Page 1 of The Altar Girls

MONDAY

1

Eight-year-old Willow Devine had never seen so much snow in her short life, and a surge of excitement made her toes tingle. It had snowed for a day and a night before the ice set in, and then more snow had fallen on top of the ice.

She pulled on her fleece and zipped up her flowery padded jacket over it, then jammed her hat on her head and shouted up the stairs.

‘Going outside, Mam.’

She flung back the door, jumped down the step and skidded onto the pristine lawn. She marvelled at the depth of her footprints behind her. Such fun. It was just getting bright, even though the sky was still more dark than light, and she wondered if she’d have time to make a snowman. Maybe not. Mam got angry when she wasn’t ready when she called. And Willow knew it was never a good move to be naughty on the morning after her mam had been on a night out.

No time for a snowman. Plenty of time for a snow angel. She leapt onto a part of the lawn that she hadn’t yet marked with her feet and lay down, moving her arms up and down and her legs in and out, feeling snowflakes melt in her open mouth.

The cold almost froze her legs through her thin leggings. Uh-oh. She forgot they’d get wet. Too late now, though she knew Mam would be mad. But wouldn’t the snow cheer her up? Adults could be stuffy sometimes, most times, but the lovely white fluffy snow should bring a smile even to the grimmest face.

Thinking of grim faces, she caught sight of Harper, her little sister, at the bedroom window. Willow waved and Harper turned away. Time to leave the fun and get ready for school. Ugh.

As she stood up, careful not to undo her lovely snow angel, Willow noticed someone bundled up against the weather standing by the gate of the house across the road. She raised her hand to wave, but whoever it was disappeared into the shadows. She thought it was an adult, and adults were odd creatures. Nothing new there, she thought, and ran inside.

2

The inside of the window was so iced over that when the boy put his finger to it, it stuck fast. Studying the shapes, he mused that they were like a tapestry of characters, and he found himself making up stories about them. Little frost figures caught in a million spiderwebs. Wasn’t he one of those figures?

It was difficult to see much outside, because it was dark. But with the lights from the village he could just about decipher the white caps on the waves and the frost on the reedy grass surrounding the caravan that had become his home.

He sighed and opened his book. He’d read it twenty-two times already, because he only had three books. He wished he had more. A new storybook. Maybe even some new Lego. He’d made all that he could with the little he had. He missed playing with his Lego. Creating things from tiny blocks of plastic. Building houses and cities and imagining a world he could inhabit. A make-believe world. One where he had two parents who loved each other and weren’t divorced. Where he had friends to play with. Someone to talk to. Somewhere it wasn’t cold and wet and frosty all the time.

The waves continued to crash as the tears rolled uninterrupted down the boy’s pale cheeks and settled at the corners of his cracked lips.

3

The big freeze had been well forecast, and an orange ice warning was in place, but when the bad weather arrived, no one was ready for it. The roads were like an ice rink after it had snowed the previous night following the freezing rain; car engines stalled and windscreens cracked under boiling water from kettles. A&E departments were overrun with breaks and fractures. The elderly had been warned to stay indoors, but Alfie’s mother had told him that no one could tell an eighty-year-old what to do. Just look at his granny. And he’d smiled. His gran, with a sneaky smile, usually did the opposite to what anyone asked.

None of this bothered Alfie. He was going to choir practice. Mam said he couldn’t miss it. His big chance to shine. A solo performance in the cathedral on Christmas Eve. He had to practise every minute God gave him. It was still two weeks away, but he knew all the notes and had memorised the Latin phrases in one of the hymns without understanding a word. Mam said that practice made perfect, and only perfect would suffice for her Alfie. You’d think he was two, not nearly twelve, he thought.

Her words rang in his ears as he pushed in the door to the sacristy before turning to wave to her as she drove off. He assumed she returned his wave, but the sheet of snow whipping a diagonal line across the churchyard in the yellow hue of the outside wall light, blurred his vision.

The chill he’d felt outside died as he entered the heated cathedral. He tugged off his ribbed hat (your granny knitted that, don’t lose it) and stuffed it into his pocket. A radiator clicked and clacked somewhere close by as he made his way out to the silent sanctuary.

‘Hmm. Where’s everyone?’ he muttered, feeling like Kevin in Home Alone.

He was rarely first for anything, even though Mam did her best with him and she worked long hours so it wasn’t always easy, but it seemed like he was first here tonight.

He glanced around. Father Maguire wasn’t seated at the organ; the lid was shut firmly in place. Lights shone brightly behind the altar and the choking odour of incense hung in the air.

‘Hello?’

His voice echoed back in the cavernous silence. Had he got the wrong evening? Maybe, but Mam was usually like a clock where his choir practice was concerned, despite her never being right when it was soccer in the summer.

Even those two kiss-arses, Naomi and Willow, weren’t around, and they were usually there before him.

He made his way back across the sanctuary to the sacristy. The old iron radiator still clanged away in the corner as he opened the heavy door and stepped out into the blizzard. He’d have to walk home. If Mam had let him have a phone like his friends, he could have called her to come pick him up. It wasn’t that far to walk, though. Along Main Street and down Gaol Street and his apartment was next door to the new courthouse. Not far at all. If he didn’t fall on the ice. The snow would slow him down, though.

With his hat once again pulled firmly over his ears, he was about to turn for home when someone came up behind him. He swirled on the ball of his foot, ready to swivel to see who it was. Alfie wasn’t scared. He was almost twelve, and twelve-year-olds were braver than eleven-year-olds, weren’t they? Even so, a trickle of unease slid down beneath the wool of his hat at the back of his neck and under his knitted scarf, settling along his Ireland rugby shirt collar.

Holding his breath, he turned around.

‘Oh, Mrs Coyne, it’s only you.’ Relief flooded through him like a burst dam. He smiled at the older lady. ‘You shouldn’t be out in this weather. My mam says it’s cold enough to get frostbite. You don’t want to get frostbite, do you?’

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