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couldn’t talk to him at all. If I’d tried, I’d only have got an anti-government tirade.’
    This morning, Archie was in no mood for Colin Jenkins. As the Vicar slid out of his car, Archie gave a preoccupied smile and wave intended to indicate his hurry, and climbed into his own. Reflected in his mirror, he saw Colin standing in the road, looking after him, a figure at once self-satisfied and forlorn. Archie put his foot down. He suddenly wanted a telephone.
    He rang from his room at the health centre.
    â€˜Sorry,’ Sally Carter said, ‘Mrs Logan’s gone. She went twenty minutes ago. If you ring the school, you might get her before lessons.’
    He rang Bradley Hall. The school secretary, a kind, confused woman with a sweet telephone manner and an aptitude for muddling bills, said Liza was in prayers.
    â€˜I’m so sorry. They’ve just gone in, only just. I can hear them singing “When A Knight Won His Spurs’. Shall I ask Mrs Logan to ring you when she comes out?’
    â€˜No,’ Archie said. ‘No, thank you. It isn’t urgent. It can wait.’
    â€˜But I’ll tell her you rang—’
    â€˜No,’ he said again. ‘No. Don’t bother.’ And then he put the receiver down and wondered what on earth had impelled him to say no, and not just once, but twice. A dull misery collected in his throat and settled there. He cleared it decisively once or twice, but to no avail. He leaned forward and pressed his intercom button.
    â€˜Mrs Hargreaves for Dr Logan, please. Mrs Har greaves.’
    Liza sang enthusiastically. All around her the children, who liked the hymn and its clear images of storybook chivalry, sang with equal fervour. Above the altar, Albert on his tortured cross seemed to be wincing at the jovial atmosphere of folksy Protestantism in which he found himself, an atmosphere June Hampole was careful to encourage so that no enraged father could possibly accuse her of Popery. Looking across at Liza singing innocently of the death of dragons, June observed how well she looked, how happy. Liza Logan, June Hampole thought, shuffling through her pockets for the prayer she had chosen and now seemed to have mislaid, was a prime example of middle-class excellence, an unshakeable rock of competence and decency and endeavour. As she grew older, her experience would give her authority and she might well, June thought, surprise herself by her own strength. June found her piece of paper and went up to the lectern below the altar.
    â€˜Let us pray.’
    The children rumbled to their knees on the floor of the chapel. June put on her spectacles and unfolded the paper.
    â€˜Dog biscuits,’ the piece of paper said. ‘Blankets from dry cleaners, gin, telephone tennis court people for resurfacing estimate.’
    â€˜Today,’ June said, ‘we are going to pray to St Anthony of Padua. He liked pigs and he is the patron saint of lost things. I am tempted to rename the lost property cupboard The Cave of St Anthony. Close your eyes and pray for something you have lost. I have lost this morning’s prayer.’
    And I, Liza thought, putting a restraining hand on the restive small boy beside her, have lost something, too. Something I did not much want. I have lost some of my inadequacy. The small boy twisted himself free and hissed in a stage whisper that he had lost his recorder.
    â€˜We’ll find it after prayers,’ Liza said softly, sure that she would.
    â€˜Now,’ he said. ‘ Now —’
    â€˜No. After prayers.’
    He subsided against her and put his thumb in his mouth. She put her arm round him and thought of his parents, a tough self-confident pair who ran a small racing stable and were friends of Simon and Diana Jago. Her arm round their child, Liza reflected that today she could cope with them too with perfect assurance.
    â€˜Our Father,’ June Hampole said. ‘Which art in heaven, Hallowed