Chapter 8

“We’d better go up to the gallery,” I murmured, but Mum spotted us. Well, with me in the psychedelic cardigan topped off with Aunty Mags’s tea-cosy, and Neil still wound up in Aunty Des’s scarf, she’d have had to have been struck blind not to.

She stood up and waved frantically, and an old man in the pew behind turned puce as her breasts jiggled in front of him in her low-cut top. “We’ve saved you a couple of spaces,” she called, her voice carrying effortlessly all through the jostling, laughing crowd to where Neil and I stood by the font.

“Sorry,” I murmured to Neil. “I tried to save you.”

“We’re in a church,” he said, shrugging as we made our way up the aisle. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“You want me to answer that?” We sidled into the pew, and I laid my saxophone case on the kneeler. “Mum, this is Neil.”

She gave him a good look up and down before extending a hand. “Lily.”