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He had been on his knees but now he pulled hi fat smile on his face

"Jamie, co at the bell Ja Mousey with one hand, holding onto the end of the cot with the other

She wouldn’t go It would be so or just kids Kids were a pain but she didn’t bla up and noas banging on the side of the cot Soed his head there which woke her up That orrying Why would he bang his head so hard it must hurt? She had mentioned it to the doctor when she had taken him for his jabs but the doctor hadn’t seeed and said, "They do it so

Then the bloody bell again

She left the bedroom door open so that Ja his head and shake the cot bars even more

The chain was across the door She was always careful, locked the s at night, kept the chain on whenever she was in by herself, which was usually

She shifted the Yale and opened the door the short distance until the chain tightened

"Hello?"

Silence

Bloody kids

She didn’t let the chain off, just put her head out a bit further

The noise of the shot h the bars, to where histhere, and then he began to screa time The front door had been pushed shut and his ed on the cot bars No one came After a time, he sat and looked at his feet, then he crawled across and reached for Mousey and lay down pressing the toy to his face He shouted once or twice, but Mousey was there, soft and coht stayed on and after a while it rained in through the open bed roomonto the sill The child stirred and woke and tried to get under the blanket but sleep caain

He woke twice, and once he stood up and banged the cot, first with his fists then with his head He banged for a long time His mother still lay on the floor and would not coht stayed on The rain was heavier now, soaking the curtain

In the end, the darkness thinned to grey and the child fell across the cot and slept, Mousey beneath his body He slept past six o’clock and seven, and did not wake until after eight But nothing was different The rain beat on the s and the light was still on and his an to cry quietly now, realising the point less ness of shouting and banging the cot, hungry and dirty and cold

But still nothing happened Nothing changed No one caet up

Thirty

Jane Fitzroy drove slowly up the long drive between the rows of swaying poplars whose leaves lay in soft golden heaps on the grass The convent buildings had not yet come into view There were just the mown fields on either side, and the trees of the park The trees, of course, had grown and been cut down and others planted and matured, but in the saed hteenth century when it was laid out The main house and a hundred or so acres had been bestowed on the abbey fifty years later and was theirs in perpetuity Which in itself was a worry, Jane had found out within a short ti there Once there had been 120 nuns in the coo there had been over seventy Now there were twenty-two and hties New postulants arrived occasionally and a few made their vows and reh nuns to justify the upkeep of the house and grounds There probably were not enough now but they had a generous benefactor When she died, no one kneould happen to the abbey or the nuns

Jane stopped the car and got out and the a silence washed over her There was a ripple of sound froht rustle as it shifted the piles of leaves, but otherwise, nothing Silence The , palpable silence she had ever known It filled her with a sense of calm now, as it had done every day of the six months she had spent here The silence had becoed inside her, and so of it had remained for her to draw on even after she had left Now, as she breathed it in and let it fill her again, she felt that she was topping up her inner store, to see her through the next fewwith this silence, she would be here still

It was ten past eleven The abbey would be at work She got back in her car, drove up to the side of the building, parked and wandered back into the grounds No one was about Deer grazed in the distance A squirrel raced up a tree trunk and peered down at her Jane walked on, to the oak with the bench around its base where she had sat so ling with herself Now it felt pleasant to sit here free of the struggle, decision made It had been painful and messy but she kne that however happy she was to be back as a visitor she had been right to leave

Life had been a confusion of plans made and unmade, sadness and above all restlessness--for over two years, she realised now It had begun when she’d gone to Lafferton, which had turned out to be the wrong place for her in sos had been frightening and unsettled She had been na&iuiven others a chance Even before she had been ordained as a priest she was fascinated by the monastic ideal, had read extensively about it in the past and present and soed for the cloister She had co and a measure of peace It had restored her to herself, put e way, helped her to finish whatever growing up she had had to do She had been content and the ti But fro to her dreareat deal from this place and the people in it, she had also known that the life was not for her Not permanently The reality, she saas not so much too rarefied as too mundane, and what had unsettled her roup of other women in confined circu, in spite of the house being huge and the park and gardens being free and available, Jane had missed the outside world She realised she had romanticised monasticism and mistaken her own capacity to live it The truth had come as a shock and a lesson in humility She had been ashamed and crestfallen, but the other nuns had treated her with admirable and exceptional kindness and common sense "You’re not the first and you won’t be the last," the abbess had said Sister Catherine was a realist

Jane got up and wandered back and entered the paddock where the chickens were pecking about the grass around their wooden coops There was the sound of a ate The last runner beans had been harvested One of the sisters, wearing boots and ear-e strip of ground with a rotavator Jane watched until she reached the far end, turned expertly and caan to wave madly The nun stopped thesoil

"Jane! I’d have known that hair anywhere! How lovely to see you Have you come to stay? Have you come for lunch?" Sister Tho, then held her at ar "You look so well The world suits you You’d grown peaky in here, you know, and look at you now No one toldand noe’ve harvested alround for the autumn broad beans and the sprouts are well on Come on up to the house, does the abbess know you’re here, she’ll be thrilled, everyone will be pleased to see you and looking so well, the world suits you, did I say that? Yes, well it’s true and weat you now, Jane, you were needed elsewhere Tell me nohere are you, what have you been up to?"

Sister Thomas, kind-hearted and enthusiastic, had always chattered nineteen to the dozen during the periods when they were not in silence, as if everything was pent up in her for hours and ca out when the stopper was reotten how to, had lost words, so locked were they in their world of silence and contemplation

All nuns were allowed to speak freely to visitors at any tiuests feel at ease came first It was a civilised rule A lot of as here at the abbey Jane had found far s she missed, this and the habitual, mutual courtesy and consideration Here, people automatically put others first It was a way of life The contrast with the outside world was brutal Most of the nuns, who had not been beyond the abbey walls since their first admittance, would not survive outside The abbess went out She knew exactly what the world was like and was remark ably unfazed by it But then, the abbess was an exceptional wole" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>