The Last Carol of St Brenda

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The story

The governess recounts an evening at St Brenda's church in the cold north, where the choir sings the same carol each year and the verses are never the same. She writes them down one Christmas Eve and finds that each new verse describes someone in the congregation.

How it begins

I was engaged as governess to the Pellingham family in the autumn of the year I turned twenty-six, and I accepted the post without once asking what the village of Scarth was like. It lay at the very top of the county, where the moors run down into the sea and the wind has no particular business with anyone. I ought to have asked. A governess who does not ask questions is a governess who will be told the answers at the wrong moment. The Pellinghams were kind, if distracted. Mr Pellingham spent his days with his ledgers and his nights with a decanter. Mrs Pellingham had a weak chest…