Page 130 of The Missing Sister

‘And how’s your family, Mary?’

‘We all caught a cold a few weeks back, but we’re better now, thank you,’ Merry said as she sat down. ‘Mammy is much better too, but this small one wants a lot of milk.’

‘And your father?’

‘Well, he has more glasses of his whiskey now than he used to and sometimes he looks sad...’ Merry shook her head. ‘I don’t know why, Ambrose, because we’re just after moving to our new house, the harvest was a healthy one and...’ Merry shrugged. ‘Sometimes, I just can’t understand adults.’

‘No, Mary,’ Ambrose replied as he suppressed a smile, ‘sometimes I can’t either, and I am one! Now then, shall I read you a story?’

‘Can it be “The Little Match Girl”?’

‘Well now, as it’s Christmas Eve, how about I read a new Christmas story to you?’

‘Yes please.’ Merry watched as he reached for what looked like a very old book on the table beside him.

‘This story is by an English author called Charles Dickens. It’s quite a grown-up story, Mary, and long too, so we may only get through part of it today. It also has things called ghosts in it. Do you know what ghosts are?’

‘Oh yes, Ambrose! Mammy’s after telling us fairy stories about the old times in Ireland and there are ghosts in those. Me and Katie think they’re real, but Ellen and Nora say we’re eejits because of it.’

‘I wouldn’t call you an eejit, Mary, but my opinion is the same as your sisters: ghosts don’t exist. However, sometimes it’s fun to be scared, isn’t it?’

‘I think so, but not at midnight, when everyone in the house is sleeping except for me.’

‘I think that you are clever enough to understand the difference between real life and stories. Perhaps the best thing for me to do is to start reading and you must tell me to stop if you get frightened, all right?’

Merry nodded, her eyes wide.

‘So, this story is called...’ Ambrose held out the page to Mary and pointed at the title.

‘A Christmas Carol!’

‘Well done, Mary. It’s the story of a man called Ebenezer Scrooge. Perhaps if you think of the meanest person you know, who always looks unhappy, you can imagine what he’s like.’

‘Like Mrs Cavanagh, you mean?’ Merry asked, then clapped a hand over her mouth as she realised what she’d said.

Ambrose gave a chuckle. ‘If you wish, though Father O’Brien would call that a bit un-Christian of us. Not that it matters to me, of course.’

‘What do you mean? Are you not a Catholic?’ Merry asked as she suddenly realised that, even though Ambrose was great friends with Father O’Brien, she never saw him at Mass on Sundays when he was down here from Dublin.

‘Ah now,’ he said, taking off his spectacles and cleaning them on his handkerchief. Without them, he looked like a little mole. ‘That is a big question, Mary.’

‘Is it? But everyone is Catholic,’ she said.

‘Actually, there are many different religions around the world,’ he said, putting his spectacles back on his nose. ‘And Catholicism is just one of them. There are Hindus in India, for example, who believe in many gods—’

‘But there’s only one god!’ she protested.

‘There is in the Catholic belief, yes, but there are people on this earth who worship different gods.’

‘Does that mean that they will all go to hell?’ she asked. ‘Because they don’t believe in the real God?’

‘Is that what you think should happen to them, Mary?’ he asked her.

Merry rubbed her nose in frustration because Ambrose had a habit of asking her questions back whenever she askedhimsomething.

‘I think...’ She chewed her lip. ‘I think if they’re good on earth, they shouldn’t go to hell, because hell is only for bad people. But if you don’t believe in God at all, that makes you very bad.’

‘So if I don’t believe in God, it must make me bad?’ he said.