It was a shame, Sal couldn't help thinking, when now that she felt more alive than she had done since Mike had gone, that such a palpable atmosphere of doom had descended upon the village. Here was Tip, rushing in to sit beside her, approximately thirty seconds before the Guild meeting was due to start, lank hair hanging limply over her face, not quite masking the trauma of a marriage in turmoil, whose days could well be numbered, and "If Eileen tells me off today, I think I'll cry," she muttered, keeping her head down for what was probably the first time in her life.

Eileen, for her part, stood before them, her posture as stately as ever, if a little less upright, following the loss of her father, before he had ever had the chance to give her away to another man; to transfer her into someone else's care, so that now she was trapped in limbo, neither a daughter nor a wife, alone in this room full of subordinates. She cleared her throat, with a "Well, now. Are we all we're to be?"

As she did so, Kate Bales, who, for all her youth and girlishness, perhaps had a stronger acquaintance with death than any of them, seemed to fight the urge to roll her eyes. Poor Kate, who had been a widow before she had been a woman, and now whose secret only Sal knew. She had finally begun to come into her own, and her tortured expression would linger, Sal knew, the blood staining her memory long after it been scrubbed away.

Everyone looked around now, scanning the room, and Sal went to point out that Queenie wasn't there, stopping herself just in time, as she remembered that the verger had been taken ill, quite suddenly, last week, reminding them all, once more, of exactly how tenuous their grip on life was becoming. By way of contrast, Delilah was recovering, as well as could be expected, from her accident, and she sat, crumpled, in the corner, leaning heavily into her seat. She was still very much alive, albeit broken in body and in spirit, even if her mind was apt, like Tash's Spike, to go wandering.

"Susie isn't here yet!" Rosie yelled, before turning her attention back to her phone, which was permanently attached to her hand now that her son had been released. His time in prison didn't seem to have taught him the error of his ways, and he was driving his poor mother to distraction. As if she hadn't already got enough to deal with, now she was fraught with worry about him, dreading the day when he went further than he meant to; when he really, seriously hurt somebody, or worse. Tragedy crept up on most of them, hovering in the periphery, biding its time, lying in wait for the moment to strike. But there were also those, like Rosie's son, that chose to go out looking for it.

Sal's eyes went automatically to Caroline, but she didn't even seem to have registered her friend's absence, so distracted was she by a fascinating patch of floor, and the nurse couldn't help feeling sorry for her, in spite of herself. Poor Caroline, she had only just learnt what it meant to suffer, and Sal offered up yet another silent prayer for her son's safe return.

"Yes, well..." Eileen began, not quite saying what they were all thinking: that it was a truth, if not universally acknowledged, then at least whispered all over the village, that Susie had not been looking at all well recently. She was saved, however, from having to verbalise this, when the woman herself appeared, present and correct, if a shell of her former self, the entire Guild's sorrows reflected in the shadows under her eyes. Wordlessly, she took her seat next to Caroline, looking more haunted than the rest of them combined, as if she might have breathed her last a long time since.