Dying on Principle by Judith Cutler

Harborne in forty minutes. But I did think of someone I’d like to talk to, someone who might have some background knowledge of Melina’s brand of Christianity: Philomena, one of our cleaning staff.
    I could hear her voice in the porters’ lodge: she was berating someone soundly. It was the head caretaker, as it transpired. But she left off to hug me. The head caretaker made good his escape.
    â€˜What’s all this about a body at George Muntz?’ She tapped the
Birmingham Post
. ‘I’d have thought you’d have had enough of bodies.’
    â€˜Too right. And it seems I was one of the last people to see her alive. I feel bad about it, Philly: she wanted to talk to me and I didn’t make time.’
    â€˜Not like you, that.’ She looked at me shrewdly. ‘Why not?’
    â€˜I was going out with Chris and—’
    â€˜Out? With Chris? That lovely young man! I’ll have to tell Winston when I phone him. Says he can’t afford to phone me on his student grant, of course, but I tell him, you doctors earn enough when you’re qualified – a bit more debt doesn’t matter now.’
    I didn’t imagine he’d dare argue.
    â€˜Not out like that – just out,’ I said. ‘But I feel bad about it. She was a nice girl. God-fearing.’
    â€˜Not many of those about,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s not that that’s worrying you, is it?’
    I shook my head. I wished myself anywhere but here. Philly was a highly trained nurse with an OU qualification in computers. It would be as crass to ask her about obscurer forms of Christianity as it had been to question Aberlene.
    â€˜I don’t know how her family would feel about my going round,’ I said. ‘Seems they belong to one of these churches that believes Saturday’s the Sabbath. Would that make them a bit – fundamental?’
    â€˜Don’t you talk to me about fundamentalism! Come here!’ She pulled me to the door and gestured at some girls in the foyer. ‘Look at them!’
    They were dressed from top to toe in black: veiled, their faces covered so only their eyes showed, they’d not have been out of place in Saudi Arabia. But in Birmingham? And another thing – ‘But Philly, they’re Afro-Caribbean, not Arabs!’
    â€˜Right. But these young girls have got it into their heads they’ve got to be Muslim. So they do that to themselves. And goodness knows what else besides,’ she added darkly. ‘You ask me, I reckon religion does more harm than good, and thass a fac’.’
    I grinned: I loved her excursions into patois. ‘You’re not a church-goer yourself?’
    â€˜Humanist, Sophie. I don’t want no patriarch telling
me
what to do about sex and—’
    I grabbed. ‘That was one of Melina’s problems.’
    Philly looked at me sharply. ‘Pregnant?’
    â€˜Lesbian.’
    â€˜Not if she was a fundamentalist, surely?’
    â€˜Can religion reorient someone’s sexual inclinations?’
    â€˜Maybe not. But it can do a wonderful job repressing them. Lawks-a-mussy!’ she exclaimed as the head caretaker reappeared. ‘Look at dat ol’ clock. Philly, she way behind.’
    The 103 bus, which I caught at Five Ways, followed for a quite alarming proportion of its journey to Harborne a loathsome high-sided lorry carrying bones and other butcher’s waste. It stank vilely, and unsavoury bits and pieces escaped from the inadequate tarpaulin to remind us of its load and of our own mortality. Certainly I was glad to return to the comparative safety of George Muntz and occupy myself with some teaching.
    It was an A-level group, ready to take their exams in about five weeks. ‘Ready’ was the wrong word, perhaps. We started the afternoon with a quick revision of the apostrophe after one of the group had assured me that ‘its’ was the plural of