The connecting train was cancelled and I got stuck in Preston, the nearest city to home, though it only won its city status in the years after I had moved to London. It was an exotic, cultured place to me as a teenager. There was a university a few of my older friends commuted to. The novelty of seeing Asians in large numbers. A place to watch bands in the union. The nearest bookshop. Dickens called the place Coketown. A rainy, Catholic cotton town – which now always made me melancholic, though that was not its fault but mine, my mood always coloured by the fact of travelling towards or away from my town.

While I waited for the next train I wrote an email to Emily to ask if she would like to meet up when I got back to London.

*

Outside the wooden door I listened to the familiar rhythms of the prayers. The wind was up and the sky was washed-out cotton in all directions, so much of it, broken only by the church spire.

Opposite was the church hall, my classroom for a year in primary school, where I accomplished my greatest ever achievement, the completion of the Italia 90 sticker book. And here, inside the church, through the door I opened carefully, was the cold stone basin for the holy water. In the name of the father. The first third of the church was filled up; I couldn’t see past to the family on the front bench. And of the son. Who probably hadn’t been inside the building for twenty years, but had been stamped with the sacraments same as me. He lay in a dark-wood coffin under Christ on the cross in his golden robes. And the holy spirit. The incense from the censer the Nigerian priest was swinging on his punishment posting. The lemon wood polish. The stained-glass Peter and Andrew, the fishers of men. I put my knee to the floor. Amen.

None of the congregation noticed me come in, and I took a seat at the back, looking around to see if I could spot any old school friends, wondering what the girls I had fantasised about in school Masses now looked like. I could only see the back of people’s heads.

When the congregation stood to leave, I stood on my tiptoes, and there she was, her hand on Leia’s shoulder. Thank God. A miracle. It was Amy.

*

The wake was in the Cons club down the road. We began the walk in a group but as the conversation went on Amy’s friends strode ahead.

‘Seriously, where the fuck have you been?’

‘Thailand. We’ve just established that. I told you.’