Why? She wasn’t religious. She didn’t give much thought to Christianity once she stepped outside the church and went about her daily life. If she did, she would typically question the foundational tenets of faith, not confirm them. Sometimes she thought it was the idea of salvation that moved her. She didn’t feel saved, exactly, but the older she got, the more she felt the terrible weight of all the hundred faults and mistakes—sins, let’s call them—she was liable to commit in a given week, and it nearly broke her with gratitude just to imagine, for an instant, that somebody knew them all and forgave her for them.

On this particular Sunday, however, Iris suffered from too much champagne and too little sleep the night before. Drag herself to church? Not on your life. Her sins could wait until next week, when they’d be properly ripened.

But Sasha insisted.

“Are you nuts?” she said. “You must’ve drunk half the gin in London last night, you and your pals. You look like death.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean you’re hungover, that’s all. You need aspirin and coffee, not God. Anyway, it’s almost nine thirty, and you haven’t even shaved yet.”

He threw down his napkin and rose from the table. “I’ll shave now. Have the boys ready in twenty minutes.”

“Oh, but Sasha—”

“We’re going, all right? That’s all there is to it.”

She watched him storm out of the kitchen and turned to Jack, who sat awestruck in his chair, nibbling a toast soldier while his brother studiously flipped the page of his magazine and dragged his cocoa cup to his mouth.

“And for this I married an atheist,” she said.

WHILE SASHA BANGED AROUND in the bathroom, Iris put on her lilac Sunday dress and forced Kip and Jack into their navy sailor suits, neatly pressed. They left the building at nine fifty-four, leaving just enough time to hurry around the corner under the shelter of an umbrella for the ten o’clock rites at St. Barnabas, the second and longer service of the morning. Privately she thought Sasha was more suited to St. Mary Abbots up Kensington High Street, which was larger and grander and more High Church than low, lots of ceremony and incantation and that kind of thing, but he seemed to prefer the convenience of a smaller neighborhood church.