‘He did?’ It was a feeble response, but Quinn couldn’t hide it anymore. He cared, and Jerry knew it.
‘He did. I hadn’t seen him since … well, a few years now. He never visits. So, when he turned up, I was a little shocked.’
‘Why did he visit?’ Quinn asked.
Jerry shrugged, sighing, a puff of white breath trailing before him. ‘When I opened the front door, it took me a little while to recognise him. I follow him on the socials, of course, but in person he looked different. He looked upset.’
‘Upset?’
The icicle in his chest melted, sending freezing water through his veins.
‘Said he shouldn’t have come back to Hay,’ Jerry said. ‘I invited him in for tea. He came in, but he didn’t want to stay long. He was with someone.’
‘Matty.’
So, there it was. Noah went straight back to Matty and left with him. Which implied what? That they were back together?
‘Is that his name?’ Jerry asked. ‘I didn’t get the chance to ask.’
‘Why not?’
‘He wouldn’t leave the car.’
Rude.
‘I made Noah tea. He said how my house hadn’t changed from when he was last here years ago.’ Jerry said this with a smile, no doubt remembering a past when Noah was around. Quinn conjured up his own image of what Noah’s childhood was like; how he might have been. ‘I asked him why he came by and he said he wanted to say goodbye.’
‘Oh gosh. That sounds…’
‘Oh, no, not dramatically,’ Jerry reassured Quinn. ‘Just a melodramatic way. Said he wouldneverset foot in Hay again. I laughed at that, which seemed to annoy him. This is Brecon, not Hay. Guess he didn’t want to step foot anywhere near it.’
‘Why would he come back here? Why would he want to see you?’ And why would Ivy bring him here right now, when he was trying so desperately to forget Noah.
Jerry looked back towards the house. ‘You see that window up there to the left, with the light on?’
Quinn did. The thatched roof nestled the window, the yellow glow offering a cosy glimpse into a room.
‘It was there that Noah came out to me when he was sixteen.’
Quinn gasped. Surely that moment alone qualified this house for one of those commemorative blue plaques.
‘Wow.’
‘He did that, and two days later, he left for London. That was the last time I saw him. He came out to me long before he came out to his mother, or in fact, anyone. I think he went to London pretending he was still straight.’ Jerry laughed at this, but not with cruelty. ‘When Noah was growing up, we had a good relationship, and I think he felt like he could trust me because…’ Jerry paused. ‘Well, because he knew about my own struggles.’
Quinn didn’t want to pry, but he wanted to know. He let the silence drift between them, thinking of asking so many things, wanting to know more about the Sage men, about that moment, and about Noah’s life in London.
‘We were there for each other,’ Jerry said. ‘I could tell when I saw him all those years ago that he needed someone to listen to him. He told me he couldn’t stay in Hay, told me what he knew he was, and then when he left, it left me devastated. I felt like I wasn’t enough for him or had let him down. We drifted apart, because I think to him, people like myself, like Hermione, were bad memories.’
It hurt Quinn to hear it. He knew those feelings, the ones that made you feel you didn’t belong, or like you were wrong. It was why he had opened his shop: for people feeling the same way.
‘When he was here the other night, it was like nothing had changed. He told me he wanted to see me again. Said sorry that it took so long. Gave me his number so we could keep in touch. And then he told me he’d made a mistake. He told me Hay only made him realise how much he couldn’t have something. He told me he feared what he was feeling. So, he needed to go, run away from it like he did all those years ago.’
Quinn understood Noah’s desire to leave. Something within him, something both childlike and primal, had forced Noah into survival mode. All those years ago, closeted and ashamed of his mother, he ran from it instead of dealing with it. Now, with what happened between them, the feelings that Quinn now knew were unmistaken and undeniable, allowed the fear to creep back in. Quinn almost pitied him, but he couldn’t sympathise. Both of them were nearing their thirties. You didn’t run away at this age. You dealt with problems.
‘He didn’t drink his tea,’ Jerry said, as if this mattered. ‘He told me he was sorry. Then he left. Said he needed to speak to the boy in the car.’
‘Matty.’
