Evi reached out and lifted her glass. She put it to her lips, then licked the moisture off them. The glass went back down.
‘With Harry?’ she said. ‘Harry the vicar?’
‘I know, I know.’ Gillian was almost chuckling. ‘I’m still not used to the vicar bit myself. But when he took that stupid dress thing off he didn’t look like a vicar at all. He was standing outside when I left and I just had a feeling he’d been waiting for me.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? I think he might be a bit shy. So I asked him if he wanted to come back to the flat for a coffee.’
Evi’s hand was on the glass again. ‘What did he say?’
‘Well, I was sure he was going to say yes but then some people came round the corner, so he said he had to make sure the church was locked up and he walked off up the hill. Course, I knew he wanted me to follow him so I waited a few minutes and then I went up too.’
‘Gillian …’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s just … vicars have a certain code of conduct.’
Blank look on Gillian’s face.
‘A certain way they have to behave,’ Evi tried again, ‘and inviting a young woman he hardly knows up to a church at night … well, it doesn’t feel too responsible to me. Are you sure that’s what he wanted?’
Gillian shrugged. ‘Men are men,’ she said. ‘He might wear a dog collar but he’s still got a prick in his pants.’
Evi picked up the glass again. It was empty.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Evi, when she trusted her voice again. ‘You probably think I’m prying. If you don’t feel ready to talk about this, that’s fine. Are you still sleeping well?’
‘You think a vicar wouldn’t be interested in someone like me?’ Gillian asked. The lines on her face seemed to have hardened. The lipstick she’d chosen looked too dark for her.
‘No, that’s not what I meant at all.’
‘So why did he kiss me?’
Evi took a deep breath. ‘Gillian, my only concern is whether you’re ready to get involved again. Emotionally, you’ve been very badly damaged.’
He’d kissed her?
The girl had shrunk into her chair again. She didn’t seem able to look at Evi any more.
‘Do you really like him?’ Evi asked softly.
Gillian nodded without looking up. ‘It sounds stupid,’ she said, speaking to the rug at her feet, ‘because I hardly know him, but it’s like I care about him. When I went in the church he was just sitting in the front pew. I went and sat down next to him and put my hand on his. He didn’t pull his away. He said he was sorry about what had happened, that it must have been dreadful for me, after what I’d been through.’
‘Sounds like it was pretty grim for everyone,’ said Evi. Ten minutes before the end of the session. A tiny amount of time in the greater scheme of things. And yet too long to carry a picture in her head of Harry and this girl, in a dimly lit church, holding hands.
‘It was like we had such a connection,’ Gillian was saying. ‘I felt I could say anything. So I asked him what I’d wanted to the first time I met him. How could God let bad things happen to innocent people, like Hayley? And almost to Millie. If He’s all powerful, the way people say, why do these things happen?’
And me, thought Evi. What part of the great plan made me a cripple? What part of the plan whisked Harry away from me just when … less than ten minutes to go.
‘What did he say?’ she asked.
‘He started quoting this prayer at me. He does that a lot, I’ve noticed. Incredible memory. Something about Jesus not having any hands or feet …’
‘No hands but ours,’ said Evi, after a moment.
‘That’s it. Do you know it?’
‘I was brought up a Catholic,’ said Evi. ‘That prayer was written by St Teresa in the sixteenth century. “Christ has no body now on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours.” It means that everything that happens here on earth – all the good things, all the bad things too – are down to us.’
‘Yes, that’s what Harry said,’ replied Gillian. ‘He said it’s up to us now. He said God had a great plan, he was sure of it, but that it was a plan in outline and that it was up