Cece looks at her, expression guarded, and Lissa wonders if she’s crossed a line. But Rosy’s eyes light up and she lifts her arms to take the bear.
‘It’s not for me,’ she says.
Lissa nods. ‘I know.’
‘We’ll take it to Eddy.’
She works up a smile. ‘I’m sure he’ll like that.’
Rosy smooths the bear’s head, the way Cece smoothed her hair. ‘I suppose we won’t know, will we? Because he’s not here to ask.’
‘You can talk to him, though,’ Lissa murmurs. ‘Tell him about the bear when you take it to him.’
Rosy looks up at her out of those big eyes. ‘Really?’
‘Sure.’ She bends down so she is at eye level with the little girl. ‘My sister died too,’ she tells her, like a secret. ‘I used to talk to her all the time when I was younger.’
‘Do you think she heard you?’
Lissa hesitates. She doesn’t know what to say to someone this young, this innocent. In the end, she settles on the truth. ‘I hope so.’
Rosy blinks at her. ‘How come you don’t talk to her any more?’
Cece’s hand tightens its grip on her niece’s.
‘Well,’ Lissa says, holding her voice steady, ‘it was a long time ago.’ Rosy nods, like that is explanation enough.
Lissa straightens, and Cece smiles. It is a little stiff, but Lissa thinks it’s sincere.
‘Thank you,’ she says quietly.
Lissa nods as they turn to go, Rosy gripping the bear tightly. She tries very hard not to succumb to tears as she heads back into the shop.
There’s a message from Ash waiting for her on her phone.
Meet me for a drink next week?
And because she’s feeling sad, and vulnerable, she types her answer without thinking, because it’s honest, because she wants to know.
Why?
The three dots indicating that he’s typing start and stop a few times. She wonders if he’ll send another GIF, make it into a joke. She wonders if it’s made him question that very fact himself – why, exactly, they are still talking to one another.
Then, finally, the message comes through.
Because I want to see you.
The gravel path crunches under Lissa’s boots as she makes her way from the car park into the graveyard. Ivy creeps up one side of the church building, and there’s a nod to the end of the season in the form of a Christmas tree outside, modestly decorated with white fairy lights. She passes crumbling gravestones commemorating people who have long since been forgotten, and moves onto the grass, feeling its dampness seep through the toes of her boots.
It’s been years since she’s been here, but she could never forget the exact route to her sister’s grave. She stopped coming because it became easier not to. Because she had reminders enough of what had happened, because she didn’t want to see it, all the graves, with their loved ones left to grieve. Because, she always told herself, it happened so long ago.
Now she bends down at the rose and black granite headstone, traces her sister’s name in faded gold lettering, then the dates, painfully close together.
‘Hey, Chlo-bear,’ she whispers. It has always felt odd to bring flowers to her grave. She was too young to really understand the gesture of flowers, and in any case, flowers wither, they die. She planted a plant a few years ago, and wonders if it will still flower come spring. And this time, there’s a wreath on the grave, which can only have been put here by her mum.
It was little Rosy in the shop who reminded Lissa of what she used to do. Bring tokens to Chloe – things her mum would sometimes tell her off for leaving on the ground because they weren’t suitable for a graveyard. But now she places a wooden reindeer, one she picked up at the Christmas market because she liked the look of it, by the corner of the headstone.
She kneels, cold water seeping through her jeans. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been to visit in a while,’ she whispers. ‘I’m glad Mum has, though.’ She takes a breath, watches it dissolve into the greying mist around her. She used to come here as a teenager without her mum. Used to find it so easy to talk to Chloe – as long as there was no one else here.
