“I sincerely hope not,” said the headmaster with a frown.

Jean decided it was pain that made him humorless and chose to pity him.

She had taken an early train from Bromley South. The platform was crowded with children in uniform going on a school journey. Two teachers with clipboards were trying to marshal them into lines, while groups of boys kept drifting off to look at a steam engine on the opposite platform.

Jean put her bicycle in the guard’s van and chose a compartment near the front of the train. The only other occupant, a woman, glanced up from her book as the door opened and gave her a smile of relief, which Jean understood and returned. She chose a seat in the corner, diagonally opposite, to allow them both the maximum possible space. In her bag was her lunch, an Agatha Christie for the journey, her notebook, of course, and a swimsuit and towel in case there was time to go to the beach.

It was the part of the day she was most looking forward to; she was a good swimmer and in the sea she felt both strong and graceful, a sensation not replicated in the public baths at Beckenham with its chilly tiles and chlorine smell, or indeed on dry land. She had intended to read, but she hadn’t opened her book once, preferring instead to gaze out of the window as the dwindling suburbs gave way to the sun-baked fields of north Kent.

After a brief tour of the classrooms, the headmaster took Jean to his office to view St. Cecilia’s archive, which had lain undisturbed for nearly a decade. He unlocked a wooden cabinet and laid out various ledgers and a photograph album on his desk for her inspection. There were also some artifacts left behind in the move, which no one had ever bothered to reclaim—a kidney bowl, a bedpan, a selection of prayer cards, some leather finger cots and a set of calipers.

Jean picked up one of the prayer cards and read:

Let nothing disturb thee; nothing affright thee

All things are passing

God never changeth;

Patient endurance attaineth to all things;

Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting.

Alone God sufficeth.

ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA

“May I keep this?” she asked.

“You may take the lot,” the headmaster replied. “I’ve no use for them.”

“I suppose the nuns used to give them to the patients,” Jean said, turning the pages of the photograph album and stopping at a staff picture of a group of women standing on the gravel drive in front of the house.

Some were in nurses’ uniforms; some in nuns’ habits. They were smiling and squinting into the sun; some were even shielding their eyes with one hand, as though unused to posing for photographs.

“I don’t doubt it,” said the headmaster.

She wondered whether his distaste was for religion or just the Roman Catholic arm of it.

“Would it surprise you to discover that a miracle had taken place within these walls?” Jean asked him.