Otherwise he just sat with the cat on his lap his eyes gazing into the distance. The cat had turned up one day. She kept ambling around the steps and meowing. It was a small cat of no distinction. She didn’t care for me. It was bror she was after. She slept by his pillow and rested on his lap. As if she sensed something.

On the saturday he asked if I wanted to come with him to church. To church I asked.

Yes. Either the ordinary one or mother’s.

And I who thought you disliked the blackcoats. Godbotherers you called them.

That’s right. I don’t like them.

It had to be the ordinary one because the service started an hour later in that church. It had been snowing all night.

The minister was a new man. We went to sit close to the front. The congregation was quite large even though that sunday wasn’t a special holy day.

The first line of pews was full of children to be confirmed. Boys to the left and girls to the right. Unlike bror I had always liked going to church. Sacred phrases came to mind almost 280whatever happened to me. Mediated by mother’s embroideries words arrived in dreams. It was part of how I responded to the world around me.

My upbringing had hammered the language of the bible into me as well as its judgemental old testament division of the world into right and wrong. A place where fires burned and angels sang. I behaved badly towards people quite often but would suffer for it every time in one way or another. I knew that. It was the law of karma to use a worn expression. Law of cause and effect. It never failed to apply and that was a kind of reassurance.

Bror on the other hand had always had problems with religion. Especially the ministers of the church. The plastic trays as he called them. I think he was jealous because they had taken his mother away from him.

I glanced at bror. He had closed his eyes and clasped his hands tightly together.

What have you done I thought. It couldn’t be worse he thought back to me.

We believe in god the father almighty creator of heaven and earth.

The minister was about our age but looked older in his glasses and minister’s black coat. His voice was pleasing.

He went to address us from the pulpit. It was unusual. Ministers who wanted to be modern showed it by staying level with the congregation. Up there he was a bit above us and could look out over us. His eyes lingered for a moment on the third row from the front where two ginger redfaced twins sat studying the reading of the day.