In the long silence that follows I look out through the open back door into the garden. The sunshine is very strong just now, shining hard on the path and the unkempt grass.

“I don’t want to be rounding people up like a sheepdog. If sheepdogs grip they get disqualified.”

Frobisher is puzzled. “What, pray, is gripping?”

“When the dog bites a sheep.”

He’s looking at me gravely, his head low. At close quarters I have no choice but to stare straight into his small penetrating eyes, behind which I sense the thorough and powerful workings of his brain.

“You’re not a sheepdog, Mr. Acton. You are a shepherd.” He snaps his briefcase shut and looks down. “Come now, little man. That is not your bed.”

Bailey is lying with his head on Frobisher’s right foot.

—

“Did you get a hundred lines?” Tom asks, when Frobisher is gone and we are driving to Waltham for food. “Or did Bailey melt his heart?”

“A mixture of both.” I tell Tom about the Mission part of my brief, Frobisher’s urgings.

“But you’re meant to round them up, aren’t you? You did at Fulbrook.”

And at Alver Shore before Fulbrook. But during the last few years at Fulbrook the gaps in pews were larger, the faces older. Upton is still well-attended but how much of that is due to novelty? How much longer can I supply the impressive energy that Clive, bless him, had talked about?

“Tom, if I tried to round you up, what would you do?”

“I’ve got no business in church, Dad, you know that. I don’t believe in God.”

“True.”

“I can’t help it. I just don’t.”

—

We park near the main square. Tom immediately spots a shop called Waltham Health Foods, a place I’ve never noticed, and heads for it, leaving me with his list. I cross the cobbles of the square, which on this brisk sunny day looks rather beautiful, the clean windows of the town hall catching the sunlight. In the supermarket I load my basket with milk, vegetables, and other sundries, and then make my way toward the frozen food section at the back. Tom has asked for haddock.

There, standing by one of the tall freezer cabinets, is Ellen.

She’s looking at herself in the glass door of the cabinet. As I watch she lifts her hands up to her hair, touches it where it is caught into a bun. She moves her head to one side, catches a stray lock between two fingers and makes a scissoring motion. She’s deciding whether to have it cut.

Oh, let her not cut her hair.