When Ruthy first turned up at the Waterfords’ door, she said Mrs Waterford wouldn’t let her inside. She pushed her back on to the porch and asked what she wanted with Lincoln. Ruthy said she thinks she is quite a good mother and was probably worried we would blame her for what happened, but Ruthy told her straight away we didn’t, and that we were very glad Caleb had a terrific friend like Lincoln who really tried to help, and that something would have happened anyway because Caleb was trying hard to rescue Dad. Mrs Waterford stepped towards Ruthy, grabbed her in the tightest hug in the world, and cried and cried. They let her in to see Lincoln, who also seemed wary for a few minutes, and who then also cried and cried and said how sorry he was. He was eager to talk and Ruthy took lots of notes so she could share the story with me.

So from what we can piece together, Caleb had consulted Lincoln Waterford daily about how to stop Dad from being sacrificed. Lincoln had asked his mum, his dad, an old priest and a couple of nuns whether there was anything that could have been done to stop Jesus from being nailed to the cross, but apparently they had said no, he had to sacrifice himself to save the world. This didn’t seem fair to me, because I’m not convinced he was really given a choice, even though at our church they said he was. I think this is a bit like saying Daniel had a choice at seventeen about whether he had to be sent to New South Wales, or whether he could be a lawyer when he left school, but when you are brought up to hear the same thing year after year, and told to obey your parents, in my opinion it’s pretty hard to pick something you know everyone will be upset about, so I think Jesus, just like Daniel, didn’t really have an option.

Lincoln tried to cheer Caleb up by pointing out that our dad wasn’t, as far as he could tell, the Son of God or part of the Holy Trinity, whatever that was, and therefore he couldn’t be expected to die for everybody. Caleb sent him back to the Catholic experts with this question, which I thought was a good one: ‘He may not be the Son of God, but could he be another Son of God?’ Apparently the answer was something along the lines of ‘don’t be ridiculous’, so the boys crossed that off the list of concerns. As a result, in Lincoln’s opinion, if they could find a suitable alternative sacrifice, Dad should be okay.

Caleb was much cheered by this advice, but had no clues as to what the alternative sacrifice might be. Caleb remembered that someone or other had sacrificed a sheep, but they felt this would be too cruel and they weren’t sure where they’d get one. Lincoln thought Sampson had cut off his hair as a sacrifice, but Caleb said no, some girl cut if off when he was asleep. What they did agree on was there seemed to be a lot of stuff about burnt offerings, so they were settled on fire as part of the deal.