When I look at my sins (and if I think they’re sins, then they are sins), I can see the appeal of born-again Christianity. I suspect that it’s not the Christianity that is so alluring; it’s the rebirth. Because who wouldn’t wish to start all over again?

12

When all the England football fans were rioting at some World Cup or another, I asked David why it was always the English and never the Scots, and he explained that the Scots’ fans refusal to misbehave was a kind of weird form of aggression: they hate us so much that even though a few of them would probably like to fight, they won’t, because they want to prove that they are better than us. Well, Molly has become a Scot. Ever since Tom hit the repulsive Christopher, she has insisted on being as nice as she possibly can to the repulsive Hope. Every day Hope comes round after school and smells the place out; and the more she smells, the keener Molly is for her to return the following evening, and the more Tom is made aware of his own unpleasantness to his Hope equivalent. I am seriously beginning to worry about Molly’s mental health: how many eight-year-olds would want to spend day after day doing something so unappealing just to show that they are morally superior to a sibling?

And now we are approaching Molly’s birthday, and she is insisting that she doesn’t want a party; she wants to spend the day with us and her brother and her new best friend. To our immense discredit, two of the five people involved are not so keen.

‘She never gets invited anywhere,’ says Molly by way of explanation. They are very different, my son and my daughter, particularly at the moment. My son would make the same observation to justify the opposite course of action. Someone who was never invited anywhere would, ipso facto, be excluded from any party that Tom might contemplate throwing.

‘But she smells,’ Tom points out.

‘Yes,’ says Molly, almost affectionately. ‘But she can’t help it.’

‘Yes, she can.’

‘How?’

‘She could have a bath. And use deodorant. And she doesn’t have to fart all the time, does she?’

‘I think she does, yes.’

I am struck suddenly both by the importance of this argument (it is, after all, about nothing less than how much we owe our fellow humans, and whether it is our duty to love everyone regardless of their personal attributes) and the form that it has taken—namely, a small child’s flatulence. I stifle a laugh, because this is a serious business. The idea of driving to an amusement park in a small family car with Hope is not, ultimately, very funny.

‘Why don’t you just have a big birthday party and invite Hope to that?’

‘She can do what she wants,’ says David.

‘Of course she can do what she wants. I just want to make sure that this is what she wants. I don’t want to have to look at photos of Molly’s ninth birthday party and try to remember who the hell she spent it with.’

‘Why not? We don’t know hardly anyone in our wedding photos any more.’

‘Yes. And look what…’ I stop myself just in time. Bitter contemplation of the wreck that is our marriage would be inappropriate right now. ‘…Look what was the cause of that.’ In my anxiety to finish the sentence seamlessly I have begun to speak like an Eastern European exchange student.

However, if you wanted to look what was the cause of that, you couldn’t have found a neater illustration of how our marriage became a wreck: over the next few years David taunted and teased and sneered at all the guests at our wedding, our friends and colleagues and relatives, for years and years until they dropped us.

‘It’s my birthday. I can do what I want.’

‘It’s not for a couple of weeks. Why don’t you wait until you mention it to her, just to make sure?’ It’s not as if she’ll be busy, after all.

‘I don’t want to.’ And she goes to the telephone with more malicious glee, it seems to me, than is strictly appropriate for an act of such selfless generosity.

So. To recap: I wish to be forgiven for my trespasses (which include committing adultery, dishonouring my parents, being rude to the borderline mentally ill, e.g., Barmy Brian, and even lying to my own children about where I live), and yet I will not forgive those who trespass against me, even if they are eight-year-old girls whose only real trespass is smelling bad. And having grey skin. And not being terribly bright. Right. OK, then. Let me think about that, and I’ll come back to you.

I don’t even know I’m going to say the words until they come out of my mouth, and when they do I feel slightly faint. Perhaps I was feeling faint already—it is Sunday morning, and I have not yet eaten, despite having left the flat a couple of hours ago. Perhaps if I’d had a bowl of cereal as soon as I got home, I would never have said anything.

‘I’m going to church. Does anyone want to come?’

David and the children look at me with some interest, for some time. It’s as if, having said something eccentric, I might follow this up by doing something eccentric, like stripping naked or running amok with a kitchen knife. I am suddenly glad that it is not my job to convince people that going to church is a perfectly healthy leisure activity.

‘I told you,’ says Tom.

‘What did you tell me? When?’

‘Ages ago. When Dad was giving all our stuff away. I said we’d have to go to church in the end.’

I had forgotten that. So Tom was right, in a way he could never have predicted.

‘This is nothing to do with your father,’ I say. ‘And no one has to go anywhere.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ says Molly.

‘What church?’ says David.

Good question.

‘The one round the corner.’ There must be one round the corner. They’re like betting shops, churches, aren’t they? There’s always one round the corner, and you never notice them if you don’t use them.

‘What corner?’

‘We could go with Pauline,’ says Molly. ‘I know which church she goes to.’ Pauline is a schoolfriend of Molly’s. She’s Afro-Caribbean. Oh, God.

‘That wasn’t… I was thinking of a different sort of church.’

‘Pauline says it’s fun, hers.’

‘I’m not looking for a fun church.’

‘What are you looking for?’ David asks, relishing my discomfort.

‘Just… I want to sit at the back and not join in. I expect Pauline’s is a… well, a joining-in sort of church, isn’t it?’

‘What do you want to go for if you don’t join in? What’s the point of that?’

‘I just want to listen.’

‘I’m sure we can listen at Pauline’s church.’

It’s the lack of conviction I want, of course. I was hoping for a mild, doubtful liberal, possibly a youngish woman, who would give a sermon about, say, asylum seekers and economic migrants, or maybe the National Lottery and greed, and then apologize for bringing up the subject of God. And somehow in the process I would be forgiven my imperfections, permitted not to like Hope and Barmy Brian, made to understand that just because I wasn’t good, it didn’t mean I was bad. That sort of thing. And maybe that’s exactly what Pauline’s church is like—how would I know? I am, however, presuming that it isn’t. I am presuming that at Pauline’s church there is no doubt, simply joyful and committed worship, and I am presuming that because it is easier to stereotype racially than it is to find out the truth. So there we have it. I get up in the morning determined to do something approximating to the right thing, and within two hours find something else to feel guilty about.

‘They go to a different sort of church, don’t they, Mum?’ says Tom.

‘Who are “they”?’ I ask sharply. If I’m going down, I’m going to take them with me.

‘Pauline’s family,’ says Tom, puzzled.

‘Oh. I thought you were being… Never mind.’

Because, of course, it wasn’t him that was being anything. It was me. As usual.