He sat in his idling car out front. Traffic, such as it was in Newbury on a weekday evening, ambled by behind him. He huffed, killed the engine and climbed out.

He walked to the church. As he stood before it and looked sky-ward he could barely see the top. He’d always resented the church and never understood why, but now he felt that maybe he’d always seen the building itself as a bully. He hated bullies in all their forms. Hated them as a kid, hated fighting them in a war, hated teaching them. They were the first to act stupid, the first to flee when things got hard.

And what had he been to his wife? He’d never hit her. He snorted. Like that was the mark of goodness––just not being an arsehole. The lack of something did not prove the opposite. He hadn’t been completely useless, but had he been good?

He shook himself free of the few leaves coating his jacket and walked inside. An older lady was standing in the lobby, fiddling with some pamphlets in a wooden rack. She turned and beheld him and did not look pleased.

‘Mr Moore.’

‘Mrs Bayleigh.’

‘You’ll be wanting Reverend Kelly?’ She didn’t return his smile. ‘He’s right through there. At the pulpit.’ She nodded towards the concertinaed glass doors.

‘Thought you’d be happier to see me back in church, Mrs Bayleigh,’ Vernon said as he peered through the frosted glass. There was a shadowy figure behind the pulpit who, by the grim look of him, might very well be a demon.

Mrs Bayleigh said, ‘Always rejoice when a man comes back to his faith.’

‘You don’t look like you’re rejoicing.’

This time she did smile. ‘Don’t have to like the man.’

She yanked back on the wooden handle and parted the doors. Bill Kelly, at the pulpit, smiled down at his friend but made no move to suggest he would leave his post. ‘Let me finish my thought here.’

‘You’re right, mate,’ Vernon said. He mosied down between the pews, studying the green carpet beneath his feet, the stained-glass windows, and he wandered over close to the one for the first time in his life. A quote was etched into the glass. In all their affliction, he was afflicted. Beneath that, the name of a bloke killed in action in France in 1918. 14th Battalion. Cyril Johnson. Sounded like a girl’s name. The glass itself bore Jesus in his gaunt whiteness in a garden surrounded by people, and some bloke’s ear was cut. There was a man near Jesus with a bloodied sword. Jesus’ hands out like he meant calm for the lot of them. Try as he might, Vernon couldn’t make the image and the words fit together. Or why they’d been selected to commemorate old Cyril.

‘You know, I never look at those,’ Kelly said. Vernon turned. He was still behind the pulpit, still leaning on his elbows.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Just writing in my journal.’