One day in summer when I was sewing dresses for my doll, the door-bell rang. Nan went to answer it, came back very red in the face, with a funny smile; said there was a gentleman to see me. I went to the door and knew she was listening at the window.

The gentleman was stout with a dark suit and a brocade tie slashed by a pin. He was from ‘The Voice of Prophecy’ — it was he who had read my questions every week. But it was all wrong, for although his voice was American, it was not the voice; and his shoulders were so broad, his legs so thick. He was embarrassed, because he had been expecting an adult; I was embarrassed, because the Jesus image had been replaced by a real man with eyebrows that met in the middle, gold fillings in his teeth, hairs on his wrists, stiffer ones up his nose.

Once again I knew it was ruined; that I had been found out. I knew that I had cheated — I did not fit into the cosy mould I had erected so carefully. Once again the defences that guarded me from my worry had crumbled away.

I gazed at the tie-pin as he talked. I saw a black and white butterfly in a cobweb. I pushed a dead leaf under the mat with my toe. And then he shook my hand and gave me some papers from his briefcase. A signet-ring with a ruby cross sniggered, and he was gone. I went inside and threw the papers in the bin; hated my grandmother for making me see him alone. But she was unrepentant, and said that it would teach me.

It did.

I never listened to the voice again, and I ceased thinking of my Jesus father. I put Hannah Lee and Home Words and The Family Friend away. When Sunday came I called for Carol and we played dress-ups in the shed, had penny concerts, turned cartwheels on the lawn.

But I came to hate Sunday. The cartwheels and the concerts could not dispel the awful feeling inside me when I heard the church bells ring.

Twenty

TWENTY

I stared at the baby. Its skin was uniformly cream, there were no flushes on its cheeks — just a nose, the creases of eyes, a curved mouth. The baby looked as if it had been carved from soap or stitched in padded velvet. Then the creases opened and the creaminess was blemished by ugly smudges.

The baby was the brother of the girl who stole my oranges. I stood in her mother’s kitchen and smelt talcum powder and milk and napkins. I forgot the baby and felt miserable as I remembered Gymnasium. I counted the days that remained until I went again. I added the nights to make the time longer.