Page 13 of Hook, Line and Single

‘An accountability group. It’s like a self-help thing, to keep you focused on what’s important and not be distracted by temptation.’

Bloody hell. If Sam decides this is her route to true love, she’s going to need a whole drawer of vibrators to keep her from going mad. Except, knowing this lot, vibrators are probably banned as well.

5

‘So, tell me about this sudden decision to go to church,’ my younger sister Em asks with a grin as we sit down for lunch. ‘Have you two become God-botherers now?’

‘Mind your language, Emerald,’ my father warns her. ‘We didn’t raise you to be disparaging about people who see the world differently from you.’ Mum and Dad’s decision to name us both after gemstones, because we’re apparently the jewels in their crown, has been a lot easier for me than Em, who was bullied a bit at school for having a ‘posho’s’ name. Unsurprisingly, the only people to use her full name are Mum and Dad; to everyone else she’s firmly Em.

Em rolls her eyes theatrically but otherwise ignores Dad. ‘Did Jesus come to you in a vision, like St Paul on the road to Damascus?’ she asks me. ‘Are you going to become a nun?’

‘You’d make a good nun,’ Mum observes. ‘You could read all day and it’s not as if it would have a detrimental effect on your love life because you don’t have one. They’d probably even let you keep Samson.’

I’m just about to tell her what I think of that idea when I notice that Dad is looking at me quizzically. ‘What?’ I ask him.

‘Nothing,’ he replies. ‘Just trying to picture you in a habit. I reckon it would suit you. Plus, it would give me something to brag about at the golf club. My daughter, the nun.’

‘I’m not becoming a nun, OK?’ I say crossly. ‘I went because Sam asked me.’

‘Are you becoming a nun then, Sam?’ Em asks her.

‘I might as well, at this rate,’ Sam replies gloomily. ‘Although, if the people at convents are anything like the crowd this morning, they’d probably burn me at the stake rather than let me in.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘It was like stepping back into the Victorian age, but with better music,’ Sam says despondently. ‘My plan was simple. Go to a church where there are lots of nice single men and meet Mr Right. Not exactly hard.’

‘Seems straightforward enough,’ Em agrees. ‘Were there lots of nice single men?’

‘Loads, but they’re kept strictly under lock and key. Get this: you’re not allowed to spend time alone with any of them unless you’re covenanted. Isn’t that the term, Ruby?’

‘Yup. You have to sign an agreement saying you’re not going to get up to any funny business and then attend a weekly group to make sure you’re not falling off the wagon.’

‘You can’t be serious.’ Em’s eyes are wide.

‘Deadly,’ Sam tells her. ‘Everyone I spoke to was totally on message, but then I talked to this one guy, in the education team, and it got a whole load worse.’

‘They all have branded polo shirts,’ I chip in. ‘We worked out in the car on the way here that the colour denotes your role. Black is welcome team, green is group coordinator or something like that, red is education and training, and blue is still a mystery. Sorry, go on, Sam.’

‘Yeah, so I was talking to Bryan, with a “y”, as he kept informing me. Before you even get to the covenanting stuff, or applying to get engaged, there are all these hoops you have to jump through. It’s even more complicated if, as he put it, you have a “sexual past”.’

‘A what?’

‘Exactly. I wanted to ask him how many twenty-eight-year-olds he knew that didn’t have a sexual past, but then I looked around the room and thought he probably knew quite a few. So, anyway, if you have this so-called “sexual past”, you have to attend and graduate from a course calledThe Mary Magdalene Institute.’

‘What the bloody hell is that? I hope that’s just for the girls, and the boys have their own course calledThe Serpent between my legs beguiled me, and I did enter her.’

‘Don’t be crude, Emerald,’ Mum scolds.

‘Nice Biblical reference though,’ I tell her.

‘Certainly better than theirs,’ Dad agrees. ‘It’s lazy theology to assume Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, which is what I suspect they’re getting at. There’s no evidence in the Bible that she was.’

‘Wasn’t she the woman caught in adultery?’ Mum asks.

‘Nope. Again, people make the association, but there’s no evidence.’

‘When did you become such a Biblical scholar?’ Em is obviously as surprised by this sudden outpouring of theology from Dad as I am.

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