After The Fire

8. Attacked On The Road

Though it tested him severely, Joe kept on with the course. Obviously, it was a conversion thing, and obviously the whole point was to brainwash him and get him to say 'Yes sir' to Jesus. If it hadn't been for the constant visions and general weird stuff that was happening to him, he'd have had real trouble keeping a straight face as they told him some of the more out-there rubbish.

In fact, he did walk out of the first session. Well, he tried to. He was sitting in the group, waiting for things to kick off, feeling like a spare part. He'd not been so much on edge for a long time. There was something weird about this church. The way they threw everyone together and expected it not to go wrong. So on his left he was being ignored by the middle-class women talking about school fees, and on his right he was being ignored by two northerners bantering about the footie. A crustie-looking kid drooped unhappy in the corner, and the leader of the group was sitting in silence opposite him, looking vacant, obviously thinking he'd rather be anywhere else.

He thought, forget this, got up, and headed out of the church, on his way to the wine shop. But he got no more than a hundred yards down the road before the voice in his head exploded at him, 'Get back in there!'.

That was when Joe realised things had changed. Two months previously that voice would have freaked him out, but now it was no more than what he expected. He did what he was told. He turned around, and went back in, put up with feeling bad, and got through the first session.

Once he was over feeling stupid and imagining what his mates would say, it wasn't so bad. He'd done a few stints in AA, been in full-on residential rehab twice in his life, so the process wasn't too strange. They showed you a video about Jesus, and then they talked about it. The talking was surprisingly familiar. He was used to sitting round while people shared the most God-awful stories about their lives, and, you name it these people had been through it, even (especially) the middle-class women. Abusive grandparents, husbands, children. Rejections, drugs, affairs, deaths, beatings, robberies, self-harms. He found when it was his turn, he could talk on the things he'd been through pretty simply, so he ran through a few bits and pieces. Secretly he was a little disappointed: for a church group they weren't very shockable. No-one disapproved, even when he described the lap dancers and the scams he and the boys got up to in London.

The first real turning point came three weeks in. He wasn't sure how it happened, but he got talking about Ronnie. How they'd met five years back, how they weren't loved up, but were amazing mates, like she was the best kind of sister. How they'd had such a laugh, and how she was the only one who gave him somewhere to hide when things went bad with the gang. He described how he had bought the pills that Ronnie had used that night back in October, and how the gang had got the dealer to spike the package without him knowing. How the cleaners had found her on the floor in the kitchen in the morning, and how the ambulance had taken forever to come.

He stopped crying and finally looked up at the group. Expecting contempt, even disgust, he was prepared to leave. It shocked him to see how they were all listening, and how one or two of them had tears in their eyes too. One of them explained how when you said you believed in Jesus, everything you had done wrong up till then got forgiven.

'Everything?' Joe had asked.

'Everything', they had assured him, their faces open and vulnerable.

'Everyone gets this? Doesn't matter what they've done?'

'Everyone gets this. For free '

He nodded, tried not to let on how much he wanted to laugh. Scammers always came on with an offer like that.

Yet he was slowly realising that the leaders genuinely believed in magic. They kept on bringing it back to God, and Jesus, and this weird thing he couldn't get a hold of called the Holy Spirit.