The Power(34)

‘Bloody hell, no one knows what I mean. Not that I’ve talked about it with loads of people. Anyway, that: useful to be able to tell the blokes, right? Useful to work together.’

Allie flattens her lips. ‘I see it a bit differently, you know.’

‘Yeah, mate, I know you do, I’ve seen your stuff.’

‘I think there’s going to be a great battle between light and darkness. And your destiny is to fight on our side. I think you will be mightiest in the mightiest.’

Roxy laughs and chucks a pebble into the sea. ‘I always fancied having a destiny,’ she says. ‘Look, can we go somewhere? Yours, or somewhere? It’s bloody freezing out here.’

They let her come to Terry’s funeral; it was a bit like Christmas. There was aunties and uncles, and booze and bridge rolls and hard-boiled eggs. There was people putting an arm round her and telling her she’s a good girl. And Ricky gave her some stuff before they set off, and he took some himself and went, ‘Just to take the edge off.’ So it felt like snow was falling. Like it was cold and high up. Just like Christmas.

At the grounds, Barbara, Terry’s mum, went to throw a trowel of dirt on to the coffin. When the earth hit the wood she made a long, wailing cry. There was a car parked and blokes with long-lens cameras taking pictures. Ricky and some of his mates scared them off.

When they came back, Bernie said, ‘Paps?’

And Ricky said, ‘Could be police. Working with.’

Roxy’s in a bit of trouble over this, probably.

They were all right to her at the reception. But at the grounds none of the mourners knew where to put their faces when she walked past.

At the convent, supper is already being served when Allie and Roxy arrive. There’s a place saved for them at the head of the table, and there’s chatter and the smell of good warm food. It’s a stew with clams and mussels and potatoes and corn. There’s crusty bread and apples. Roxy has a feeling she can’t quite name, can’t really place. It makes her a little bit soft inside, a bit teary. One of the girls finds her a change of clothes: a warm knitted jumper and a pair of sweatpants all worn and cosy from being washed so often, and that’s just how she feels, too. The girls all want to chat to her – they’ve never heard an accent like hers and they make her say ‘water’ and ‘banana’. There’s so much talking. Roxy always thought she was a bit of a blabbermouth, but this is something else.

After supper, Mother Eve gives a little lesson in the Scripture. They’re finding Scripture that works for them, rewriting the bits that don’t. Mother Eve speaks on the story of the Book of Ruth. She reads out the passage where Ruth tells her mother-in-law, her friend, ‘Don’t tell me to leave you. Whither thou goest, I shall go. Your people shall be my people. Your God will be my God.’

Mother Eve is easy amongst these women, in a way Roxy finds difficult. She’s not used to the company of girls; it’s been boys in Bernie’s family and boys in Bernie’s gang, and her mum was always more of a man’s woman and the girls at school never treated Roxy nice. Mother Eve’s not awkward like Roxy here. She holds the hands of two of the girls sitting next to her and speaks softly and with humour.

She says, ‘That story about Ruth, that’s the most beautiful story of friendship in the whole of the Bible. No one was ever more faithful than Ruth, no one ever expressed the bonds of friendship better.’ There are tears in her eyes as she speaks, and the girls around the table are already moved. ‘It’s not for us to worry about the men,’ she says. ‘Let them please themselves, as they always have. If they want to war with each other and to wander, let them go. We have each other. Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people, my sisters.’

And they say, ‘Amen.’

Upstairs, they’ve made a bed up for Roxy. It’s just a little room; a single bed with a hand-stitched quilt across it, a table and chair, a view of the ocean. She wants to weep when they open the door, but she doesn’t show it. She remembers, quite suddenly, as she sits on the bed and feels the coverlet under her hand, a night when her dad brought her back to his house, the house he lived in with Barbara and with Roxy’s brothers. It was late at night and her mum was ill with vomiting, and she’d called Bernie to pick up Roxy and he’d come. She was in her pyjamas, she can’t have been more than five or six. She remembers Barbara saying, ‘Well, she can’t stay here,’ and Bernie going, ‘For fuck’s sake, just put her in the guest room,’ and Barbara crossing her arms across her bosom and going, ‘I told you, she’s not staying here. Send her to your brother’s if you have to.’ It was raining that night and her dad carried her back out to the car, the drops falling past the hood of her dressing gown to fall on her chest.

There’s someone expecting Roxy this evening, sort of. Someone who’ll catch it in the neck if they’ve lost her, anyway. But she’s sixteen, and one text will sort that out.

Mother Eve closes the door, so it’s just the two of them in the little room. She sits on the chair and says, ‘You can stay as long as you like.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got a good feeling about you.’

Roxy laughs. ‘Would you have a good feeling about me if I was a boy?’

‘But you’re not a boy.’