His plan for Josiah was a brilliant one, set at the centre of court. God has a plan for each and every one of us He creates. Who are you to create a life where I have refused it? I knew then that it was an answer to my prayers, to the nights I have spent on my knees asking why our family has suffered such humiliation: it was my fault. How dare you? My gaze flew to the front of the church, to the cross, soaring up before the altar. But even as I dropped to my knees, the voice came again. And as I closed my eyes, the words came to me in a torrent: How dare you? My eyelids snapped open. Saints gazed upon me from the old stained-glass windows left from Queen Mary’s reign. A force loving but sad, intolerably heavy. Today I felt, more powerful than ever, the weight of God’s disapproval pressing down on me as I slipped into the deserted church and took a pew. One cries thank you the other forgive me. When I pray, there are two voices inside my head, gabbling over one another. Am I praising God or serving a penance? For each time I step into the church there is a nagging guilt at the core of me. In accordance with my custom, I went to All Souls Church to give thanks for the daughter they told me would never come.

And a mother, who should nurture and protect, but instead . .” A betrayal of trust at such a young age, from those instinct prompts us to hold most dear . . . ‘Believe me, Mrs Bainbridge, I feel deeply for you. Or would she? A part of her, a small treacherous part, must want it to be known or she would not have written it, she would not have told him. First through coercion and then through a sort of mental necessity, you have hidden the fact that your parents mistreated you.’ If she still had a voice she would scream, No, no, speak of anything but that. And I think that’s what you have done, Mrs Bainbridge: drawn a veil. I cannot pretend to be ignorant of the hints you drop, however much natural delicacy would prefer to draw a veil over the subject. Childish memories, childish thoughts, that if she squeezed her eyes shut, somehow Dr Shepherd would not be able to see her. ‘You, I deduce, are afraid of becoming like either of your parents.’ They were bound to come, of course: the pinpricks of light in her vision and the rush like water in her ears. We are afraid of the things inside us – be they memories, sickness or sinful urges.’ He tilted his head.

But do you know what really scares us? It is not things that go bump – or even hiss – in the night. “You have written of these “companions”, as you call them.

The silent companions by laura purcell