The second dream was worse. I think Caleb must have handed it on to me somehow. I was in a graveyard next to the shop from which we bought the fresh bread on Sundays. When I came out of the shop with the bread, I did the wrong thing and started to eat it because it was so soft and fragrant. I noticed Dad on a cross in a small graveyard next to the shop, and ran to him to try to get him down. He said he couldn’t get down because I had the bread of life in my hands and I’d picked a big hole in it, and because of that he’d have to die to save Caleb now. He said I’d never believed Caleb’s lungs were really bad, and if I hadn’t wanted a guinea pig so badly, none of this would have happened. He started to cry big drops of blood, and they splashed on the loaf of bread. He said, ‘Take, eat, this is my body. Take, drink. This is my blood,’ in his lovely tenor voice, and I walked back to the car with the bloody bread, but there was no one there. I just sat in the back by myself for a long time feeling like a giant stone was sitting in my heart until I woke up crying and scratching my scalp.

I did not know you could feel so bad. I thought Sixpence dying was the worst thing that could happen to me, but I was wrong. Losing Caleb meant I thought about Sixpence all the time again, every day. But at least I had been able to make her a bed and give her a kiss and say goodbye. At least she was in Mr Driver’s garden and I would be able to visit her every day when I got home. I didn’t know where Caleb was. I didn’t have a picture in my head about it. I kept trying to imagine what that place would look like. Would he have a nice tree overhead to keep him cool? Who was asleep next to him? Was it a nice person who would look after him at the resurrection until I could find him? I was pretty sure I was too naughty to be judged and given eternal life when Jesus came back, but if Jesus was at all kind, he would at least drag me out of the mud to check that Caleb had a friend and wasn’t too scared before he consigned me to everlasting death.

During the day I would sometimes think Caleb would turn up somewhere, laughing at us for being silly, and I would be able to run and hug him or perhaps give him tickle-death for giving us all such a scare. That would make me so happy for just a minute and then the happiness would burst like a big blister and all the hope would run out like blister water down my foot.