Free The Gospel According to Luke by Emily Maguire

live in such an imposing place, and he was unusually nervous as he waited for her to answer the chiming bell. But then she opened the door and his anxiousness dissolved.
    She grabbed his hands and dragged him inside, kicking the door closed and talking non-stop as she led him up and down stairs, through low doorways and winding corridors. She told stories about the paintings hanging on the walls and the history of each piece of antique furniture. She was particularly proud of the old claw-foot bath which had once belonged to a convent. ‘You can see the indentation,’ she pointed out, ‘from all those nuns’ heads. They must have been short. My feet hang right over the edge when I lie in it.’
    â€˜You are uncommonly long,’ Luke said. ‘Tall. You’re very tall. Extremely tall.’
    â€˜Yes.’ She laughed. ‘That’s true.’
    The walls were lined with paintings in heavy gilt frames. Luke did not know if the art was good or bad, expensive or cheap, but what he did know was that sadness leaked from every picture. A small girl weeping into a bunch of daffodils; a black-cloaked woman leaning over the rail of a suspension bridge, the wind whipping her cloak behind her; a grey soldier, leaning heavily on his bayonet; a series of landscapes, each darker and more desolate than the last. No smiles orsunshine. No fluffy animals or cheerful cottages. And tellingly, no photographs.
    He asked her about it and she shrugged. ‘I took them all down after Dad died. It was just too depressing. In every photo the only person who looked happy was him. Mum was always gorgeously sullen and I was always gangly and self-conscious, but Dad was . . . I used to have a wedding photo hanging over my bed, but I trashed it when Kip took off, and then when Simon moved in we had a picture of us together in the living room and a photo of his kids in the study. Matt and I had a lot of photos . . . It seemed pathetic to keep them up after he left.’ She smiled. ‘I suppose not having any photos is even more pathetic, isn’t it? It’s proof that I’m a total Nigel-no-friends.’
    â€˜The only photo I have up is of me at my ordination,’ Luke said.
    â€˜Hurrah! I’m
not
the saddest almost-thirty-year-old in the world.’
    Aggie served dinner on the back deck, overlooking a shimmering pool surrounded by palm trees and mounds of shiny black rocks. Luke didn’t eat a thing. He told her he was not hungry which was only half an explanation. The rest of it was that he was captivated.
    She told him about the time she had wrestled a knife off a strung-out junkie in a hospital waiting room, the time she had helped deliver a baby girl in the office of a homeless shelter, the time she chased a mugger through Redfern and not only reclaimedher handbag but talked the guy into signing up to her rehab program. She told Luke about the television and radio interviews she’d done, the newspaper and magazine articles, the teaching and campaigning and lobbying. She had held training camps for social workers, cookouts for homeless people and recreation trips for troubled teenagers. She had walked over hot coals – literally – to demonstrate to a group of heroin addicts how powerful the mind could be.
    â€˜Do you realise how incredible you are, Aggie?’
    â€˜No, I don’t. Please feel free to tell me.’ She laughed, tossing her head back and gulping wine.
    By eleven o’clock, when they were sitting in her living room in front of an open fire – she sprawled on a brown velvet couch gulping red wine, he sitting upright in an overstuffed chair sipping lemonade – Luke had figured out that he had long given Satan too much credit. Lust was from God and was just the cleverest thing ever. God
wanted
him to be tormented with desire, so that his work in saving Aggie’s soul would be conducted with urgency. The sooner she gave herself to the