Acts and Omissions Read Free

Close.
    An almost full moon hangs picturesquely in the sky above the spire. Wind stirs the branches of the Christmas tree, making the lights dance. The lights are white. They are tasteful, because this is the Close, not Renfold. All around in the historic houses we can see windows – round ones, arched ones, tall, narrow ones – with pretty trees glowing. It is like a huge Advent calendar.
    Down in the Lower Town there is some vulgar roistering. You can probably hear the shouts. Sirens tear the night. A rocket goes off prematurely. It is five to midnight. And now the big door of the canon precentor’s house opens and people spill out. Next comes a troupe of lay clerks from Vicars’ Hall. Stragglers from other houses join the throng and stand shivering on the west front. The precentor carries a jingling box of champagne flutes, his wife and sons have the cava. Here comes the canon chancellor, Mr Happy, and here’s the dean, Marion Randall – yes, a woman dean! In deepest Lindfordshire! – with her supercilious wine merchant husband.
    Someone asks, ‘Where’s Freddie?’ Where’s Freddie, where’s Freddie, goes up the cry. Yoo hoo, Freddieeee!
    Freddie woke with a lurch. What the fuck? He was up on the palace roof still. Ah, nuts. What time was it? The first boom of Great William rocked the air. He scrambled to his feet. Naw. He’d been so-o-oo going to enjoy this New Year, and he’d now fucking missed it?
    Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
    But just then: how silently, how silently! A flock of red Chinese lanterns floated up from some hidden garden and over the cathedral. Freddie watched them in wonder. They trailed wishes behind them. Prayers. Resolutions. This year everything will be different. I will be a better person. Let it be all right. Off and away they sailed into the night, carried by the wind.
    And the days of Auld Lang Syne.
    Then, sure-footed as Amadeus, the cathedral cat, Freddie made his way back over the bishop’s roof to the window he’d left open.
    At the last second a slate slipped under him.
    He clawed at air. And fell.

Chapter 2
    New Year’s Day dawns meek and mild over the diocese of Lindchester. The dog-walkers are out in municipal parks and suburban streets, or squelching along the Linden’s banks, armed with biodegradable scented dog-poop bags and tennis balls. Here and there we spot hungover parents trying not to vomit as they bend wincingly to push small people along on their Christmas scooters and tractors and bikes. It gets better, we want to tell them. Your babies will learn to sleep through, they’ll grow up and leave home, and one day you will understand what all those kind old women meant when they admonished you to ‘enjoy them while they’re little’.
    Father Dominic is awake. It’s such a nice morning that he’s taken his coffee and croissant out on to his rubbly patio – with 300 vicarages devouring money, the diocesan housing officer is not going to stump up for something as frivolous as a patio, unless Dominic makes a total nuisance of himself, and he won’t, because he is cursed with empathy and can imagine how horrible it must be to be a diocesan housing officer – and after he’s smoked a cheeky cigar, he will get out his iPhone and say the Morning Office, using the Common Prayer app.
    The New Year is smiling upon him. Look at the sunshine on the birch twigs! And there’s a little chaffinch! Well, considering how much he drank last night, he’s got off rather lightly, he thinks; because he is still pished. He casts his mind back. Probably oughtn’t to have slagged off Paul Henderson like that. Dominic holds the office of bishop in high regard, even when he does not entirely like or esteem the individual holders of that office. He does not for one minute believe Paul is a closet queen. Oh Lord, by the age of fifty-three he really ought to have grown out of