Still, just because the obvious route had been closed off to him didn't mean he should give up his quest. He'd learned that persistence from years of writing program code.
He wasn't sure whether his vigil would pay off, but he'd felt driven to come here. If it didn't work, he'd find another way to get what he wanted. He'd arrived just after seven and made his way to the grave. He'd been there before, disappointed that it didn't make him feel any closer to the mother he'd never known. This time, he laid the discreet floral tribute at the foot of the headstone then made his way to the vantage point he'd scouted on his last visit. He would be mostly obscured by an ornate memorial to a former town councillor, but with a clear line of sight to Rosie's last resting place.
Someone would come. He'd felt sure of it. But now, as the hands of his watch moved toward seven o'clock, he began to wonder. To hell with what Lawson had told him about staying away from his uncles. He was going to make contact. He'd reckoned that approaching them in such a highly charged place might cut through their hostility and allow them to see him as someone who, like them, had a right to be considered part of Rosie's family. Now it was starting to look as if he'd miscalculated. The thought angered him.
Just then, he saw a darker shape against the graves. It resolved itself to the outline of a man, walking briskly along the path toward him. Macfadyen drew his breath in sharply.
Head down against the weather, the man left the path and picked his way confidently through the grave markers. As he grew closer, Macfadyen could see he carried a small posy of flowers. The man slowed down and came to a halt five feet from Rosie's gravestone. He bowed his head and stood for a long moment. As he bent to place the flowers, Macfadyen moved forward, the snow muffling his steps.
The man straightened and took a step backward, cannoning into Macfadyen. "What the? he exclaimed, swinging round on his heel.
Macfadyen held up his hands in a placatory gesture. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you." He pushed back the hood of his parka, to appear less intimidating.
The man scowled at him, head to one side, staring intently at his face. "Do I know you?" he said, his voice as belligerent as his stance.
Macfadyen didn't hesitate. "I think you're my uncle," he said.
Lynn left Alex to make his phone call. Her sorrow felt like a solid uncomfortable lump in her chest. Distracted, she went through to the kitchen and diced chicken on automatic pilot, tossing it into a cast-iron casserole with some roughly chopped onions and peppers. She poured over a jar of ready-made sauce, added a slug of white wine and shoved it in the oven. As usual, she'd forgotten to preheat it. She pricked a couple of baking potatoes with a fork and placed them on the shelf above the casserole. Alex should have finished his call to Weird by now, she thought. She couldn't postpone talking to her brother any longer.
When she stopped to think about it, it seemed slightly odd to Lynn that, despite the blood ties, despite her contempt for Weird's brand of hellfire and damnation, Mondo had become the most disengaged member of the original quartet. She often thought that if it weren't for the fact that they were brother and sister, he'd have disappeared completely from Alex's radar. He was geographically closest, over in Glasgow. But by the end of their university career, it seemed he wanted to shed all the ties that bound him to his childhood and adolescence.
He'd been first to leave the country, heading off to France after graduation to pursue his ambition for a career in academe. He'd scarcely returned to Scotland in the following three years, not even showing up for their grandmother's funeral. She doubted whether he'd have bothered to attend her wedding to Alex if he hadn't been back in the UK by then, lecturing at Manchester University. Whenever Lynn had tried to discover the reason for his absence, he'd always evaded the issue. He'd always been good at avoidance, her big brother.
Lynn, who had stayed firmly anchored to her roots, couldn't understand why anyone would want to sever himself from his personal history. It wasn't as if Mondo had had a shitty childhood and a horrible adolescence. Sure,