A fresh bouquet of roses lay on Gerald’s grave, the previous flowers gone. Quinn, confused, took out his phone and called his mother.
‘Quinn?’
The way she talked to him almost broke him. It was like it confused her to hear from him. God, why was he being so rude to her? He needed her now more than ever, yet he’d been cutting her off. Harold. His dad. Pitiful excuses for being a sorry excuse for a son.
‘Hey, Mum,’ Quinn said, forcing himself to sound friendly. He heard his mum make a small exhale on the other end of the line, as if she was relieved this wouldn’t be a hard conversation. ‘I’m at Dad’s grave. Um… Have you been here?’
‘I’ve been meaning to,’ Claire said. Her wary tone told him she feared a rebuttal. ‘I just haven’t?—’
‘It’s fine, Mum,’ Quinn said. ‘I appreciate it’s hard for you.’
Claire sighed. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
Quinn gripped his phone tighter, looking at Gerald’s carved name. ‘Um, it’s just that red roses keep appearing on the grave. I thought it might be you.’
‘Oh,’ Claire said. ‘No, not me. Although…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, he was popular, wasn’t he? He used to get red roses delivered to his shop. For ages, I thought he was having an affair, but he said they would just show up. Like a secret admirer.’
Quinn shook his head. His dad had a secret admirer? Was it possible he’d been having an affair? Could someone in Hay be grieving for his father, like Quinn was, but in secret?
‘Red roses?’
‘Yep. He always denied an affair, but they came almost every week. I thought they’d stopped after… Well, clearly, they haven’t.’
Quinn swallowed. ‘When was the last time you came here?’
‘Wow. It must have been…’ Claire paused. Quinn closed his eyes. ‘Too long.’
‘I understand.’
He said goodbye to his mum and instead crouched down to the grave. ‘Well, Dad. Where do I begin? Harold’s evicting me. Things are changing too fast. That guy I embarrassed myself in front of? Well, he got stuck in the town and now he’s … well, we’ve hung out. Nothing romantic, of course. No, that doesn’t happen to boys like me. And, get this, he hates Hay. How can anyone hate Hay?’
He waited, as if his dad would answer. If that ever did happen, Quinn thought he might be frightened, rather than elated.
The ground was covered in snow, but this time, he was wearing suitable clothing. He stayed crouched, though, because sitting on the ground wasn’t an option.
‘Then there’s his mum,’ Quinn said, looking out at the other graves. ‘You remember her, don’t you? Hermione Sage. Apparently, her sister’s buried at the entrance. Yeah, about that. I saw Noah, her son, the other day at her grave.’
Quinn imagined the ghost of his father nodding along, as if this thrilled him. It was all he had to hold on to.
‘Well, she’s put a call on her website about someone writing her autobiography. You always said I’d be a writer someday, Dad. Hold on, though, because I haven’t signed a deal yet. Right now, she doesn’t know I exist. But I’m thinking about it. Submitting, that is. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but…’
At that moment, a red robin landed a few feet away. Quinn laughed, and the robin tilted its head.
‘That your sign, Dad?’
The robin hopped above Gerald’s carved name.
‘I’ll think about it.’
As Quinn got to his feet, he saw a figure retreating in the distance. The way they walked, with a hurried pace, made him pause. There weren’t many other graves underneath the yew tree. Which suggested to Quinn that the person had been coming in this direction and hadn’t seen him crouched down.
The red roses. What if…?
Quinn tore away from his father, the robin, and towards the scurrying figure. Were those roses in their hand?
