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much by definition, was actually rather trying to read, especially when it had been written to be performed, as Jesmond’s was. Reading it was a test of faith, somehow. But it could change people – she believed that. At any rate, reading this had changed her. It made her want to be the sort of woman who could inspire a man to write poetry. It made her want to be interesting. As things stood, no one would ever want to write about her, no matter how kind she tried to be, or how eager to please. In fact, from her rudimentary reading of the relevant literary works (or rather, the summaries of classic novels that she had found in encyclopaedias), the kinder and the more eager the woman, the less likely she was to inspire poetry.
    She wished she had talked to Jesmond when he’d visited. She’d come to think of him as a pompous, vain drunk who troubled her husband – because that’s what Lucas thought. And although she’d felt sorry for him because of the life he led, she’d never tried to make a connection with him.
    Never mind. She would make an effort next time he dropped round.

Chapter Seven ~ Christina

    The next day, Lucas had to go and inspect a miracle. He decided to get it over with and go straight there rather than stopping in to the office first. He didn’t like doing the home visits. It could be so embarrassing. There’d be the walk up to the front door, where he’d find himself making a judgement about the people inside before he even set eyes on them. Then there’d be the particular smell of the house; something acrid and left over. Then there’d be the people themselves; the desperation, the smallness of them compared with their big dreams.
    When he started out in this job, he’d assumed it would be mostly religious establishments that would contact him. But it wasn’t. Perhaps such places had their own rigorous tests to which they subjected potential miracles before reporting them. Or perhaps they had miracles and they kept them to themselves, storing them up to store up power which they would unleash one day, when the time came – whenever that might be. Then again, perhaps miracles didn’t happen in churches, mosques and temples because God does not exist and miracles do not exist. It seemed entirely feasible to him that these places were there simply to guard that secret. But try telling ordinary people that God does not exist. They weren’t interested. They wanted to believe in something.
    It was funny but he did think, as he set off for work that morning, how brilliant it would be if he found a miracle. He would tell Angela. It would be their passport to Cornwall. He would have sex with her from every angle and never think about Joanna Jones. And then he thought how strange it was that if you tried not to think about someone, their name popped into your mind, like that.
    Trying not to think of Joanna didn’t work so he’d have to keep himself busy with other things, putting time and distance between them and simply not thinking of her for months on end, until he never thought of her. But for now, he was wondering if she was at home wondering if he was watching her. He’d like to go into Jones’s office and have a quick peek, just to make sure, but he was in the car en route to a reported miracle, so he couldn’t. The thought of her began take him over. He’d have to give himself over to it for now and then just try to remember not to try not to think about her in future.
    But for now, well, she would be standing in the kitchen in a T-shirt and a little pair of frilly knickers. She would have jam on her fingers. She would look up at one of the cameras Jones had positioned around the place. She would bring her fingers up to her mouth and put the middle three fingers in her mouth up to the first set of knuckles, then she would lick each of her fingers all the way up and down, one by one. She would look at the camera and her expression, close up, would be exactly the same as the expression