Series 1, episode 2
Father Michael persuades Christina to come clean to the police with what she has done. At Christina’s subsequent court hearing, Father Michael appears as a character witness and Christina is spared jail but still has to deal with the wrath of her distraught sister, Mariella. Father Michael tries to mediate between the sisters, eager to place the importance of their collective grief above the individual pain of sibling betrayal.
At little Lisa’s Catholic primary school, preparations continue for the kids’ First Communion festivities, but Father Michael finds himself on a collision course with sensitive teacher, Miss Pickering, who has organised the ceremony for the years. With Christina still fresh in his mind, Father Michael is reluctant for parents to put themselves in debt buying big dresses and posh suits for the sake of a few hours. He suggests the children dress in school uniform do they all look the same and there’s no competition to outdo each other, but Miss Pickering takes the suggestion as a criticism of the way she’s always done things.
At confession, Father Michael is confronted by a new parishioner, Roz Demichelis; a beautiful and single mother-of-three who admits embezzling from her employer to feed her gambling addiction; a secret the boss is about to find out. With the shame proving too much to bear, Roz tells Father Michael that she can think of only one solution, prompting the priest to share a dark confession of his own in an attempt to dissuade Roz from her destined path. The two clearly share a connection, but is it wise for Father Michael to confide his own secrets to someone unwilling to deal with their own?
Elsewhere, one of Father Michael’s most devoted parishioners, Helen Oyenusi, has a crisis when her paranoid schizophrenic son, 18-year old Vernon, suffers a psychotic episode. Recently discharged from a specialist care unit, Vernon struggles to re-adapt to his home environment and his mother is not sufficiently trained to cope with his rapid breakdown. After trying unsuccessfully to contact Father Michael (whom Vernon trusts implicitly), Helen is forced to call in a crisis team, who in turn summons the policebut, despite the best calming efforts of PC Andrew Powell, the situation quickly escalates, with tragic consequences. Father Michael is doubly devastated, not just because he knew Vernon, but also because tiredness had led him to deliberately avoid Helen’s crucial phone call the night before. Could Father Michael have prevented a tragedy?