloured maple; with the river-haunting willow. She laughed when I told her how scared I used to be of the yew trees in graveyards, how I imagined they were so dark because they soaked up evil spirits. And I always stepped around them when Nan took me to Church on Sunday mornings.

‘Did you really believe it?’ Lorna asked once, eager for details, like I was the last survivor of a dying tribe. And I just shrugged. I didn’t know how to explain. Mostly it was boring. In Sunday school we made collages, filled shoeboxes for children in Romania, acted out scenes from the Bible. But sometimes – and I could never predict when – I felt this thing – this prickling in my face, my spine. Some kind of gut-twisting hope. Sort of like the Yorkshire caving trip in the last year before high school – fear of the dripping dark, sandwiched between people, hoping the fat kid in front wouldn’t get stuck. Keeping the panic down by pretending you were a Power Ranger or Indiana Jones and breathing in the thick damp air. Not enough of it. Wondering what the hell it was all for, the sharp rock digging into your ribs, and then the first sniff of sky and light and the push forward.

Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these ye have done it verily, verily, verily, unto me. It has power, even when you hear it in that robot-vicar drone. A hot hand melting into you, into your body, moving things around, pushing. For a moment you want to jump up and do something. And then it goes and you forget. You’re glad you didn’t say anything embarrassing. You wonder whether you’re turning into some kind of religious nut job.