not unless you'd been alive before
2003-04-25 || 10:28 p.m.

Charlotte was almost in tears, 'But I thought ... I didn't know it was like this. I thought ...'

'What did you think?' asked Elizabeth. They had begun to walk again, slowly, lagging behind the rest.

'It had a roof - I mean it was a proper church. Not like this.'

The bricks were blackened where the roof had been. There was jagged blackened glass round the edges of the windows. On some the frames were still more or less complete.

'But it's been burnt down for years,' Elizabeth said, 'Oh, for ages, I think.'

'But I saw a roof.' cried Charlotte, 'and it was all blue with little gold stars on it.' She did not think about betraying herself, and briefly she did not care. After all it did not much matter now.

'But, look, you couldn't have seen a roof,' Elizabeth was saying, hotly. 'It must have been burnt long before you were born, so you couldn't have seen it, could you, not possibly, not unless you'd been alive before...'

'I can't make you out. Look, why are you so strange? Why do you say such odd, such peculiar things? As if you never listened, never noticed anything that went on. Honestly, I wonder about you sometimes.'

'There is something, isn't there - something odd?'