The stories we tell define us. So do the stories we don’t tell and the ones we never finish. When she was a young girl, five or six, Sarah loved to sit on her granny’s lap and nuzzle up, and Granny would tell Bible tales in that soft, precise voice of hers from the lowlands around Dumfries. The Good Samaritan, of course. The Pearl of Great Price. Noah and the Ark, Sarah liked that one: there was a song about the animals and they’d be cats and meow or wave their arms like elephants’ trunks or Sarah would jump down and hop like a kangaroo. Two by two. ‘We two,’ said Granny, but wee sometimes meant little and wee sometimes meant wee, like you did sitting down; it could all get a bit confusing. Granny would laugh. ‘Shall we two kangaroos have a wee wee-wee?’
She laughed a lot and so did Sarah, even though it sometimes felt as if she was being naughty for being happy. She didn’t tell anyone that, though. Then one day Granny got out her little white leather Bible with the silver-edged pages that were as thin as tissue, and she wet her finger and looked through, humming to herself as Sarah lay on the floor playing with an old wooden set of the ark and all the animals and Mr and Mrs Noah and the little white dove that was her favourite. Apart from the tigers.
‘Come here, lovely; listen to this one,’ said Granny, and Sarah shuffled on her bottom across the floor and leaned against Granny’s legs, one arm wrapped around a knee, sucking her thumb. Her daddy would say that she might be getting a bit old for that, but Granny let her do it while she told the story.
‘There was a man and a woman and they lived in the desert and they were terribly old, like me . . .’ Granny’s laugh was like a happy little hiss. ‘The man was called Abraham and his wife was called Sarah.’
That caught her attention.
‘Yes, like you, my love. She was a special lady.’ And Granny told how Sarah and her husband Abraham were both very old, they lived in a caravan – which was not a caravan like the one they stayed in on holiday at Camber Sands, but another name for a lot of tents and camels and a camp fire and servants (they had servants but they must have been very nice to them because they were nice people, because they were the good people in a story), the caravan was what you called all these people and things and animals as they moved through the desert together – and at night the men would sit around the fire and talk while the women stayed in the tent and cooked.
‘That’s not fair,’ said little Sarah, who was used to having her tea cooked by Daddy, and Granny laughed. ‘No, it’s not. I wish you’d been able to tell your grandad, bless his soul. But anyway . . . these two were old and they had not been able to have any children, which made them very sad. They would have been so jealous of me, sitting here with you like this, it’s such a blessing. They prayed about it and God told Abraham they would have children – as many as the stars, would you believe? That’s a lot, isn’t it? But nothing happened, the stork didn’t come and bring them a baby. Have I told you about the stork? Oh, that’s for another day then!’
She ruffled Sarah’s hair with her free hand, the Bible balanced on a knee but disregarded now that her memory had been refreshed. ‘So, one day Abraham was sitting under the shade of a tree they had found, when three men turned up. Mysterious men. Tall, dark and handsome, I like to think. Like your father. Do you know who they were?’
Sarah shook her head.
‘No, nor did Abraham. He had never seen them before, but they looked fine. They had nice robes and healthy, fat camels and there was a custom they had in those days – my own granny had it too on the farm: if a stranger came, you had to be nice to them and give them food, maybe even a place to sleep.’
‘Even if you didn’t know them? Strangers?’
‘Aye, pet. The world was different then. You’re quite right, you should never take sweets or go with a stranger, that’s true, but Abraham was a grown-up and he was just being nice to these men who were on a journey somewhere, so he offered them a cold drink and a bit of lunch, with a scone maybe.’
That made it all right as far as Sarah was concerned, because she had been a bit worried about the strangers, but there could be no harm in a scone.
‘Then one of the men asked where Sarah was and Abraham was really surprised, because he didn’t know how the man knew Sarah’s name. So he looked again and he saw this wasn’t any ordinary man, it was God himself.’
‘Wow!’
‘Ha! Yes, wow indeed.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I don’t know, pet, the Bible doesn’t say. But it was God anyway, and Sarah could hear him talking from where she was in the shade in the tent and she heard him say, “We will come back in a year’s time and you will have a child!” And do you know what Sarah did?’
Little Sarah shook her head again, just a tiny bit.
‘She laughed. She laughed at God, because she was old and very tired and not able to have babies any more.’
‘But it wasn’t funny.’
‘No, it wasn’t funny. It was sad. Sarah laughed at God because she was sad and angry and couldn’t have babies, but do you know what happened next? Sarah?’
But Sarah didn’t hear what happened next, because she had her hands over her ears and was running fast for the garden, elbows banging into things, tripping over the step and out into the sunshine, confused and upset about this person Sarah who was her, she was named after her, they were the same and Sarah could not have babies, Sarah could not have babies, she would not have babies and she loved babies, she really, really loved babies and she wanted to be a mummy and she wanted her mummy and she wanted her mummy so much it was a nasty, nasty pain that made her cry and she couldn’t see for tears and stumbled again and fell down on the grass, by the swing, sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.