The Cuckoo Clock

Geoffrey Latch has not been touched by another human being in six years. A fifty-three-year-old watch repairman in a quiet English coastal town, he opens his shop at eight, closes at five, and keeps the world at a careful, courteous distance. Behind his gentle precision lies a secret he has carried for twenty years—a car accident, a brother's rage, and a silence he chose as penance. When a retired nurse named Patsy Cottam brings in a broken cuckoo clock and refuses to stop talking, Geoffrey's carefully sealed life begins, against every instinct, to crack open.