Nobody moved.

I could feel two hundred people turning around to look at me. Old friends. New neighbours. The young mums from the back pew. Gerald Pike, with his hand over his mouth.

Felicity Harrington's face had gone the same colour as her hat.

“Joan?” she said, into the microphone, without meaning to. “Joan gave one and a half million pounds?”

Rev. Sarah Lane stepped forward and gently took the microphone from her.

“I'd like to read something very short,” she said. “It's from the Gospel of Mark.”

She didn't need a Bible. She knew it by heart.

She told the story of the rich people putting large amounts of money into the temple treasury, for everyone to see. And a poor widow who came and put in two tiny copper coins. Worth almost nothing.

And how Jesus said the widow had given more than all of them. Because they gave out of their riches. But she gave all she had.

Sarah looked out over the crowd.

“Two years ago,” she said, “somebody put twenty pounds in our building fund box. Some of us laughed.”

She paused.

“It turns out we should have been paying more attention.”