If You Don’t Spend, God Doesn’t Listen

My favourite part of Glasgow airport is the chapel. It’s the last place in the terminal where you can still buy something. I’m sick of the free food, the complimentary coffee, the bookshops with the trust boxes that everyone ignores. I want to part with cash, want to feel the pound notes crisp between my fingers as I count them out. The chapel has an actual till with an actual human, a middle-aged woman who scowls as she breaks a tenner for the guy in the high-vis vest who needs change for the coin-operated qibla. I can’t decide between the cruciform neck pillows, the Saint Christopher medals in the shape of A380s, or the hand-embroidered bookmarks bearing slogans like YOU’RE MORE LIKELY TO DIE OF CANCER THAN IN A CRASH, so I decide to say my prayers while I’m choosing what to buy. I sit on a padded chair facing the altar and silently recite the Our Father, just like my parents taught me when we attended that draughty church in the Highlands. The cashier points to the sign that reads NO PRAYER WITHOUT PURCHASE and says are you planning to buy something or what? I can’t concentrate on my Hail Mary’s because of her tutting, so I survey the wares and select a rosary of tiny planes for my dead mother. I imagine her running the beads through her fingers as she sat in her armchair by the fireside in the evenings. I remember how she used to give me a 50-pence coin for the collection plate when I was little. How proud I felt when it hit the wood with a clink.