But we don’t know for certain. How could we? We weren’t there. She didn’t exactly keep a journal of her life. We’re just told that the Holy Ghost came down with an angel or something and…Naturally, I don’t know how it was supposed to be managed but it was a miracle, wasn’t it? There she was a virgin one minute and pregnant the next and then in nine months — there was this little baby and she was holding him probably not quite believing he was real and counting his fi ngers and toes. He was hers, really hers, the baby she’d longed for…I mean, if you believe in miracles. If you do.”

She hadn’t realised that she’d begun to cry until she saw the man’s expression change. Then the sheer oddity of their situation made her want to laugh instead. It was wildly absurd, this psychic pain. They were passing it between them like a tennis ball.

He dug a handkerchief out of a pocket of his overcoat, and he pressed it, crumpled, into her hand. “Please.” His voice was earnest. “It’s quite clean. I’ve only used it once. To wipe the rain from my face.”

Deborah laughed shakily. She pressed the linen beneath her eyes and returned it to him.

“Thoughts link up like that, don’t they? You don’t expect them to. You think you’ve quite protected yourself. Then all of a sudden you’re saying something that seems so reasonable and safe on the surface, but you’re not safe at all, are you, from what you’re trying not to feel.”

He smiled. The rest of him was tired and ageing, lines at the eyes and flesh giving way beneath his chin, but his smile was lovely. “It’s the same for me. I came here merely for a place to walk and think that would be out of the rain, and I stumbled on this drawing instead.”

“And thought of St. Joseph when you didn’t want to?”

“No. I’d been thinking of him anyway, after a fashion.” He tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket and went on, his tone becoming more determinedly light.