(136)A BELIEF IN INFIDELITY
‘If you believe in fairies, clap your hands.’ That’s how it
was once: a hundred children all clapping and wishing, and it must be. If only that’s how it worked, he thought. It was
the bus. ‘Running late,’ Bernadette said, flushed. He noticed buttons fastened
up wrong on her dress.
(137)TO DOUBT
‘I have to trust you,’ Finnbarr said. ‘Otherwise there’s no
point. To this or anything. I have to believe you when you say it was the bus
and your dress buttoned up wrong is just the haste with which you dressed this
morning and not something else. But I can’t.’
(138)A BELIEF IN WHAT SHE SAID
She shrugged and said it was up to him. Her conscience was
clear, she said. He could check if he liked. But it’d be better if he just
trusted that what she said was true. ‘You have to believe me when I say it was
the bus.’ He wanted to.
(139)A BELIEF IN LIES
Will believing it make it so? Like fairies and the whole
audience clapping and wishing and a small trick with lights and Tinkerbell back
to bright life. Will it be like that, if he believes? And something better in
this world. And can a lie be as bright, he wonders.
(140)MORE THAN JUST A SLOGAN
He has a thing on his wall. A small plaque, one word on it:
‘believe’. And a badge for his lapel with the same one word. And a t-shirt, and
written on the back of his hand, stitched on the hidden hem of his shirt. But
believing's not so easy.
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