Joe stretched out alongside her, one arm supporting his head. He was aware of her next to him, of her short, plump body rising and falling as she breathed. He had an urge to reach over, stroke her, tell her it was all right, tell himself it was all right. He walked his fingers towards her and met her fingers as they crept towards him, and they lay, hand in hand. He had never been so happy.

‘I like you,’ she said. She had stopped calling him Father.

‘I like you too, well enough,’ he said. He wanted to say, I love you, thought that wouldn’t be right, him a priest, and maybe a sinner now, too.

‘Have you ever touched a woman?’

‘No,’ Joe said, added, ‘apart from my sisters and my mother.’

‘They don’t count,’ she said. ‘Has a woman ever touched you?’

‘No.’

He wanted her to touch him. He was on a helter-skelter, hurtling round and round.

‘Are you frightened?’

‘Yes,’ he said. That was an easy answer.

‘What is there to be frightened of?’

The jangle of his feelings, his tingling flesh. A woman.

‘You’re a good-looking man.’ She laughed. ‘Almost pretty.’

Joe shut his eyes. He’d never told a soul, never breathed a word of it, only to his daidí, that once, and never again. You’re a pretty boy, Joe.

‘Did I say something wrong?’ Trude said.

Joe shook his head. Dared not open his eyes. He was weeping, the moisture trickling down his cheek, his lips puckering like a little boy’s.

She was leaning over him. He could feel her warmth, the brush of her blouse. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What’s troubling you?’

Not even in confession had he said a word, bless me, Father, for I have sinned. A grievous sin, but he couldn’t name it, could only touch its carnal agony. He could feel a gathering force, as if Trude’s soft words had lanced the boil and the pus would erupt in an unstoppable flow. He should get up, leave, have nothing more to do with her, but the pain was too abrupt, too deep.

‘You can trust me,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’

He wasn’t sure he had the words, nor could face the disgrace. The mortification of it. Not to Trude, not to anyone. He’d done a wicked thing.

‘I don’t think I can tell you.’ It sat on his conscience, an abyss of misery, his personal hell. He had no right to burden Trude with the truth.

‘You can try,’ she said.

For her sake, he had to bear it. She was not a worldly woman, he could tell by the angelic purity of her face. It would destroy her. And wasn’t it his duty to protect her from such things?

‘What do the English say? A problem shared is a problem halved.’