The end of the world would be good, maybe. Everything would end at once, and it would be clear. The dinosaurs died because a meteorite collided with the Earth and everything went dark with ash. I like that image. A thick carpet of ash falls softly over the globe like Auntie Annu’s wool, and everyone dies. At some point, later, when the soil is being dug up, the thick, grey carpet will be found inside the earth. It will be everywhere, evenly, in every country. And inside, asleep, will be dinosaurs, animals, trees and all the grassy fields of the Earth.

If the end of the world doesn’t work out, there’s always an alternative: Paradise. Auntie Annu said she heard Paradise will only come if all the people in the world are without sin for one moment. One moment would be enough, but it would have to be the same moment for everyone. A world without sin for one small, shared moment, and Paradise will pop out. A trumpet will sound, angels will swoosh and the world will end.

I’m not sure about Paradise. I don’t trust angels.

Sometimes, in the manor house, I used to lie in my metal bed and imagine ways of getting Paradise started. If everyone could be made to sleep at the same time, it might work, because you can’t sin when you’re asleep, even if you’re having a nightmare.

Or maybe it could be announced on TV, on the news, and in the papers: tomorrow at eight o’clock everyone has to be absolutely still for one minute and not do or think anything bad. I wondered how the information could be got to every person, even those who didn’t watch TV or read the papers. If you started spreading the word early enough, would absolutely everyone get to hear about it? What about people living in a jungle or criminals in prison or people whose language no one else spoke? What if someone didn’t want to be without sin at that very moment? Could you force them? Those were the sorts of things I was thinking until my grey cells got all knotted up and I fell asleep.

If there’s no ending, there’s no story. Jesus knew that when he organized Easter. That’s why you can’t bypass the end of the world. And that’s precisely why the ministers at the Easter service got on my nerves when I was little: they really knew how to ruin a good story.

Maybe not everyone wants Paradise. Maybe most people don’t want any kind of ending because they’re afraid of death. And that’s why Paradise doesn’t come, and things just happen.