Curtain Call at the Lantern

St Brigid's stood in Dockside, hunched between a bookmaker's and a boarded-up pub, its stone dark with a century of sea air. Inside it smelt of damp hymn-books and candle-smoke. Reverend Tobias Lund was setting out chairs, alone.

You had always thought of religion as a strange sort of infrastructure: a system of rewards and punishments with a very long-term payment plan. Heaven for the well-behaved. Sin for the rest. A rulebook for the living and a promise for the dead. It shaped a great many lives without ever being seen to.

"He came here," said Lund before you asked. "Every Sunday for eleven years."

"Sir Edwin?"

"A man in a flat cap, sat at the back. I didn't know who he was for a long time." Lund put down the chair. "I knew he wasn't here to be forgiven."