He’d spotted a plover on the dunes that morning, lying there with a broken wing. It flew away as Joe got close. ‘Fibber,’ Joe had called after it. ‘You’ll do that once too often.’

‘Well, if you’re really sure,’ Father Murphy said, handing his glass to his father, Pat, and pointing two fingers to indicate the level, ‘I’ll ask at St Xavier’s to see if they can take you on. Just to get your Latin up to scratch and give you a decent education, ready for the seminary.’

What nobody told him was that the souls of the faithful departed weren’t ones for company, that a priest was second only to God, and that was the loneliest place in the world. Living like a stylite. No one thought a priest was flesh and blood, had needs like any other man.

‘Who knows what the deceased might have been, had she lived longer?’ Joe paused. This borrowed surplice was too big for him and the sleeves snagged on the pulpit. His voice echoed round the empty church, sounded on the sole mourner in the front pew. ‘Or what her unborn child might have become?’

The deceased woman’s father leant forward, his frame shuddering. Geoffrey, Joe reminded himself, his name was Geoffrey. The deceased was called Margaret. He’d never met her and had only just met Geoffrey. ‘It’s short notice,’ the parish priest had said, ‘but can you do the funeral?’ Curate to the convent, locum to the island, Joe sometimes didn’t know whether he was coming or going.

‘But God has a design for us all,’ he went on.

Geoffrey howled, an anguished, animal cry of pain.

‘And He tests our faith from time to time.’ Joe was about to say, in this vale of tears, but stopped himself. He’d picked up the words from a book of eulogies, empty phrases that had no link with the living. Why go on? The man was in agony, and this made it worse.

There were times Joe thought his priesthood was a coat to grow into, like one of Pat Junior’s hand-me-downs. Deep inside, he knew he wasn’t up to the job, that despite his mother’s private intentions read out at Sunday mass, he didn’t have a real vocation. But what could he do? He couldn’t back out now. People looked to him for help. He was a fraud, if truth be told. A mountebank for wounded souls. A pardoner who peddled hope. What succour could he offer a sinner?

The church door swung open and a nurse walked in. The door slammed behind her and Geoffrey started in his pew, looked over his shoulder. Joe beckoned her to come forward, but she shook her head, sat at the back. Perhaps she was seeking sanctuary, Joe thought, had stumbled into the funeral by chance.