Chapter 21: Washed Cups

The table broke down the middle with a crack that echoed off the rafters.

Dennis lay in the wreckage on his back, with his glasses gone and one leg of the trestle across his chest.

Joss stood over him with his fists still closed.

He was breathing hard through his nose.

"Joss," I said.

He didn't hear me.

"Joss."

The old brother with the white beard walked across the hall and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Enough, lad," he said. "He's down."

Joss's fists opened.

It took him a while.

Behind me, the baby had started to cry, thin and furious.

Poppy had her back against the wall and her whole body wrapped around him.

I got my arm round her and held on.

"I've got you," I said. "Dennis never touched the baby. Nobody did."

"He said my son," she said. "He said it to my face."

"I know."

"He's not his."

"No, Poppy. He's yours. He's only ever been yours."

Dennis sat up.

There was blood in his grey beard and he looked, for the first time since I had known him, like a man his age.

He felt around for his glasses, and the young prospect who couldn't have been twenty picked them out of the splinters and held them out.

Then Dennis seemed to realise what he had done and dropped them.

"I'm your president," Dennis said, to the hall.

The old brother let him have the silence.

"It was a lie," Dennis said. "Brothers. A girl with a grudge and a husband with a motive. You've all known me twenty years."

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