Sorry

My Top 3

During a recent visit to Belfast, while walking through Botonic Park, I looked down and saw this stenciled on the pavement:

It took me by surprise and moved me to the verge of tears. Perhaps the emotion was intensified in part because we had only left the Ulster Museum moments earlier, where we saw an exhibit on the history of the Troubles.

I want to use this image, in words, of course, in the novel. Wade’s mother had repeatedly told him that his father was in the British Army, and that he was killed by the IRA one night in the late 1960s on the Lower Ormeau Road. Wade will see the stenciled pavement shortly after his uncle tells him the truth about his dead father, whom Wade only vaguely remembers.