milesAdam was about to tell her that he’d only arrived in the village that afternoon, when Herbert’s voice boomed across the shop floor, bouncing off the tiled walls with an alarming echo. “Honestly, Yvonne! Don’t you know who this is? He’s not going to have seen your flyer, he’s only just come back – this is Iris’s boy. Iris Challinor!”
Yvonne turned back to Adam, recognition dawning as she took a step closer, her narrowed eyes glowing with a sense of homely familiarity. “No…” she whispered. “Iris’s boy? But – but you were all—”
“—pale and skinny. Yeah, someone mentioned,” Adam finished for her. “What can I say? It’s been a long time.”
“How long, exactly?”
How“Long enough.”
Yvonne placed a hand on the side of his face, her thinning fingers not yet having surrendered to infirmity, but
