Dougal and Ted sat at the table, both of them hunched over the laptop. Ted was slowly losing the will to live. He loved his curate very much, too much, sometimes, but having to explain this over and over again to him was starting to break Ted.

"Let's just go over this one more time," Ted said slowly, with his head in his hands.

"Okay," nodded Dougal, his face full of concentration.

"When we talked to Father Stone, he wasn't actually inside the laptop," explained Ted.

"Not inside the laptop," Dougal repeated. "Are you sure, Ted? Because it looked like he was," replied Dougal, his brows knitted together.

"It did look like it," agreed Ted. "But he wasn't actually inside the laptop. He was sitting at home in his house using his laptop."

"But how could we see him, Ted?!" exclaimed Dougal. "Can't you see how I'm getting confused?"

"I can," agreed Ted, to keep the peace. "But on our laptop, we have something called Zoom."

"Oh, like when you zoom in on a pair of binoculars?"

"Dougal," Ted warned.

"I still don't think it was right that we spied on those nuns, Ted."

"Dougal," said Ted. "Zoom is just the name of the program we're using."

"Right."

"Father Stone is in his house, very far away."

"Like the cows."

"Like the cows. Very far away."

"Okay. And he can hear us talking?"

"Yes – so you've got to stop talking about you willy. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Ted."

Mrs Doyle darted out from the kitchen. "It's 8 o'clock, Fathers. You know what time it is!"

"FECK OFF!" bellowed Jack.

"We need to go outside and clap," announced Mrs Doyle.

"But we did that last week," whined Dougal, getting up from the chair.

"I know," said Ted, following Dougal and Mrs Doyle. "We do it every Thursday at 8 o'clock to show our appreciation for the NHS workers who are fighting the virus on the front line."

"I don't see why they need a clap. Surely, we can give them something more useful, like money?" said Dougal, as Mrs Doyle opened the door.

Mrs Doyle and Ted both turned to each other and laughed. "Don't be silly, Dougal. This way the NHS workers know that we appreciate all their hard work and dedication. They already get money," scoffed Ted.

All three of them stood on the doorstep and begun to clap. They could hear no one else because the next house was over two miles away, but they clapped nonetheless into the cold night air.

After a minute or two, Dougal stopped clapping. "My hands hurt," he announced, then wrinkled his nose up and sneezed very loudly. Mrs Doyle and Ted immediately stopped clapping and turned to Dougal.

"Dougal, tell me you were just pretending to sneeze."

"I was just pretending to sneeze, Ted."

"Are you telling the truth?"

"No, but you told me to say it."

"Dougal," Ted cried, leading the younger man in by his elbow. "Upstairs, now."

"What have I done, Ted?"

"Nothing, Dougal, but you need to go to your room."

"You only send me upstairs when I've been naughty, Ted. Like that time when I smoked all of your cigarettes and drank all of Jack's whiskey… and accidentally told Father Stone about my willy."

"DRINK!" cried Jack from the sitting room.

"You've done nothing wrong, Dougal, it's just time for you to go to bed."

"Oh, but Ted, you said I could watch the My Family re-runs at nine!"

"I've changed my mind. Go on, up to bed with you," he said, pointing up the stairs.

"Te-ed," whined Dougal as he stomped up the stairs.

Mrs Doyle closed the front door, looking very worried. "Do you think it's the virus, Father?"

"No, I'm sure it's nothing, but we best get him tested just in case."