Daniel Clarke sat upstairs on the bare floorboards of his bedroom, waiting for Father MacCarrick to arrive.
He had missed an appointment with the school counsellor this morning, and Daniel knew Carla was the sort of person who would definitely want an explanation as to why he hadn’t turned up.
He pushed thoughts about school away. He had other things to think about right now.
His mother had drilled him in the sorts of questions the priest might ask and what Daniel’s replies ought to be.
His mother didn’t know this but Father MacCarrick had already talked to him about what the correct responses should be when he called him to the sacristy yesterday.
The priest called him to the sacristy a lot but Daniel tried not to think about that, either.
‘This is your chance to put right all your wrongs, to repent.’ His mother frowned earlier in the day, shadowing the sign of the cross on herself. ‘God above only knows what Father MacCarrick sees in you. You’d better not let us all down.’
He didn’t want to be an altar server for a number of reasons he couldn’t discuss with anyone, least of all his mother. What if they found out at school? His life would be even more of a misery than it was now, if that were even possible.
‘He won’t make you a server just like that, you know,’ John Peters had told him at church yesterday as Daniel sat praying. ‘Only Father Mac’s favourites get to be altar boys.’
John was a seminarian, a student of the church, and he was often rude about Father MacCarrick when the priest wasn’t around.
‘The priest has to really like you. I mean really like you,’ John grinned, revealing furred yellow teeth. ‘Do you know what I mean, Danny Boy?’
John’s clawed hand slid down towards Daniel’s crotch, and the boy swung his legs to the side to protect himself. John had grabbed his balls hard before and it killed.
Father MacCarrick did like him, Daniel felt sure of that. Otherwise, he wouldn’t ask him to help file papers in his private office regularly or assist him in cleaning the vestments and sacred vessels in the sacristy.
Although why the priest needed his help at all puzzled Daniel.
Mrs Bream was the church’s regular volunteer cleaner and she had a detailed rota pinned up in the annexe which included the dusting of the sacristy.
Daniel could hear his mother busying around downstairs.
For once, she wasn’t lying on the sofa watching that American show that did DNA and lie detector tests on people who swore at each other and fought on stage.
He could hear plates and cutlery clinking.
His mother thought she was an important person at the church, but Father MacCarrick never let her do any of the special tasks, and the three ladies who arranged the flowers often whispered about her in the back when she sat praying in the front pews before service.
His mother thought she knew everything but she knew nothing. Nothing at all.
She was clueless about school, and she was even more clueless about what happened during the times Father MacCarrick called him to the sacristy.