Author's Note
Author's Note
Halvern, the Dunmere, Alder Weir, the Greaves Bridge, Rookhill and the Marlow Trust do not exist, and nobody in this book is a portrait of a living person. The streets are borrowed from many English towns and the institutions are invented.
The idea began with a small, ordinary observation: that we learn the people we love by their habits more than by their faces. A way of tying a shoe. A phrase. A tap on a table. These things are borrowed, passed hand to hand, and nobody remembers who began them. The book asks what happens to a grieving man when someone else turns up wearing them.
The title changes its meaning as you read, and I hope it is still changing when you close the last page.
Thank you for reading.
STEVE 2026
Author's Note · 1