Once she had sat down a woman seated in the front pew rose and walked to the altar. She was clearly moved even before she spoke. Perhaps it was the seriousness of the moment.

I’ve been thinking of that maria she began. Her voice was pleasant and free from the pathos of the clergy. We all know her as the mother of Jesus but still we don’t know much about her. There she was in Nazareth walking around with her big belly about to give birth any moment.

Ever since returning to smalånger I had been thinking about that maria too. The force of her presence had been such that the village is still reeling though she had been dead for some time. I had heard from angelika that the shop manager had been the last of the men she had picked up on the way. Mricander. That explained why bror misbehaved towards him. She had dumped bror for the grocer.

Get your head round that one angelika had said. An obese eightyyearold who is suddenly being courted by the village femme fatale. It was so weird I had to ask her why. Guess what her answer was.

No. Can’t. 304

She said she quite fancied the possibility that the fat icamanager would breathe his last under her body.

When I emerged from my thoughts the stand in for the minister was rounding off the story of the birth of jesus.

You can imagine can’t you how fearful and exposed she must have felt as she clomped about she said. With the baby due so soon. If the worst came to the worst they wouldn’t even have a roof over their heads. She was fourteen and knew nothing about giving birth. She must have been missing her mother once the contractions began to hit her. Joseph was doing his best to find somewhere to spend that night but he had to take her to an old byre where he bedded maria down in the straw. Their baby was born during the night when the stars were shining most brightly. Especially the star that had followed them all the way from nazareth.

It must have been sirius I thought.

Then we prayed and we sang and we prayed and we sang but I wasn’t thinking about maria and jesus. I was thinking about diana. Her serious face as she lay newly born in my arms and her sleeping face in the armchair in my hospital room. Her bright figure as it moved without haste through the crowd and her desperate expression as I left her behind in the cold car park.

I was thinking about my child and mourned a life passing me by as quickly as a moment spent with a neighbour who dropped in to borrow sugar. It could have been different. I looked across to john. He turned his head so quickly I didn’t have time to avert my eyes.