When he remained on his stool an hour later, she gave another rueful look, then departed into the kitchen - and, he could tell, out the back. He gave his pleasantries to the regulars and exited again out the front.

She was not leaning against the building this time. She was pacing back and forth in the street. The icy gusts attacked her hair; he tried not to notice how it went from dark to copper in the misleading sunlight, like ballpoint ink.

"Is it about the christening?" he tried, knowing well enough how much deeper it ran. She didn't look at him, only folded her arms and shook her head.

"I really shouldn't be doing this," she said, the wind stealing her volume.

"It's not just about faith, Assumpta. I've seen you with children. I can't think of anyone I would trust more. You'd make a wonderful m...godmother." He cursed his near slip and his word choice. It was the wrong way to say it - too intimate, too adoring. He tried to back off: "But if you really can't abide it...there's no point to a vow if your heart isn't in it."

Bad thing worsened. He hung his head and steeled himself for the damage.

She was silent. He looked up again. She was shivering.

"Are you cold?"

"Yeah. No."

He thought to challenge this, but changed his mind, simply removing his coat and holding it at her shoulders. She accepted the offer, put her arms into the sleeves; they hung well past the tips of her fingers. He couldn't help but think she looked both comically swallowed up and yet, too, quite at home in it.

Ridiculous. Beautiful. Devoured and protected, both at once.

Another brute gust whipped a lock of hair into her eyes. He reached out to tame it behind an ear, but she got there first. Her hand was out of its long wool tunnel now; she stuffed it reflexively into the coat's pocket.

Peter remembered what he'd felt there the night before, what he'd meant with every fibre of his being to lock away in a drawer or hide in a book.

Oh, no.

Absently, she drew out a scrap of paper. She examined it briefly, then crumpled it in her palm. Horror and humiliation clouded her face and she marched down the side alley once more, wriggling her way out of the coat, shoving it into his grasp.

"'Sumpta, please wait!" he loped after her, dreading the litany of accusations she was surely about to recite, but knowing he deserved them all.

The pursuit continued back into the pub kitchen; he flung his inside-out coat on the back of a chair. As he finally caught her shoulder and she turned, the look on her face was not what he'd prepared for. No wrath, no pride, no steely resolve: only shame and heartache.

Her voice was small against the chatter from the next room. "Peter, this isn't your problem, all right? Please."

"Look at me."

She shook her head. He tipped her face up by the chin.

"Not your problem," she repeated, her eyes swimming and her voice weaker still.

"Yes it is," he whispered.

"What?"

"You had to know." He flattened a hand against her back, pulling her to him. "You said yourself everyone was joking."

"Joking about how it looks. What am I supposed to have known?"

"Why I've stayed away. How I feel about you." He held her against him. "I thought dogs on the street knew."

She took a moment to absorb this.

He felt her arms encircle him, felt her stroke his back. She met his eyes, rising on the balls of her feet to make up for the difference in their heights.

Was it really happening this time, at last?

"Customers!" they heard Brendan yell. Assumpta dropped back onto her heels.

"I have to go," she whispered. "They don't even know you're still here."

"Wait," he pleaded.

She looked up. "I shouldn't let you do this to yourself," she muttered, breaking away.

Tonight's dream had him back in the tasteless rope noose for the ill-conceived charity auction. Leave it to Brian Quigley and Father Mac to devise a fundraiser rooted in the mockery of human enslavement! Oh, and of course he was totally naked up on the scaffold, as his confessor paraded him in front of the village and the businessman made half-hearted attempts to sell him.

The crowd's reactions were a pot-pourri of apathy, amusement, and disgust, all launched from within the safety of their clothes. It became clear that no one cared to pay for him in his current state.

Father Mac was getting tired of pacing with the unwanted merchandise. "Call up the next one, Brian," he sighed. "No one wants him without the suit."

"Wait!" called a familiar voice. Peter saw a naked Assumpta elbow her way to the front of the shocked audience.

"Do we have a bid for the curate?" Quigley asked flatly.

"Twenty quid," the landlady answered, pulling a rolled-up note from behind her ear.

"Your funeral," Quigley said, accepting the money as Father Mac disdainfully handed the rope to the buyer.

Assumpta removed the noose and led him down the steps, through the crowd, and all the way to the riverbank. The sunlight bounced off the water, covering them both in luminous nets.

"Well," he said, "I suppose I'm all yours."

She smiled uncertainly but didn't answer.

"What do you want me to do, Assumpta?"

"I want you to decide what you're giving up."

"Leaving things in my pockets?" he tried to joke.

"Very funny."

"Fundraising?" he tried again.

She swatted him. "Be serious." Her playful slap made him too aware of being alive. "What are you giving up, Peter?"

"Being led," he whispered, realising.

"Prove it," she replied.

She waited for him to kiss her, for him to pull her close to him.

Just as he reached for her, the dream dissolved against the ringing of the bedside telephone.