You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here

It seems my passion for Aidan has been like a flare going off, full of colour and light, but falling from the sky and coming to nothing.

‘Maybe if you’re not married by the age of thirty and I’m not married either we could have a pact.’ There’s simply nothing more detrimental to romance than neediness. It’s like the turning off of a mains supply. It shuts the whole thing down.

‘Evelyn wasn’t hungry,’ I reply absently, thinking hard about Aidan and how I’m only the fall-back girl. It seems I can have nothing for myself.

The door of the church is always open, and we go in and gaze at holy statues, willing them to wink at us. We’re never chosen for apparitions, but it’s for the best; we might get too much of a fright, or we might be given a big job by God to carry out when all we want to do is play. Saint Jude is the saint of hopeless cases, and he stands inside the

‘I’m only saying. It’s human nature to think we’re all here for some big purpose. But most of us aren’t. Most of us are ordinary, and it’s important to accept it. A person has to be content to lead a normal life. There’s no shame in it.’ The three of us sit in terrible, awkward silence. The worst thing that could happen would be for me to fail, to

It’s important when you’ve good news to tell the right people. People who understand the dream or have a dream of their own. Otherwise you end up feeling deflated.

‘I didn’t really want a race. I only wanted peace and quiet.’ His face is bright and flushed, his tousled thick hair soaked with sweat. ‘I’d prefer it being just the two of us.’ The air around us is changing colour. There are forces at play beneath the surface. There are invisible filaments reaching out from me and sparking with the invisible filam

It often feels as though myself and Evelyn were born friends. We’re always on the edge of things and looking on. It’s as though we’re the only people who’re truly alive, and the people around us aren’t real at all, existing merely for our own amusement.

‘All the adults tell us he’s real because they want us to be good,’ she says. ‘But the truth is there’s no one watching. God is only made-up. So you can do whatever you want.’ She’s so casual about it, not forceful at all, that I’m struck with a magnificent terror, the likes of which I’ve never experienced before. If there’s no God, then there’s no