Girl A(58)

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you. I’ll come home.’

When she had gone, I saw myself in the mirror, smiling. It was the thought of her, back in the country. In the passenger seat. A stay in Hollowfield, she had said. It isn’t exactly the road trip we had planned. I watched the train arrive, pause, depart. There was nobody around to board it. Without Gabriel’s signature, the exercise would be redundant. The house would be sold, in ruins, or pilfered by the moor which surrounded it. I started the engine and turned the car around.

The Lifehouse was finished the summer before I started secondary school. For two weeks, Father patrolled the high street, handing out leaflets advertising the grand opening and talking to anyone who would listen about the love of God. At night, he walked the residential streets, posting flyers. He had, he said, left piles of them hidden in the pews of other churches in town, hoping that members of the congregation would sense that God was directing them elsewhere. On the eve of the opening, he instructed us to wear our red T-shirts from the holiday to Blackpool. Mine was embarrassingly tight at the chest and Ethan’s tore at his shoulders. When we congregated in the kitchen, Father surveyed us with disgust. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. We were permitted to wear something white and modest, instead.

Jolly travelled from Blackpool. Evie cut chains of paper angels to string in the windows. Mother descended from her bedroom and baked late into the night. It had been a long time since she was pregnant, and Father had prescribed rest, with a doctor’s certainty. When she emerged, she looked white and lumpen, like part of the bedding.

Before I went to sleep, I wandered to the kitchen and offered to help her. She was surrounded by sponge cakes, whipping cream, her eyes fixed on the spoon in the bowl. ‘Aren’t you too clever for this kind of thing?’ she said, but she didn’t refuse. The kitchen bulbs were bright; still uncovered. I could see the psoriasis at her elbows and throat. As soon as I took the bowl, she folded herself away from me and gripped at her sleeves.

‘Is there anything else to do?’ I said. ‘After this?’

‘The other one needs icing.’

‘Leave it for Evie. I’d probably destroy it.’

Our reflections hovered in the kitchen window, expressionless and close.

‘The new school,’ she said. ‘What’s it like?’

‘It’s OK. We did a lot of the stuff already, at Jasper Street. Or else Ethan told me it.’

‘Are you still at the top?’

I glanced up. She was turned away, picking at baking paper. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Probably.’

‘Make sure of it.’

I spread the cream onto the sponge, and Mother manoeuvred a second one on top of it. She took her hands away tentatively, trembling, and covered her eyes. ‘Please, God, let this be a success,’ she said, and I realized that I had never heard her pray like that before – like God was in the kitchen.

We were at the Lifehouse at eight o’clock the next morning, carrying decorations and baked goods. I had visited the weekend before, to touch up the paint, and I had liked the new wood smell. I could see, tying balloons to the pulpit, that Father had created something simple and strangely beautiful from the husk of the shop. Light fell through the old glass windows and careened down the aisle. There was a neat wooden bar at the back of the room, where Mother had laid out the cakes.

The service was due to start at eleven (‘To ease them in,’ said Father), but with five minutes to go, nobody had arrived. We had spread ourselves out, tactically, across the first two rows. Ethan turned around every few seconds to check the door; after a time he stood, straightened his shirt, and joined Father outside. I could hear snippets of their conversations with passers-by, some of them gentle and some of them scoffing. Two teenage girls slipped in, giggling, and took a handful of Mother’s flapjacks each. They sat on the back row, close to the door. A pensioner joined them, and one of the drunks from the pub across the road. Somehow, this meagre crowd – witnesses to Father’s embarrassment – was worse than no crowd at all.

At quarter past eleven, Father stepped up to the makeshift pulpit and cleared his throat. He had never needed a microphone. I heard Ethan slide into the pew beside me, but I didn’t look at him; when Father caught our eyes, I knew that it would be important for him to see that he had our absolute attention. ‘Welcome to the Lifehouse,’ he said.

Late that night, when I couldn’t sleep, I heard somebody in the kitchen. I untangled my body from the sheets and walked down the hallway and the stairs, knowing them now, stretching my feet to the quieter floorboards. I hoped that it would be Ethan, that we would be able to discuss the day. Downstairs, I stood in the darkness and watched Father at the kitchen table. He held the liquor in one hand; with the other he gestured, his lips moving but no sound coming out. The final sad sermon of the day. I thought for a long time about joining him. I still think of it now. I have selected the exact verses that might have offered him comfort. Instead, I made my way back to the bedroom. That night, eleven and confused, I didn’t yet know what to say.

The palace was orange and pink beneath the evening sky. This time, I didn’t park between the lines, or speak with the receptionist, or wait to be summoned. I arrived at Gabriel’s room out of breath, with a nurse at my heels.

‘There’ll be something for addiction,’ I said. ‘At the community centre. It’ll be a condition of the proposal.’