Pastor Emmanuel Kwame Osei
Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Pastor Emmanuel leads the Ghanaian fellowship that rents the parish hall under St Botolph's on Sunday afternoons, for forty pounds a month. Forty or fifty strong, with a keyboard, a drummer, grandmothers in gold and blue with headwraps to match, and small children asleep against their aunts, they are the gladdest thing in Aldcaster, and some of their faces are the nurses, carers and night-shift workers who keep the town going. Their singing comes up through the vestry floor while the church council meets upstairs. Emmanuel is a big, unhurried man with enormous hands, a laugh that fills a room, and no grievance in him anywhere. When Arthur comes down to ask, kindly, whether they might keep it down, Emmanuel puts his hand on his heart. "Of course, my friend."