The fog was a veritable swirl of grease at half past nine when she left the house. Harold had already left to deliver his lecture, having tucked a small message near her hat (she did not know when precisely he had started these silly yet strangely pleasant little mannerisms).

Faces blended into greying fog as she passed the Fleet River, saw the vaguely dark outlines of what must be the Heath in the background, as she slowly strolled into Bayham Street.

Rather belatedly, and more than a little stupidly, she realised that she had forgotten to ask Millicent what her actual address was, which number, and she was left standing in the almost tangible fog, staring at identical house after identical house, for moments that bled into car horns and the sounds of people on the streets.

And what had she come here for, after all? To see figures come and go, to settle down at tea and chatter about carrots and jobs (or, rather, a lack thereof), to form a childless mothers group? (She tried to ignore the self-inflicted stab wound that grated and tore at her stomach at that thought.)

In that instant, something slipped past her arm (a breeze? A leaf?), and she felt it, heard it- that strange, incandescent thread that pulsed, that was somehow tied to that wretched painting, that she remembered from Eustace Clarence (even, yes, even in their disagreements and their fights, and she remembered that wretched morning after she had put up Guernica in the sitting room). She remembered Susan, and that visit, and her strange, strange story with all its pauses and halts, its cloistered and cloistering silences.

And why should Millicent MacPherson have any clue?

(But, surely, she might know better than Alberta?)

Yes, she would ask, Alberta decided; she would be firm, she would be direct, she would ask. A car horn blared beside her, and inside she heard the ringing of a telephone. Each sound was so purposeful, so bold; she, too, would be bold.

Yet, as the seconds (hours) slunk by and slumped into the hedges, the thread began to slip, and she had to reach out, grasp again, and reach out, grasp.

Narnia, she thought, Susan. Eustace Clarence. Narnia. Aslan. Narnia. Susan. Eustace Clarence. Aslan. Narnia-

"Alberta?"

Now, how nice it would be if that was what would happen, that somehow Millicent MacPherson would recognise her, would come out and invite her in. It would mean that walking over had not been such a dreadful waste of her own time, and that she would not have to return home and try to pretend that she had done something moderately useful! Now, if -

"Alberta Scrubb, is that you?"

She blinked, turned to the vague direction of the voice (rather vague it was, for directional hearing had never been her strong point). A woman was standing in a rather plain grey coat, with a decidedly ugly wide-brimmed, rounded plum hat, and as Alberta peered more closely yet, she recognised the woman, vaguely, as being Millicent MacPherson.

"Hello?" she ventured.

"Oh, good, it is you; I was so apprehensive this morning when I realised that I had forgotten to tell you my address!" the woman chattered, extending a gloved hand to Alberta. "The house is this way; do come in, out of this dreadful fog!"

In the blinding haze that arched its back, Alberta felt oddly like a blind woman being led to the doorsteps, as Millicent guided her past this lamppost, past that telegraph pole, up a set of stairs ("Oh, careful, this third one is a little uneven"), and into a smallish hallway.

"I am so dreadfully sorry about the weather," Millicent was saying, as Alberta removed her now yellow, soiled hat. "I would have offered to drive, but Samuel shares his car with his brother, and Michael was off to Essex this week- are you quite all right?"

Glancing ruefully at her hat, Alberta hesitated momentarily. Thankfully, Millicent had either not noticed, or she simply chose not to notice, for she was already walking down the hallway, turning on the light to her quaint, if unimaginative, sitting room.

"I have something to ask," said Alberta abruptly, the moment that her slacks reached the cushion.

Millicent looked vaguely unnerved as she took her seat opposite Alberta.

I suppose this is not how you thought the day would go at all, a vindictively relished voice whispered, I have upset your plans.

But Alberta knew better than to relish in this completely irrational glory; relishing in one's satisfaction meant one might miss the bigger question, might provide the weaker, less publishable journal article.

"Have you ever heard of Narnia, or Aslan?"

"I-" Millicent looked clearly taken aback. "I- no, I don't- not that I recall. Why do you ask?"

Trying to ignore the sinking shame (disappointment) in her throat, and the throb that thrummed against her forehead and in her ears, Alberta paused. ("Remember, they may not give all to you on your first attempt; ask, ask differently, ask, and ask, until you have a satisfying response!")

"My nephews and niece also attended your church, I believe- Peter and Edmund Pevensie, and Lucy Pevensie?"

Millicent's brow cleared, her eyes brightened.

"Yes, the Pevensies were wonderful. Lucy, in particular, was such a darling; she would often trail me, offer to help out with Sunday School and taking care of the children during the Mother's Sewing Circle- they were your nephews and niece?"

"Yes," said Alberta, trying to avoid the lump in her throat, to block out the image of the coffins and the portraits being removed from the whitewashed walls. "They were my brother's children."

Victor.

("Alberta, the story! You cannot afford to follow a personal line at the cost of the main point!")

She cleared her throat.

"I believe that my son, Eustace Clarence, created a story- or some adventure- with his cousins, and that- a Jill Pole may have been involved. And-"

"And?" asked Millicent, clearly uncomfortable. "A story-"

"They believed it was true," said Alberta, flatly. Millicent peered at her, confused. "It had something to do with a place called Narnia."

"I suppose that the Lord spoke to Balaam through his donkey," said Millicent, dubiously, when Alberta finished regaling her tale (if one could, in all honesty, call it a tale. Alberta had read better constructed stories in cheap women's magazines, much as she disliked the comparison.) Not knowing who Balaam was, and still somewhat embarrassed by the foolishness of what she had just said, Alberta stayed quiet. She was sure that the tips of her ears were burning.

"Alberta." Millicent reached across the table and hesitated, her hand awkwardly hovering an inch above Alberta's. "I- I don't mean to imply anything about Eustace Clarence. He was a wonderful young man, and a most sincere and mature Christian. It is simply- there are so many things I do not know, and can never know. Perhaps The Lord did use this- Narnia- to lead your son to our Lord Jesus. But I don't know, I can't know."

And with that, the thread snapped, and Alberta felt as though she had run headlong into a wall of brick, that rocks had crumbled across something she had once thought an opening.

"I see," she said dully, unable to quite look at Millicent.

An uncomfortable silence descended on the table. She heard, rather than saw, Millicent reach for the milk jug.

"- Do you, though? See, that is?" Millicent asked abruptly, when the silence had grown so warm that Alberta half felt she was being forced outside the room. "Because I must confess that sometimes- often- I can't."

"If you can't see, then why do you believe?"

Unable to quite constrain the hysteria and disbelief from her voice, Alberta breathed in; out, in; out, half impatient to hear Millicent's response and more than half frustrated with her deferent answers. She watched Millicent (without eye contact of any sort), watched her shift to the left, to the right, reach out to grasp her cup.

"I believe because I believe that Jesus is who he said he was," she said, eventually, "- and because it is the only way I can understand and bear life."

Alberta snorted. "And what about some person who lived nearly two thousand years ago can make this bearable?"

As frustrated as she was by this entire visit, she was glad- truly, she was- that Millicent was not all that daft, that she didn't have to vocalise 'this' (Eustace Clarence. Victor. Dead dead dead), that she didn't have to say what still shredded her throat with its rusty red strokes.

Millicent sighed and pushed away her tea.

"I didn't, at first," she said, and her voice slowed to still moving ripples on the top of a quiet, lonely lake. "I wanted to hate God. I still He believed He existed; I couldn't not believe, whenever I saw the world, see- the stars, the seasons, people, I simply can't believe this happened without a god. But I didn't know if He was good." Her lips curled a little. "That's the worst part; believing in a god but not knowing if He's good."

Not believing in a god, Alberta kept silent.

She sighed, then, looked down. If she could slice through Millicent's mind, step behind her eyes, perhaps she could see the moving pictures which must be playing, vivid as the flicker of firelight, against the screen of her mind.

"What changed?" she wanted to ask, but it felt somehow rude to break the silence, and she sat there, watching the steam wisp and curl into the air as her tea inevitably cooled.

"It was one of the sermons, one of those awful Sundays when I didn't want to go to church, but Samuel took me along," Millicent continued abruptly, and it was as if there had never been any quiet; even the tendrils of smoke docilely sank back, seemingly collapsing inside their respective cups. "The Old Testament reading was from the book of Job. How I used to hate that book. Do you know it?"

Mutely, Alberta shook her head. The word 'Job' was as familiar to her as the taste of pork, and its mention was about as welcome; she must have encountered it somewhere, but its sharpness had long faded into a paleness that she happily cultivated. Job? She assumed it was a person, most Bible books tended to be. Or a place. It wasn't a particularly smart name for a place or a person, in her opinion, but those Bible people had been strange. But Millicent was speaking.

"- and Job loses everything in one day; wealth, property, his children, his health. Everything. And yet- God is there, He just doesn't speak. And Job spends the book crying out, crying out to God- and when God finally speaks, it is so strange, so very strange what He says. I'd never liked it, that strange book," Millicent was saying, raising her eyes to the non-plussed Alberta. "But then the preacher got up. I don't remember his name, but I remember his words, I remember them so clearly, it's as if he spoke them last week. For one thing- oh, it seems so obvious, but I hadn't thought it; he said, it was Satan who inflicted the suffering. God *allowed* it for a season, though he put limits in place, but it was Satan, not God, who caused the suffering. That- that was a little better."

In Alberta's opinion, it made about as much sense and provided about as much meaning and emotional comfort as Duchamp's infamous Fountain.

"- of course," Millicent said, after a pause, "I then thought, if God allows that suffering, does that mean He is not powerful to stop it? Or worse, does He allow it- because He isn't good?" She paused, laughed a little. "I tried to stop going to church, but Samuel has a way of talking me around."

Alberta thought of Harold, of his strategically placed slips of paper and newspaper pages.

"Men seem to have a penchant for that," she said dryly. She thought she saw Millicent's lips quirk at the corner, and felt a little more warmly towards her, even if she had the strangest, most un-consoling beliefs. "And what happened when your husband talked you into going to church?"

Millicent waved her hand.

"A few of the usual; people saying horrible things about how suffering builds character, how they know-" she met Alberta's eyes for a moment, and Alberta was not sure whether or not to read a vague apology in them ("It is never easy for a mother to lose a son")- "and- well, Bible readings. Sermons. The Lord, at work."

If Alberta was able to notice, or note, her motions, she might have seen her slight shift forwards, an ever so slightly perceptible incline of her head.

"There was the passage in Revelations; that reminder that our God will wipe every tear from every eye. He is powerful to stop suffering, and that is His plan; it has always been His plan. And then we had young Father Bowyer speaking about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane; our Lord suffered, and He knows pain. And- and I realised- God knows." Millicent took a short, shaky breath, and Alberta saw (felt) the tears misting in her eyes. "God knows- really, really knows- what it is to lose a son, to lose His Son. And then- I saw, or realised- or remembered- I don't know which. But it became clear to me- that suffering is what happens because this world is broken; because this world would kill our own Lord- and in this world, Satan inflicts pain, inflicts suffering on suffering, and pain on pain; but He will bring it all to an end, and He will bring comfort. Comfort, comfort, my people, He says, and He will bring it, because He is faithful!"

Millicent paused, took a few ragged breaths.

"Of course," she added after a moment, a hint of rue in her voice, "I still have no living child, and I cannot help but be wildly jealous of every mother with a child older than seven hours." Something of the light that had somehow, sometime, lit her face faded, and her age seemed etched into each crease of each line. "My Lord is enough- He is so much more than enough- but still, it is something I struggle with every day." She raised her eyes to meet Alberta's. "I imagine that your struggle is different, though no less painful."

"I do not- comprehend all this," said Alberta, almost pitifully, and indeed there was something ringing strangely in her head, almost like the bells on a Sunday morning, or a repeated, magnified sound of Harold scuffing his cufflinks against a metal railing.

"Of course," said Millicent quickly; "oh- I've talked too much, I'm so sorry, Alberta-"

"I think- I will think on this," Alberta cut in, ears spinning and her head still ringing.

"Of course," said Millicent's voice, as Millicent's hand reached out and grasped hers, helped pull her up to a standing position. "And if- if you ever want to talk- well- you know where to find me. Or you are most welcome to Holy Cross-"

"Yes," said Alberta's voice, as Alberta reached for her hat. "I- I think that would be lovely."

"Good day, Alberta," floated Millicent's (hesitant) voice, and Alberta turned around hastily for a half wave as the door shut against the grey, swirling grease.

-
A/N: Because Millicent kind of word vomits when the rubber hits the road, and it *is* a lot for Alberta to take in.

Also, prolific apologies for the slow update! I had this and the next 2 chapters written and ready to go for over a week but I have been in Adelaide without access to a computer. Dying. Also I got embroiled in a fight with the computers at Adelaide airport where the internet was *so slow* that I couldn't even upload a document. *Dying*. The rest of the chapters will be up in a few hours, bar the final chapter, which is still in the works. So sorry.