Their heads must be cut off today and he was the one to do it.

It was his job.

There was no need for remorse. Their time was up. Their lives were over, their beauty spent.

And the garden would look much tidier once all those roses had been dead-headed.

Carol Browne first appeared on the planet in 1954. She regards Crewe, Cheshire, as her home town and graduated from Nottingham University in 1976 with an honours degree in English Language and Literature. Now living in the Cambridgeshire countryside with her cockatiel, Sparky, when she’s not writing fiction, Carol spends her time as a housekeeper, proofreader, and ghost writer in order to pay the bills.