There is no such church. It was just something that Old Tom said a lot. Perhaps he had a whole liturgy of lost causes going on in his head. Perhaps he peopled it with a whole hierarchy of clergy. Who knows? Or perhaps it was just something he said to amuse himself. A little wry comment on his character.

“We shall call her Franny,” said Sina.

“Francesca,” said Old Tom, nodding. “It’s a noble name.”

“No,” said Sina. “Franny. Not short for anything. I can tell she’s going to be a serious, practical, and realistic person. I can feel it in my bones.”

Old Tom never argued with Sina’s bones.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything left of the baby stuff next door,” said Sina, pondering the smoking ruins.

After that Old Tom called an ambulance to take away the dead body. When the ambulance workers had done so, Old Tom and Sina, carrying me, walked over to look at the smoking ruins from enough angles to determine that there would indeed be no salvageable baby stuff.

As far as the adoption agency was concerned, the goods had been delivered. As far as the ambulance personnel were concerned, the body of the caseworker was now their problem. As far as Sina and Old Tom were concerned, any adoption agency so inept that they couldn’t keep track of their deliveries had had their chance with me. Now the fates had put me with them, and I was their problem.

“Tom, go into Victoria and buy diapers and baby furniture and bottles and formula and anything else that occurs to you. I will take Franny and show her the house.”

Sina showed me the first floor, with the parlor, the library, the kitchen, the dining and living rooms with their big fireplaces, the sun room, and the attached greenhouse, which is really Old Tom’s domain even though it is in the house, which is Sina’s domain. Then up to the second floor, with the four bedrooms. Two of those face the south and the sea. They belong to Sina and Old Tom.

Although they are married, you would be forgiven for thinking they were distant cousins or something because they are both in their own little worlds most of the time and Old Tom is a foot shorter than Sina, which seems strange in a husband/wife situation somehow. I mean, you can’t choose the height of other people. But you’d think people sizing up prospective spouses would, in the back of their minds, be looking for someone nearer their own height if only to make kissing more convenient. Or, at most, having the man taller by a foot than the woman. I believe it’s really very unusual the other way around. But Sina is rather tall for a woman and Old Tom is a bit on the short side for a man, although neither is freakishly so. In addition, Sina is all caught up in her sculpting and Old Tom in his gardens, and when they sit across from each other at the little kitchen table, both just having happened to find themselves there in the late afternoon for a cup of tea, they often hardly seem to notice each other. I have come across them contemplatively eating biscuits and staring moodily out the window to the sea, and if I say hello they turn to me and answer, “Hello, Franny,” and then seem to suddenly notice each other and jump. I’m used to it but other people might find it odd, is all I’m saying.