07:28 <VoxPVoxD> Compared to how long it tends to take to buy property, this was a model of efficiency. But at the rate at which Willie's life has been happening for the past month, it was an intolerable drag. Hours of research, followed by hours of lunch-hour phone calls and off-hours visits, and then a full day at the solicitor's office, followed by driving all the way up to Bolton to pick up the keys... 07:32 <VoxPVoxD> It's not the Home Counties by any stretch — it's not even Cornwall — but it's so sweet and clean and bright compared to the noise and smell and weight of the city. There's a nice bit of land, a pretty little lake and a piece of its shoreline, and a homely little two-storey house. This is Crime Farm, and it belongs to her. 07:36 <VoxPVoxD> he door is shrill on its hinges, but the key fits the lock. Changing those is a priority, of course. She's had the tour already, but it ticked so many of her boxes she wasn't particularly thorough. There's a secret little cubby behind a false wall upstairs. The range doesn't light, and the greasy old knob comes off in her hand — that was always going to need replacing. 07:39 <VoxPVoxD> The grand window in the parlour is spotless inside and out, because that's the angle the estate agent photographed. The others... are going to need a thorough cleaning. Lot of projects up here. Lot to keep busy with over the winter, until the spring when the workmen can come. For now, there's hot water, and a boiler, and the wiring works. That will do. 07:42 <VoxPVoxD> Willie lights a cigarette indoors. The shutters are rattling, the late-afternoon sky is threatening rain, and there's a terrible draught; she's basically outside. It counts. 07:44 <VoxPVoxD> There's something so satisfying about standing here, on her floor, looking out a window at a lake which, if she wishes, she can rise to see every morning, every day, until she rises no more. That it came so suddenly and so readily does nothing to diminish how immense and real it feels to possess something. 07:53 <VoxPVoxD> When the clouds thicken it's just late enough for encroaching twilight to obscure the strength of the storm. Willie's exploration brings her back to the parlour, to the window, to the view. This feels really good. It feels good differently to how hell feels good. To how winning or helping or learning feels good. To how Sergio feels good. She has a sense of inviolable safety. By the time 07:53 <VoxPVoxD> the heat's worked hard enough to let her take her jacket off, it's properly dark out, and the wind flicks the first scattered drops of rain against the glass. 07:56 <VoxPVoxD> Considered from the lake, from that forlorn-looking house, a woman stands behind the parlour window, bathed in the only warm light in the house. The only warm thing the eye can see. 07:57 <VoxPVoxD> She doesn't like having the light on, because it's terribly difficult to see outside now. She just sees herself reflected in the window. The world beyond it is gone. 07:57 <VoxPVoxD> But it's too dark without it. 08:00 <VoxPVoxD> Without recourse to the window, she turns her back on it, inward, towards the heart of the parlour and the darkened house beyond. 08:02 <VoxPVoxD> Speech comes easier here than it did at the Greybox, or at least more quickly. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Since... I don't know." 08:03 <VoxPVoxD> She knows. Who is she lying to? She hasn't prayed since the first lockdown last year. 08:05 <VoxPVoxD> The blankets and camping chair she brought in the car are the house's only furniture; she ignores them and kneels on the floor. The back of her head is all the lake can see from the window. If Willie thought like a sniper, she would have knelt a couple of metres stage right. 08:06 <VoxPVoxD> "I need rugs. Or chubby knees. Perhaps I'd get comfortable if I did it more often." 08:15 <VoxPVoxD> "Holy Father," The shutters rattle harder as the wind picks up. It's actually raining now. "Make haste to help us. We walk an unlit path, seeking the truth and the good at the end of it, and the clearer it grows, so becomes the danger. The way ahead is very difficult. We may fail. I pray that it is not impossible." 08:16 <VoxPVoxD> "I have a lot to pray for. It's been too long. Sometimes I delete voicemails without listening to them because they're so long. And then I tell myself, no one from home— From London— is keeping in touch." 08:17 <VoxPVoxD> "Please don't do that." 08:17 <VoxPVoxD> Outside the rain is steady. The trees would be waving like dancers in the wind, if they still existed outside that window. 08:18 <VoxPVoxD> "Holy Father, watch over my family, for they are your children as I am theirs. Keep them safe. Keep them honest. And when the time comes... let them down gently." 08:18 <VoxPVoxD> She's still thinking about the voicemails. "Look after Maria, and her new baby. Look after Robbie and Dan, and their new marriage. And please, especially, look after the others, after William and Azi and Manbir, after Dana, Siobhan, after Lucy and Tasha, after Sangita, after Molly, Jacinta and Valeria, and everyone else trying to find meaning and purpose from their labour." 08:19 <VoxPVoxD> "Go easy on Roger, Curly, June and the rest of the team. They work so hard, and they deserve a rest. Take care of the healers and the sick, the widow and the orphan, because we're not doing enough." 08:20 <VoxPVoxD> "Protect Olly, and his wife and children. I couldn't manage this job without him. And without this job, I couldn't manage the rest of it." 08:21 <VoxPVoxD> The rest of it... Willie knows he knows, and Willie knows he knows Willie knows. Still, there is a certain... he'll forgive us for not using names. 08:21 <VoxPVoxD> Somewhere past the lake is the first churn of thunder. 08:22 <VoxPVoxD> "For those who make themselves the last line of defence between the damned and damnation, I pray for discernment, patience, and understanding." 08:22 <VoxPVoxD> "For those who threw off tyrannical masters, to hold in common trust the blood of the living, I pray for mercy, humanity, and tolerance." 08:23 <VoxPVoxD> "For those old ones cast out to grieve and grow, and for those lesser creatures whose bent backs they stand upon, I pray for gentleness, and the wisdom to recognise that that which they have taken is irreplaceable." 08:24 <VoxPVoxD> "For those who pulled five generations into darkness, and were dragged to the dark in turn, I pray for forgiveness: yours for them, Holy Father, and theirs for us." 08:25 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who hold fast to their memories like a treasure buried beneath a ruined church, I pray for security." 08:26 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who have beheld a holy truth and brought it forth to radiate into the world, I pray for them to be seen and known." 08:26 <VoxPVoxD> Thunder rolls closer. The shutters bang. 08:27 <VoxPVoxD> "For those who seek to challenge you on a plane of their choosing, until you meet them and they claim their prize, I pray only for their victory." 08:27 <VoxPVoxD> Lightning flashes; if Willie's eyes were open she would see the window lattice spread over her shadow like a spiderweb. 08:27 <VoxPVoxD> "For the taken, for the changed, for the lost and the left-behind, I pray for lives and hearts enough to hold them. Every one." 08:28 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who put a face to their pain, who found it tarnished and brittle and so, so breakable, I pray for peace." 08:28 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who returned to a colder world than they left behind, I pray for warmth, and the will to share it." 08:29 <VoxPVoxD> The power flickers. 08:31 <VoxPVoxD> Willie folds her hands under her legs, trying to get some warmth into her fingers. The draught is gaining ground against the boiler. 08:31 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who were fashioned into a weapon, and then used until unfashionable, I pray for the rest and regard they were promised for their toil." 08:32 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who traveled strange ways to a strange place to work, to worry and wait, I pray for wholeness: of body, of spirit, of purpose. I pray most of all for reunion." 08:33 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who... would find the very idea of praying for them preposterous, I pray for the gentle and intricate. I pray for the simple and hard. I pray for steady work and stable income." 08:33 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who labour in the forgotten places, and who the careful and cruel would seek to forget in turn, I pray for only as much remembrance as they desire, and every drop of freedom they are owed." 08:35 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who suffer with the knowledge that they have been agents of suffering, I pray for love: the recognition of love from others, and the permission to love oneself." 08:36 <VoxPVoxD> "For they who have been born twice, and twice had that life stolen from them, I pray that they can find kinship beyond thievery." 08:37 <VoxPVoxD> There is no delay between the flash and the boom. The storm passes straight overhead. 08:37 <VoxPVoxD> "And... for they who love them, I pray for that love to be enough. I pray for them, as they are in their fullness... to be enough." 08:38 <VoxPVoxD> "Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness, and live—" 08:38 <VoxPVoxD> "He who pardons and absolves all those who truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy gospel—" 08:39 <VoxPVoxD> "I beseech him to grant us true repentance, and his Holy Spirit, that those things we do may please him—" 08:39 <VoxPVoxD> "—and that the rest of our lives hereafter may be righteous, and holy, so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 08:40 <VoxPVoxD> Something strikes the window. Hard enough to creak, but not hard enough to break. Willie's on her feet. Her left hand strays to the pocketknife that she's started carrying everywhere. 08:43 <VoxPVoxD> She gets closer to the window. Even without being able to see past her own wary reflection, she has the sense of shape, of something heavier than a shadow on the glass, at eye level... 08:44 <VoxPVoxD> The lightning flashes again. The dead bird slides ten bloody centimetres down the windowpane before the wind peels it off and leaves it for the worms to take after the rain has gone. 08:45 <VoxPVoxD> As the thunder rolls — more distant now — Willie is left staring at her own uncomprehending face. 08:47 <VoxPVoxD> She stands there, growing increasingly angry, as if an explanation will be forthcoming, that someone will tell her that the bird got caught in a storm and, disoriented by the night and its forces, flew as swiftly and truly as it could for the only warm thing the eye could see. 08:50 <VoxPVoxD> No one does. Even the wind softens its tone. Lightning flares again, with thunder slow to follow, and she sees the ghost of her reflection against the brief, brilliant illumination of the land, the lake, the storm... marred by the smear of blood across the window, stubborn against the slowing rain, obscuring her jaw, her throat, her chest. 08:51 <VoxPVoxD> As soon as the rain stops, Willie is out there to clean the smear from the window, but she leaves the bird for the worms, and Crime Farm for the city. At least for the night.