There's a stone wall lining the churchyard that I remember, which has gotten more overgrown since I was last here. The loose paving tile that tripped Lola up all those years ago has been repaired and it doesn't make the same noise that it used to when I step on it. I strain my ears to hear Lola's buckles clicking, but I hear nothing except the cars and the buses going by and the man asking me if I need any help.
Again, I wonder if it's the strange man.
Again, it's not.
This man looks older, although he can't be more than thirty-five. Perhaps forty at a push. He walks towards me from the church door with his hands in his black trousers pockets, looking at me with eyes whose colour I can't quite see yet. I see their concern, though.
"Yeah," I say. Lie. "I'm fine."
He's closer now. His eyes are brown.
"Is there anything I can help you with?"
His eyes are brown and he's got thinning hair and he's wearing all black, except for a white priest's collar. I think it's odd that a priest should be wearing trousers and not be old.
"I'm going to see my sister," I tell him. He nods once, then give me a small smile.
"Do you know where she is? Or - "
"Yeah."
Because I do, even if I never come here. I don't have to ask the priest to help me find her headstone, because even though it's just over a year old, it's still shiny and stands out a lot.
Lola died last summer. I overdosed last December. Spencer pursed her lips for me before she left and Kieran was watching me from the hospital window when it was raining.
The headstone is cold to the touch, and it's smooth and wet from last night's rain. When I kneel down in front of it, the soaked soil stains the knees of my jeans. I trace the letters with equally soil-stained fingertips.
Lola. My lovely Lola.
When she tripped outside the graveyard on the way home from school that day I never imagined that I'd be burying her in it.
There's people outside the church, walking past all of the death as if it's a flattened crisp packet or dented can of tomato soup in the gutter. I watch them talk on their phones and laugh with their lovers and listen to music and complain about the rain that's getting increasingly heavier, but all I see is the capability for hurt. Pain. More death.
All I see is the capability for each and every person who passes me by to get hit by a car, and to make their boyfriend cry, and to watch Westerns on a wet Sunday and to go down the hall of their sister's house and cut their wrists in the bathroom.
"Are you sure you're alright?"
The priest is back, this time looking marginally more concerned and a lot more like Natalie and the strange man looked. I can't see any soil on his trousers but then again, they're black.
"You've been here for an hour," he tells me quietly. "Well, fifty minutes is probably more accurate. My watch has long packed up."
That makes me smile like it was supposed to. Something in the way he talks makes me want to turn around and tell him everything.
"No," I say. Admit. "I'm not alright."
The priest nods. Twice, this time. He puts a hand on my shoulder and I don't mind.
"Come inside," he says. I guess he's around thirty-two because that's how old Kieran's brother is and the priest looks similar to him. "If you want to talk, you can talk. If you don't, at least you'll be dry. Alright?"
