That is how she hears the nuns arguing between themselves, and how she learns she might not have the chance to stay at all.
It is Sister Veronica, her face like granite, whose voice Allie hears through the door of their small sitting room.
‘Have you seen it?’ she is saying. ‘Have you seen it working?’
‘We have all seen it,’ rumbles the abbess.
‘Then how can you doubt what it is?’
‘Fairy stories,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia. ‘Children’s games.’
Sister Veronica’s voice is so loud it makes the door tremble a little, and Allie takes a pace back.
‘Are the Gospels themselves fairy tales? Was Our Lord a liar? Do you tell me that there has never been a demon, that when He cast out devils from men He was playing a game?’
‘No one is saying that, Veronica. No one is doubting the Gospels.’
‘Have you seen it on the news reports? Have you seen what they do? They have powers that men are not meant to know. From where does this power come? We all know the answer. The Lord told us where these powers come from. We all know.’
There is a silence in the room.
Sister Maria Ignacia speaks softly. ‘I have heard that it is caused by pollution. There was an interesting piece in the newspaper. Pollution in the atmosphere causing certain mutations in the –’
‘It is the Devil. The Devil walks abroad and tests the innocent and the guilty, giving powers to the damned, as he has always done.’
‘Oh no,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia, ‘I have seen the good in their faces. They are children, we have a duty to care for them.’
‘You would see good in the face of Satan himself if he arrived at your door with a pitiful story and a hungry belly.’
‘And would I be wrong to do so? If Satan needed feeding?’
Sister Veronica gives a laugh like a dog’s bark.
‘Good intentions! Good intentions pave the road to Hell.’
The abbess speaks over them all. ‘We have already asked for guidance to the Diocesan Council. They are praying on it. In the meantime, the Lord told us to suffer the little children.’
‘Younger girls awaken it in older women. This is the Devil working in the world, passing from hand to hand as Eve passed the apple to Adam.’
‘We cannot simply throw children out on to the street.’
‘The Devil will gather them to his bosom.’
‘Or they will starve,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia.
Allie thinks it over for a long time. She could move on. But she likes it here.
The voice says: You heard what she said. Eve passed the apple to Adam.
Allie thinks, Maybe she was right to do it. Maybe that’s what the world needed. A bit of shaking up. Something new.
The voice says: That’s my girl.
Allie thinks, Are you God?
The voice says: Who do you say that I am?
Allie thinks, I know that you speak to me in my hour of need. I know that you have guided me on the true path. Tell me what to do now. Tell me.
The voice says: If the world didn’t need shaking up, why would this power have come alive now?
Allie thinks, God is telling the world that there is to be a new order. That the old way is overturned. The old centuries are done. Just as Jesus told the people of Israel that God’s desires had changed, the time of the Gospels is over and there must be a new doctrine.
The voice says: There is a need for a prophet in the land.
Allie thinks, But who?
The voice says: Just try it on for size, honey. Remember, if you’re going to stay here, you’re going to need to own the place so they can’t take it from you. The only way you’re safe, honeybun, is if you own it.
Roxy
Roxy’s seen her dad hit blokes before. She’s seen him hit them square in the face, with all his rings on, casual, just as he was turning to leave. She’s seen him punch a bloke till his nose was bleeding and he fell to the floor, and Bernie kicked him in the stomach again and again, and when he was finished he wiped his hands on the handkerchief from his back pocket and looked down at the mess of the bloke’s face and said, ‘Don’t you fuck with me. Don’t you think you can fuck with me.’
She’s always wanted that.
Her dad’s body is a castle for her. A shelter and a weapon. When he puts his arm around her shoulders she feels a mixture of terror and comfort. She’s run up the stairs from his fist, screaming. She’s seen how he hurts people who want to hurt her.
She’s always wanted to have that. It’s the only thing worth having.
‘You know what’s happened, don’t you, darling?’ says Bernie.
‘Fucking Primrose,’ says Ricky.
Ricky’s the oldest of her half-brothers.
Bernie says, ‘It was a declaration of war, killing your mum, darling. And it’s taken us a long time to be sure we can get him. But now we’re sure. And we’re ready.’
There’s a look that passes around the room, between Ricky and Terry the middle son, between Terry and Darrell the youngest one. Three sons from his own wife, and then there’s Roxy. She knows why she’s been living with her granny this past year and not with them. Half in and half out, that’s what she is. Not in enough to have over for Sunday lunch but not out enough to leave out of something like this. Something like this involves all of them.
Roxy says, ‘We should kill him.’
Terry laughs.
His dad gives him a look, and the laugh cuts off halfway through a breath. You don’t want to mess with Bernie Monke. Not even if you’re his full-born son. ‘She’s right,’ says Bernie. ‘You’re right, Roxy. We should probably kill him. But he’s strong and he’s got a lot of friends, and we need to go slow and careful. If we do it, we’re gonna do it just the once. Knock everything out in one go.’
They get her to show them what she can do. She holds back a bit, gives each of them a dead arm in turn. Darrell swears when she touches him, and she feels a bit sorry. Darrell’s the only one who’s always been nice to her. He brought her an extra chocolate mouse from the sweetshop whenever his dad took him over to her mum’s after school.
After she’s finished, Bernie rubs his big arm and says, ‘That all you can do?’
So she shows them. She’s seen stuff on the internet.
They follow her out into the garden, where Bernie’s wife Barbara has one of them ornamental ponds full of big orange fish swimming around and around each other.
It’s cold. Roxy’s feet crunch on the frost-crisped grass.
She kneels down and puts the tips of her fingers into the pond.
There’s a smell, suddenly, like ripe fruit, sweet and succulent. The smell of high summer. A flicker of light in the dark water. A sound like a hiss and a crackle.
And one by one the fish bob up to the surface of the water.
‘Fuck!’ says Terry.
‘Bloody hell!’ says Ricky.
‘Mum’s going to be pissed off,’ says Darrell.
Barbara Monke never came to see Roxy, not after her mother died, not after the funeral, nothing. Roxy’s glad, for a moment, thinking of her coming back to see all her fish dead.