Mamma was still watching, with dark, slightly suspicious eyes, as if there was a dangerous mystery to be worked out. She craned round. ‘Who do you keep looking at?’

‘No one.’ Matty sat up. ‘I’ve been to the library.’ Once.

‘Good.’ She sighed and lit another cigarette, and Matty imagined a director with an American accent behind a camera saying, Get the shadows on her face. OK, Rosa sweetheart, let’s do that again. Aaaand … action! ‘Good,’ she said again. ‘You should go there.’ She smoked differently to Dad, like she hated and loved it at the same time. Dad treated his cigarettes like a friend, protecting them, looking at them fondly, sometimes letting them speak for him.

The waitress came out and put a plate of baklava on their table. One looked like a Shredded Wheat, and one like a torpedo. Both drenched in honey. ‘Bak-lava,’ Dad had said once, with emphasis on the first syllable, sniggering, when Matty had said it wrong. He always ordered them. ‘You don’t cover your face in baklava when you’re robbing a bank. And you don’t eat a woollen face-mask. Not unless you’re starving.’ He’d laughed again and popped another one from their shared plate into his mouth.

‘We didn’t order these,’ Mamma said.

‘On the house,’ the waitress said, and winked at Matty as she turned away.

‘What was that all about?’ Mamma said, seeming cross. She gestured to the plate of almost-finished beans. ‘Finish that first.’

‘Mamma?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Do you believe in angels?’

Mamma’s glance was sharp. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Just wondered.’

She didn’t answer straightaway, gazing across the street. ‘Yes, there are angels.’ She tapped her cigarette against the edge of the ashtray. ‘But he is not one of them.’

***

‘The Lord be with you.’

‘And also with you.’ A little cross, made with the thumb. Forehead, lips, chest.

With its squat turrets, St Edward the Confessor looked more like a castle than a church from the outside, though knights would be able to storm the walls easily enough. St Edward was the son of Aethelred the Unready, which was a rubbish name to have. If you were a king, you should be able to give yourself a good name. Aethelred the Crucial. Aethelred the Wicked.

‘Lift up your hearts.’

‘We lift them up to the Lord.’

Until the last two weeks, Sunday mornings had always been the same, rain or shine, and even though it had always felt starched and dutiful, it was OK to be back. Everything always happened in the same order and the same words were always said. Nothing was unpredictable. I confess to Almighty God.