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of bedrooms, so we sold that and we moved out here. This was when Amy was five and we knew she was going to be staying.’
    ‘I didn’t realize she was adopted.’ Merrily was wondering what basic difference this might make. As a foster parent, Hazel Shelbone would probably already have had considerable experience of kids from dysfunctional families, kids with emotional problems. She wouldn’t easily be fooled by them. ‘What does your husband do?’
    ‘David’s a listed-buildings officer with the Hereford Council. He looks after the old places, makes sure nobody knocks them down or tampers with them. They offered him early retirement last year, but he said he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.’ Her eyes grew anxious. ‘I wish he’d taken it, now. He’s not been in the best of health recently, and now…’
    She looked ahead, through the opening in the oak screen, towards the altar, and then suddenly turned, leaning urgently sideways in the pew, towards Merrily.
    ‘We never
pushed
the Church on her. We never forced religion on any of our children. We just made sure they knew that God was waiting for them, if and when they were ready. There’s a great difference between indoctrination and bringing up children in a home which is full of God’s love.’
    Merrily nodded again. ‘That’s sensible.’
    ‘And Amy responded better than anyone could have wished. A daughter to be proud of – respected her parents, her teachers and her God.’ Hazel Shelbone paused, looking Merrily straight in the eyes. ‘You understand I’m only talking like this to you now because you’re a woman of God. I don’t make a practice of scattering the Lord’s name willy-nilly on barren ground. The Social Services people one has to deal with in fostering andadoption, many of those people are
very
left-wing and atheistic, and they’ll automatically take against you if they think you’re some sort of religious fanatic. Well, we’re
far
from fanatics, Mrs Watkins. We just maintain a Christian household. Which you always think will… will…’
    She bit her lip.
    ‘Will be a protection to them?’ Merrily said softly.
    Hazel Shelbone leaned back and breathed in deeply as if accepting an infusion of strength from God for what she was about to say. ‘Sometimes, when I come home and she’s been alone in the house… it seems so cold. There’s a
sense
of cold. The sort of cold you can feel in your bones.’
    Merrily said nothing. Once something started gnawing at your mind, it could produce its own phenomena.
    ‘Last Sunday, when she was… sick, and we took her
from
here, I don’t think she even realized where she was. Her eyes were absolutely vacant, as though her mind had gone off somewhere else. Vacant and cold. Like a doll’s eyes. Do you know what I mean?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It was only when we got her home that she began to cry, and even then it was like tears of… defiance. I’d never seen that before, not in Amy. We’ve had other children, for short periods, who were resentful and troublesome, but not Amy. Amy became our
own
.’
    Merrily asked carefully, ‘Have you consulted a doctor?’
    Hazel Shelbone blinked. ‘You mean a psychiatrist?’
    ‘Well, not—’
    ‘We are a Christian household, Mrs Watkins. We seek Christian solutions.’
    ‘Well, yes, I understand that, but—’
    ‘You may say we’ve become complacent in our middle years, having a daughter who was always conscientious with her school work, who’d been going happily to church from the age of seven… and was, by the way, confirmed into the Church in March this year by Bishop Dunmore. A girl who even’ – shelooked at Merrily, whose silk scarf had come loose, revealing the dog collar – ‘who even talked of one day becoming a minister.’
    Merrily thought of Jane who once, in a heated moment, had said she’d rather clean public lavatories.
    ‘She always kept her Bible on her bedside table – until it went missing and I found it wedged