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you make it, Auntie Vicky?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What flavour?’
    ‘Raspberry.’
    ‘Alright,’ he says. And he gets himself up, comes out into the night garden.
    I follow him across the stepping stones. The back of his head is at once annoying and pitiful. He is so like Martin. And so different.
    Thoughts for the Day: Did Richard Burton ever have a beard? What are my gifts, other than cleaning?

Chapter Four: Monday January 31st
    New Year’s Eve. Time to look forward but I can’t help reverting to the gawky, awkward Vicky that lived in the house in Catford with Dad the gardener, mower of lawns
and planter of bulbs, pruner of hedges and mulcher of vegetable plots. And Mum, the housewife, the sidekick, the woman in whose eyes you sometimes glimpsed other lives. Other possibilities.
    Martin broke out from there, escaped to university to study some kind of science. Got a first. Then an MSc. A PhD. A lectureship. A fellowship. Got Claudia, social commentator, beauty, family
money, envy of every one of his peers. Ended up just a few miles from where he began. But what a few miles they are. Dulwich Village. Claudia finally persuaded him to move there when Jeremy was
little, and my brother is in his element, despite his whining. He loves being surrounded by wealth. It reminds him how far he has come from our humble beginnings.
    And me? I’m a few miles in the other direction, standing at my kitchen sink peeling carrots to be sliced into crudités to dunk into dips for a few friends (not parishioners) that
we’ve asked round for drinks, seeing as Steve’s not doing the midnight mass. That duty’s down to Desmond, the vicar, the one with the superior vestments – usually spattered
with grease stains.
    Tonight is to be shared with our old mates. Friends from school, the plumbing days. Neighbours. This past year has been mad what with Steve’s new career and Imo. Steve thought it would be
a good chance to catch up, to let them see he’s not become some kind of weirdo. Not that Steve’s an embarrassing Christian. He doesn’t have Jesus Loves Me car stickers or wear
socks and sandals. But he has changed from the man he was. He’s still Steve but he’s got something extra. And it’s more than the conscience that makes him fork out for The Big
Issue . It’s more than the dog collar or the ‘Revd’ that’s transformed him from plain old ‘Mr’. It’s something inside that’s changed.
    It’s called the Holy Spirit, Vicky , Desmond’s wife, Amanda, informed me.
    Amanda is a proper vicar’s wife. She’ll be in church tonight with Desmond, sitting enraptured in the front pew while her husband appeals to the congregation to turn over a new leaf
in the coming year.
    Amanda has an open house, a very nice vicarage in a tree-lined street with a large garden that doesn’t back onto the railway. There’s a constant pilgrimage of waifs and strays
passing through, eating her enormous beefy stews and hunks of granary bread.
    Amanda gave Desmond four sons who are all worthy men, settled down with worthy wives in Greater London and the Home Counties and every few months a new grandchild is paraded in St Hilda’s
to the delight of the congregation. Their photographs fill the vicarage with cherubic baby faces on every shelf, every surface. Which at least has the advantage of hiding the dust.
    The Lord doesn’t love me for my cleaning, Vicky.
    Just as well.
    Amanda escorts Desmond everywhere, making sure he is never alone with a single woman. For his protection, not theirs.
    We learnt our lesson early on, Victoria. When Desmond was a curate in Plymouth, women were always falling for him. There was one particular woman who thought Desmond was so in love with her
that he would actually leave me and the boys and run off with her into the sunset. She was very convincing, had the vicar doubting Desmond’s integrity. They saw through her in the end, once
she started attending the Methodist church, oh but gosh it was a