The Boy Who Could Hear Stones

The day they demolished St Anna's, Theo did not go. He could not bear to hear what the stones said when they came down. His grandmother understood. She kept him at home, gave him jobs to do, and did not turn on the radio. A week later, the paving stone arrived at the bottom of his grandmother's garden. Theo had asked the contractors, very politely, to set it flat just inside the back gate. He had asked them to be gentle with it. They had been gentle. The paving stone was now Theo's. It was the same stone that had been the threshold of the village's church for six hundred years. Theo and his grandmother built a small bench beside it. Theo planted, around the bench, a small ring of plants — thyme, rosemary, a single blackthorn cutting from St Anna's old churchyard. The plants would take years to grow. Theo took the notebook of names and stories to the parish council. They printed it, gently corrected by an actual local historian, into a small book called *St Anna's: A Short Memory.* It sold three hundred copies. The money went into a fund for the new church. The hearthstone stayed in the rectory. The chapel stone was on display at the museum. Other things were lost. Theo had not been able to save everything. The stones in the wall of the graveyard had gone for road metal. Theo had sat with a few of them, before they went, and written the names they remembered. He kept