THREE WEEKS AGO
The laminate was still tacky when we found it, that new-plastic smell clinging to the corkboard outside the bus shelter. Our board only ever carries tomorrow's notices. That's the rule everyone in Fenn knows and nobody says out loud: whatever's pinned up overnight is true by morning. Jumble sale, Tuesday, 2pm. Blood van outside the chapel. Mrs Aldous's cat, grey, one white sock, answers to Tolly.
This one had our name on it.
In Loving Memory of William Hallow. Service to be held at St. Osyth's, three weeks Thursday, all welcome, family flowers only.
Dad's name. Dad, who was at that moment behind the counter of our shop, cashing up the till roll and complaining about the new coin bags, the ones that split if you filled them past halfway.
Rhian read it twice, out loud, like reading it wrong would fix it. Sef didn't read it twice. He pulled the drawing pin out with his thumbnail, tore the sheet down the middle, and stuffed both halves in his coat pocket before either of us could stop him.
"There," he said. "Gone."
We didn't tell Dad. We told ourselves the board's rule was for jumble sales and lost cats, not for that. That somebody's idea of a joke had gone too far. That Sef had done the sensible thing, the only thing, really, that any of us could think to do standing there in the cold with the shelter's one working light buzzing over our heads.
He kept the torn halves in his coat for a week before Mum found them doing the wash and asked what on earth.
THIS MORNING
The board this morning had nothing about Dad on it. It had a bake sale for the church roof fund, a reminder about the recycling collection moving to Fridays — moving to Fridays, again, third time this year, nobody could keep it straight — and a small square of laminate, newer than the rest, that none of us had seen go up.
Celebration of Life: Sefton Hallow. St. Osyth's, this Thursday, 11am. Donations to the lifeboat station in lieu of flowers.
Dad's name had never come off it. We understood that now, standing there with the recycling reminder flapping at one corner. It had only ever been waiting for whoever touched the paper. Sef had folded that Thursday into his own coat pocket and carried it around for three weeks without knowing it, the way you'd carry a splinter that hadn't started hurting yet.
We went looking for him at the usual places. The allotment, where he liked to sit on the water butt and smoke one he thought we didn't know about. The lock-up behind the shop, where the delivery van was still parked, driver's door open, engine off, keys in the ignition. He wasn't anywhere we looked.
By half nine the police had a description and a route and a very calm woman asking us when we'd last seen him. We kept saying this morning, we saw him this morning, at breakfast, he had two sugars in his tea like always. Three, maybe. He'd started taking three since the summer and none of us had said anything about it.
By noon somebody had already put a fresh sheet on the board. Not about Sef. About the WI's Christmas fair, dates and times, perfectly ordinary, pinned neat and square over the corner where the older notice still showed through. It curled a little at the edge where the drawing pin held it. His name was just visible under the new paper, if you tilted your head and the light was right.
"Bus Stop Book Stop" by Oneterry AKA Terry Kearney is marked with CC0 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.