The Ecstasy of Sister Amata

11.Saturday 21st July, 2018 - late

Susie laughed in disbelief. Ella dropped her arm from Bea's shoulder and slumped on the sofa, crossing her arms and legs.

'That's why I cut myself off from you, and everything, really.' Beatrice sat down heavily on her piano stool and carefully folded her glasses on top of a pile of music. 'It was all quite intense, and when it ended I just wanted to...I don't know...turn my back on it all, I suppose.'

'Bloody hell, Bea. I mean...fuck.' Susie stared at her friend. 'So that's how you knew what to do when she collapsed.'

'Yes.' Bea was grateful for what she supposed was Susie's professional curiosity kicking in. It lessened the emotional tension very slightly. 'She was always a bit capricious about her medication, and she hated the fact that she was ill – she'd never really come to terms with her diagnosis, even after fifteen years of living with it. So I'd seen her have hypos and hypers before, and knew what to do. That day was different, though. She hadn't eaten much for days, and I'm not entirely sure when she'd last injected herself. She wasn't right when I saw her that afternoon, in fact I discovered she'd thrown out a lot of her medication, thinking she was cured. I rescued the pen I had in my pocket that day from her bin when she wasn't looking, although I didn't really know what I intended to do with it.'

'Just as well you did, Bea. She'd've died on the chapel floor if you hadn't got the insulin into her, probably.'

Bea sighed. 'I sometimes think she wanted to die, in some ways. She certainly wasn't very happy in this life. And after that day she spent what was left of it in one sort of hospital or another, talking to the imaginary vision of St Clare in her head.'

Ella rubbed her temples. Susie glanced at her, then asked, 'How long were you...I mean...a thing?'

'Eight months or so. From the start of the summer holidays at the end of Lower Sixth to that Good Friday. Although it had been building up for a while beforehand. The end had been some time coming too, for that matter, she was just so exhausting emotionally.' Bea rubbed her eyes and sighed. 'We did quite like each other from as soon she came here at the start of Lower Sixth. As friends to start with, obviously. I'm not sure when she started wanting more, but it took me a while to realise that things had crossed a line. By which time it was too late to stop, I suppose.'

'And no-one noticed?' Susie poured herself more juice. 'After you'd got closer, I mean.'

'I'm sure no-one did. We were extremely careful, obviously. And from Easter Lower Sixth I was Library Prefect to her librarian, so it wasn't that odd if we spent a lot of time together. Shortly after we, er, became intimate, it was the summer holidays, obviously, and I decided to stay at school for most of them: I was working quite hard at the organ in preparation for Cambridge and things, to be fair, so it was justifiable. That made it easier because there were so few people around the school. By the time term started, we'd worked out how to meet without arousing suspicion. We spent a lot of extra time in the library and her cottage.' Beatrice cleared her throat. 'Apart from now, I've never talked about it. I did tell Sister Francesca, that Good Friday when Thérèse...Sister Amata...was ill. I was worried about her not taking her medication and she'd just broken things off, so in a fit of anger and worry I went to Sister F and explained.'

'Woah. You went straight to Sister F and confessed to a year-long involvement with one of her nuns?'

'Yes. I had no choice. Thérèse had said...well, she said lots of things that afternoon, most of them very unkind and probably the product of her unravelling mind. But one of the things she said was that she'd written to Sister F to accuse me of seducing her into sin, after St Clare had visited her to say she'd been saved as well as cured and must put me behind her.' Beatrice sighed and kept her voice quiet. 'In the chapel that night, after you'd both gone to ring 999 and fetch Sister F, she looked at me and recognised me through the pain. She called me Satan.'