Snatches of the tunes she had danced to in the Playboy mingled with the sonorous wailing: Our time is come … The River is Broken … Tell Laura I love her, Our Oppression is Ended … Blue suede shoes … The murky brown light of the now fully-advanced morning turned the stained glass sombre. Medea’s hair was the colour of weed at the bottom of a pond. Several of the women were smoking, and a thick smog hung in the condemned rafters. With a sudden agonizing feeling of constriction, Baba jerked herself upright. ‘I want to get out of here,’ she said loudly and clearly. ‘Sssh!’ The woman on her left looked disapproving. ‘We’re making preparations. Can’t you see that?’ But Noreen, on Baba’s other side, smiled in sympathy. It was clear that she too had no intention of staying in the church all day. ‘Preparations for what?’ Baba asked crossly. ‘Excuse me please.’ And she rose to her feet with a determined expression; Noreen would almost certainly follow. ‘To get to the other side, of course,’ the woman hissed.
