the crowd. The lady screaming was the one in the head scarf, the one who’d touched my hand yesterday. Even though it was unfair of her to look to me for answers, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d let her down. I went back to the microphone.
“What did you expect from me?” I was looking at her, talking directly to her, but the whole crowd fell quiet again. “If you want, I can tell you what you came here for.”
I paused, licked my lips.
“You’re dying.”
She clapped her hands to her mouth, eyes wide with shock. More gasps rippled through the church.
“And so is the guy next to you. And the one behind. And so am I. We’re all dying. Everyone in this church, and everyone outside. You don’t need me to tell you that. But there’s something else.”
At the back of the church, a door opened. A group of men came in — policemen in uniform.
“You’re all alive, too. Right now, today, you’re alive and kicking. You’ve been given another day. We all have.”
The men walked over to the end of the main aisle and started moving toward the front. There was one guy in the middle, way taller than the rest of them, ridiculously tall, in fact, with his head bobbing and nodding to a rhythm all its own. It couldn’t be. Could it? My heart stopped beating, I swear it did, but my mouth kept going.
“We know it’s all going to come to an end one day, but we shouldn’t let that weigh us down. We shouldn’t let it stop us from living.”
Spider had come to a halt now, about halfway down the church. He was just standing there, looking up at me, with that big, silly grin on his face. I was talking to him now, there was no one else in the abbey for me, only him.
“Especially if you’ve found someone who loves you — that’s the most important thing of all. If you’ve got that, then you should appreciate every damn second with them….”
He flung his arms up in the air then, and let out a great whoop. Other people started clapping.
I backed away from the microphone and stumbled down the steps. I didn’t care who was looking at me, how many lenses or cameras were trained on me. I ran toward him, through the clapping, cheering, confused crowd, my feet nearly slipping on the polished tiles. Spider hadn’t moved, he was clapping, too, and then holding his arms out wide. I launched myself at him and he gathered me in, swinging me up and around before holding me close. I wrapped my legs around him, clinging like a limpet.
“What’s going on, man?” he laughed into my hair. “I only left you for a few days and you’ve turned into a preacher! Here”—he bent his face down to mine —“come here, I’ve never kissed a vicar before.” And he kissed me, so tenderly, in front of everyone. “I missed you,” he breathed.
“I missed you, too,” I said back, and above us, way up in the bell tower, the rods and levers clunked into place and the great abbey bells started to chime the hour.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“You’re OK, are you?” I searched his eyes for any signs of illness. Nothing, just his number, ever present, unchanging.
“Yeah, bit tired. Can’t sleep in those cells.” He wiped his big hands over his face. “Kept thinking about you. Wondering where you were. I’d no idea you were holed up in a church.”
“It’s mad, isn’t it? I kept thinking about you, too. It was making me crazy, thinking about you shut up in a cell. But that’s it now. You’re out. Are they bringing the car here?”
He frowned.
“What you talking about? What car?”
“That was one of my conditions — they had to bring you and a car and some money, and then I’d talk. So we can carry on. Get to Weston. It’s less than thirty miles from here.”
“Nah, you’ve got that wrong. They haven’t finished with me — they haven’t charged me yet. They just brought me here for a few hours, must be the deal you had, and then they’re taking me back again. ’Xpect they’ll take you an’ all, too.”
“But they agreed — they signed an agreement! It’s all legal!”
“What you gonna do? Take them to court?” He shook his head. “You can’t trust anyone, Jem, you should know that. Except me, of course.”
“But they lied. Bastards! What are we gonna do now? How are we gonna get