Free Past Praying For by Aline Templeton Page B

before – with the flimsy fabric of cheerfulness and hope that gangrene didn’t set in.
    At least she should have another three or four hours before she had to get the show on the road. She had reached the kitchen door when her eye was caught by something on the floor.
    One of the girls must have left her school blazer lying there, though what on earth she had been doing with it in the holidays she could not imagine. Tutting mumsily, she went to pick it up and restore it to the pegs in the lobby by the back door.
    The Cranbourne Girls blazer was a pleasant shade of dark green, with its crest and motto (‘ Video , audio , disco’ : officially rendered as ‘I see, I hear, I learn’ but the source of much mirthful satisfaction to those of a less classical bent) embroidered on the pocket in gold thread.
    This pocket, when Laura picked it up, flapped loose. Uncomprehending for a moment, she stared at it, ripped savagely along its stitching from the body of the garment.
    Her first thought was of concealment. She had been shaken already by the flowers, but this was worse. If it were, indeed, something she had done herself, the others must never know. No one must discover if she was having blackouts, going mad.
    She had the needle threaded and was sitting in her rocking chair, the blazer in her hand, before her shock dissolved in tears. Surely she could not have done this, surely...
    But if not she, then who? She looked about her comfortable, homely kitchen as if, even now, some spirit of malevolence might lurk within its walls, and began to shake.
    ***
    The Christmas Day Open House at the Lodge was proving less than entirely successful. Too many of the guests had seen each other too recently, and the children who had last night relished the novelty of all being together, were jaded and fretful after a late night and an early start to the day.
    Half a dozen other couples appeared, some fresh from the eleven o’clock carol service at St Mary’s, which inspired Piers to new heights of wit as he greeted them with glasses of champagne heavily adulterated with peach schnapps.
    ‘ Well, how was our lady padre this morning? Miss Margaret Moon – it’s just too good to be true, really, wouldn’t you say? Do you suppose it’s a nom de plume – or a nom de guerre , perhaps, fight the good fight, and all that.’
    He gave a roar of laughter which shook his fleshy jowls, and one or two of his audience laughed too.
    ‘ It does seem a bit strange, certainly, having a woman priest,’ said pretty Anthea Jones, who had given her husband Richard instructions that he was not to leave her side for ten seconds if Piers McEvoy were anywhere in the vicinity.
    ‘ I really don’t get this, you know. Tell me why it’s such a big deal? If she was setting up as a football jock, I could understand it.’ Hayley Cutler, resplendent in a holly-berry red silk shirt and dark green velvet trousers, was in a mellow mood already, thanks to the American breakfast-time Christmas tradition of egg nogg made with liberal proportions of brandy.
    ‘ I have to say it’s crossed my mind that she’d make quite a useful prop,’ Piers put in.
    Hayley persisted. ‘We’ve had women priests in the States for years, and it seems like a nice enough job for a lady to me. Sure, some of them are dreary enough, but the guys in that line of business aren’t usually any ball of fire either.’
    ‘ I don’t think I would actually describe Margaret Moon as dreary.’ Richard Jones, a cheerful, open-faced young Welsh doctor who in his spare time was a handy second-row forward for the county rugby football team, had already had some dealings with her over elderly and hospitalized parishioners, and was ready to admit that she had impressed him.
    ‘ To keep up the sporting metaphor, she’s ready to run with the ball, I would say. She might actually stir things up around here. She’s a good person to talk to, and she’s started taking a real interest in people’s