For the first time since he’d been a small boy forced to go to Sunday school by his mum, he went to the church on the manor, the one where he’d married Jill and where Charlie had married Nula, back in their old glory days. Somehow he needed to do this. He walked up the aisle, absorbing the peace of the vast place, his eyes fixed on the suffering Christ in the stained-glass windows behind the altar. Wondering why the hell he did it, he crossed himself and then slid into a pew and sat there, head bowed.

He thought of Charlie, dead, burned to ashes. His old friend. His mad, impulsive friend who’d been such a great laugh, such a ruddy fool, such a mate. As he remembered the helicopter crashing, his face screwed up in anguish. He should have stopped that happening somehow. Somehow. He’d lost his best friend in the whole world, but before that there had been other losses; too many. Little Col in that botched burglary. And Beezer, funny stupid Beezer in his poncy designer gear, who’d always made them laugh down the pub. Terry closed his eyes and tried to pray, but no words would come into his mind, nothing would come except his firm belief that this was an evil trade they were all involved in, and they were all damned to hell. God had punished Charlie and Nula for it and eventually God would punish him and his family for it, too.

God no. Please spare them. Spare Belle. Spare my wife. Take me. I know I’ve been bad. Just take me and be done with it.

‘My son?’

He looked up. A priest he didn’t know was standing there in a white dog collar and black cassock. Back in the day, the preacher here had been all hellfire and brimstone, but this one was new. Bulky and bald and with myopic blue eyes, there was a smile on his thin lips.

‘Are you all right?’ asked the priest.

‘I’m fine. Thank you, Father.’

‘If you need to talk . . .’ he started.

Terry started to shake his head. Then he said: ‘Would you hear my confession, Father?’

‘Of course,’ said the priest.

Then Terry thought of what he could say, what he dared say to this God-fearing man. ‘No. Maybe I won’t,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

The priest stood there looking down at Terry with gentle eyes. ‘It’s never too late to find God,’ he said.

Terry felt a tightness in his throat and for a moment he was afraid that he might actually start to cry.

‘Maybe He wouldn’t want to find me,’ he managed to say.

The priest smiled. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. God’s love is for everyone,’ he said, and walked on, up the aisle to the altar.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Jill over the phone later that same day.