Whenever some horrible tragedy happened, from the big stuff like planes crashing and bombs exploding, to the smaller stuff like a boy falling offhis bike and drowning in the river or a cot death in the house at the end of the street, they would all be put down to 'God's work' by Ms MacDonald. 'Going about His mysterious business,' she would nod sagely as people ran from disasters on the television news, as if God was running a secretive office dealing in human misery. Only Banjo seemed able to ruille her feelings. 'I hope he goes first,' Ms MacDonald said. It was going to be a race between Ms MacDonald and her gnarled old misfit of a terrier. It was surprising how much soppy, maternal love Ms MacDonald lavished on Banjo, but then Hitler was very fond of his dog. (,Biondi,' Dr Hunter said. 'She was called Biondi.')

Ms MacDonald's dog was on his last legs -literally, sometimes his back legs collapsed under him and he sat in the middle of the floor looking completely bewildered by his sudden immobility. Ms MacDonald had begun to worry that he might die on his own while she was off doing her Wednesday evening healing and praying, so now Reggie stayed with him in case he popped his paws. There were worse ways to spend an evening. Ms MacDonald had a TV that worked, although not the Hunters' extensive cable package sadly, and Reggie got the run of the bookcases and a hot meal for her pains, plus the entire congregation (of eight) always said a prayer for her which wasn't a gift horse she was about to look in the mouth. She might not believe in all that stuff but it was nice to know that someone was thinking about her welfare even if it was Ms MacDonald's flock of loony-tunes who all felt sorry for Reggie on account of her orphan status, which was totally fine by Reggie, the more people who felt sorry for her the better, in her opinion. Not Dr Hunter, though. She didn't want Dr Hunter to think of her as anything but heroically, cheeifully competent.

When the yoghurt was ceremoniously finished Ms MacDonald exclaimed, 'Goodness, look at the time!' Nowadays she was continually amazed by the time -'It can't be six o'clock!' or 'Eight o'clock? It feels more like ten,' and 'It's not really that time is it?'

Reggie could just see her when all that scourging and ailliction started, turning to Reggie in astonishment saying, 'That's never the end of the world!'

Was there a kind of lottery (Reggie imagined a tombola) where God picked out your chosen method of going -'Heart attack for him, cancer for her, let's see, have we had a terrible car crash yet this month?' Not that Reggie believed in God, but it was interesting sometimes to imagine. Did God get out of bed one morning and draw back the curtains (Reggie's imaginary God led a very domesticated life) and think, 'A drowning in a hotel swimming pool today, I fancy. We haven't had that one in a while.'

The Church of the Coming Rapture was a made-up kind of religion, really it consisted of a bunch of people who believed unbelievable things. They didn't even have a building but held their services in their members' front rooms on a rotational basis. Reggie had never attended one of these services but she imagined it was much like one of their pot-luck suppers with everyone earnestly debating dispensationalist and futurist views while they passed round a plate of fig rolls. The only difference would be that Banjo wouldn't be in attendance, slavering and groaning at the sight of the fig rolls. 'I was never blessed with children of my own,' Ms MacDonald told Reggie once, 'but I have my wee dog. And I have you, ofcourse, Reggie,' she added. 'But not for long, Ms Mac,' Reggie said. No, of course, she didn't say that. But it was true. The awful thing was that Ms MacDonald was the nearest thing that Reggie had to a family. Reggie Chase, orphan of the parish, pOor Jenny Wren, Little Reggie, the infant phenomenon.

*

Reggie did the washing-up and cleaned the worst bits of the kitchen. The sink was disgusting, decaying food in the trap, old teabags, a filthy cloth.

Noone seemed to have told Ms MacDonald that cleanliness was next to godliness. Reggie poured neat bleach into the tea-stained mugs and left them to soak. Ms MacDonald had mugs that said things like 'It's All About Jesus' and 'God Is Watching You' which Reggie thought was unlikely, you would think he would have something better to do. Mum had a Charles and Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. 'Gone,' she said, shaking her head in disbelief. 'Just like that. All that exercise for nothing.' Diana-worship was the nearest thing Mum had to a religion. If Reggie had to choose a religion she would go for Diana too, the real one -Artemis, pale moon goddess of the chase and chastity. Another powerful virgin. Or flashing-eyed Athene, wise and heroic, a warrior virgin.

You would have thought that with her background in the Classics, Ms MacDonald would have chosen from a more interesting pantheon -Zeus throwing bolts oflightning like javelins or Phoebus Apollo driving his fiery horses across the heavens. Or, given her mushrooming tumour, Hygeia, goddess of health, and Asklepios, god of healing.

Reggie separated the rubbish into the red, blue and brown bins. Ms MacDonald didn't recycle anything, she was possibly the least green person on the planet. There was no point in preserving the earth, Ms MacDonald explained in a kindly tone, because the Last Judgement couldn't occur until every last thing on the planet had been destroyed, every tree, every flower, every river. Every last eagle and owl and panda, the sheep in the fields, the leaves on the trees, the rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Everything. And Ms MacDonald was looking forward to that. ('It's a funny old world,' Mum would have said.)

Reggie was definitely going to start up her own religion, one where things were cared for, not destroyed, one where the dead were reborn -and not in a symbolic way either -without everything else having to die. Then her mother would be back on the sofa, watching Desperate Housewives and working her way through a packet of tortilla chips. No Gary sitting there pawing her though, just Mum and Reggie. Together for ever.

It had been just Mum and her for so long, well Billy too, but Billy wasn't the kind of person who sat around and ate and chatted and watched TV Gust what he did do was hard to say) and then the ManWho-Came-Before-Gary came along who turned out to be 'a total arse', according to Mum (not to mention married) and then the 'real deal' came along in the form of Gary and Mum started saying 'my boyfriend this' and 'my boyfriend that' and suddenly she was having sex and all her friends wanted to come round and talk about it. Her mother preening and giggling, 'Three times in one nightl' and her friends shrieking with excitement and spilling their wine.

Unlike the Man-Who-Came-Before-Him, Gary wasn't evil, he was just a big lump who, until he met Mum (after he met Mum as well actually), spent his time sitting around all day in his greasy denims at the back of the bike shop with a load of Gary clones talking about the Harley-Davidson 883L Sportster he was going to buy when he won the lottery. He courted Mum with cheap hothouse roses from the Shell Shop and boxes of Celebrations and when Reggie protested at this cliched attitude to romance her mother said 'You won't hear me complaining, Reggie,' fingering the thin silve; chain of the heart-shaped locket he had bought her for her birthday.

Gary was going to take her to Spain for two weeks ('Lloret de Mar -how nice does that sound, Reggie?'). Reggie's mother hadn't been on a 'proper grown-up' holiday since she went to Fuerteventura in 1989 so he could have taken her to Budin's in Skegness and she would have been impressed. Mum had taken Reggie and Billy to S~arborough for a week once but it was rather spoiled when Billy dIsappeared from their Band B one night and was brought back by a policeman the next morning after being found wandering along t~e Prom smashed out of his mind on lager. He was twelve at the tIme.