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there," Ben's aunt said and nudged him into the chair directly opposite the priest's before sitting on the edge of the chair next to him. "I hoped you might be able to make things clearer to him, Father."
    "I believe that's why I'm here. What about, now?"
    "About, as we were saying, the tragedy. He isn't over it yet, not that you'd expect him to be. Only I've heard him praying for them as if his heart was about to break. God can't mean a child to feel like that, can he?"
    "We mustn't presume to know what God means, Miss Tate. I was taught it may take us the whole of eternity even to begin to glimpse his meaning." The priest ducked his head towards Ben. "Perhaps our little soldier would like to tell us in his own words what he feels."
    He was trying to make it sound like an adventure, but it didn't seem at all like one to Ben. "What about?" Ben said awkwardly.
    "Why, how you've felt since God took your family to Him."
    Ben managed to think of something he could put into words. "I keep wondering where they've gone."
    "Well, Ben, I would have thought a good boy who goes to such a fine Catholic school would know."
    "He means purgatory, Ben."
    "You knew that, didn't you? And I'm sure you can tell us from your catechism what it means."
    Ben parroted the answer. Perhaps his aunt sensed his mounting dismay, because she said "It's a hard thing for a little boy to grasp."
    "Hard means durable, Miss Tate. Shall I tell you something that may surprise you, Ben? I expect you're feeling very much as I felt when I was just about your age. See my grandmother up there? I lost her when I was nine years old."
    He was referring to a yellowed oval photograph on the mantelpiece, Ben saw as his thoughts began to chatter. "I couldn't understand why an old lady who'd never done anyone any harm had to wait to be let into Heaven," the priest said.
    Whatever Ben had avoided thinking since the car crash, it wasn't this. "Do you think she's there yet?" he said.
    His aunt made a shocked sound, but the priest smiled indulgently at him. "That isn't for us to know, is it? If we thought we did we might stop praying for them, and that's one of the jobs God gives us on earth, to pay Him our prayers so our loved ones can get to Heaven sooner."
    Ben was beginning to panic because this meant so little to him. "But some dead people don't have anyone on earth to pray for them."
    The priest flashed his teeth at Ben's aunt. "He's a bright boy. It's a good job you're bringing him up in the faith," he said, and to Ben: "That's why we pray for all the souls in purgatory, not just those who belong to us."
    "That's better now, isn't it, Ben?" his aunt said as if he'd scraped his knee. "You know where your mother and everyone is now, and you know you're helping them."
    Ben knew nothing of the kind. Mustn't there be more souls in purgatory than there were stars in the sky, since Mr O'Toole had once told the assembled school that a single unconfessed sin could keep you in purgatory until the end of the world? If praying for all the dead people you'd never even met could help them, what was the point of singling out your own? If praying for them by name reduced their time in purgatory, how could that be anything but unfair to people who had nobody to pray for them by name? The whole set-up struck him as so unreasonable as to be meaningless, and that terrified him.
    The priest leaned towards him almost confidentially. "I think you're wondering what all this suffering is for, aren't you? Such a bright boy would. Now, Ben, whatever happens to us in this life and after it, however hard it may seem, don't you think it must be worth it if it leads us to see God?"
    "I don't know."
    "I mean, if we have to suffer so as to be worthy of it, mustn't being able to see God for all eternity be a reward beyond anything we can imagine?"
    "I suppose so."
    The priest sat back. "I think that may do for now, Miss Tate. There's a little chap with a few big new ideas to turn over in his mind. If