Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
St Botolph's is Aldcaster's great medieval parish church: eight hundred years of stone, Grade One listed, riding above the fen like a ship run aground. It has a ring of six bells, a vestry with an old black-and-green safe set into the thickness of the wall, and a side chapel where the early service is said in winter because the nave will not warm for six people. The lead on the north aisle is lifting, the rain comes in over the food-bank crates, and the roof fund is seven thousand pounds short. Thirty-odd come on a Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoons the hall below the vestry is let to a Ghanaian fellowship, and then the old building is full of singing.