The Island of Good Hope

The hard part was finding a way in. The community itself was on an island a few miles offshore. The main man, the leader of the so-called community, had some how or other, managed to scrape together the money, supposedly from his followers, to buy the island. Like most of his dealings, just how John Hopegood had managed to get that money, was something of a mystery. Just how and why he had become a leader of the Good Hope Ministry was itself another mystery. What the community got up to, all alone on that island was yet another mystery.

For me, though, the greatest of these mysteries was how and why Jane had ended up there.

When we were together, Jane had probably been the biggest atheist of the two of us. I had never believed in any kind of religion and so tended to just take lack of belief for granted, always being somewhat surprised whenever I encountered anyone who professed to be religious, regarding it as some sort of quaint eccentricity. Jane, though, had come from a religious family. Her father was some kind of high up in the church; I could never remember his proper professional title. ‘Some sort of arch-druid’ Jane spat dismissively once, when the subject came up. Consequently, she was much more antagonistic than I towards the various religions and their sub-branches, sects and cults, often seemingly going out of her way to gratuitously offend and annoy the religious whenever their paths crossed.

So, when I received the rather odd, disjointed letter from her begging me to rescue her from the Good Hope community after all the years of silence between us, I was more than a little surprised… and worried.