When I call Dev to let her know that the reap went OK, she insists I meet her and Esen on Ovingdean beach. When I get there, it’s still snowing and we sit on the wall, the three of us uncharacteristically quiet as we watch it fall and settle silently on the pebbles below. There’s no bickering. No swapping stories about the reaps we’ve done that day. We just sit there, waiting for Deborah to dispatch us somewhere else.

She doesn’t, though, so I do what Dev told me to and remember it – this moment – terrified that if I don’t, my life will narrow to a pinhole that allows for nothing more than being a taxi driver for the undead, everything in between just yawning gaps of time to be whiled away in the goldfish bowl of the bookshop, looking out the window as the world floats by.

Dev’s right, the physical stuff is easier to let go of – not feeling cold or hungry or tired – but while I no longer feel my heart beating, I still feel the weight of it every time I think about my parents dancing to ‘Rock Steady’ at a wedding or the first time I heard Poppy laugh – how it was a brand new sound that I wanted to hear again and again.

I remember it all and I promise never to forget.

In the meantime there’s this:

Dev’s hair is the same colour as the snow beneath our feet.

She hasn’t left my side since I woke up on the sofa in the bookshop and I know she never will.

Esen’s hair is as black as the sky stretching over us.

It would be easy to dismiss her as a shadow that sucks away the light, but standing beside her is like standing in the shade of a great oak tree on a summer’s day. Cool and steady and every now and then, there’s a thread of light.

And then there’s me, sitting between them as we look out at the wide, wild sea.

No, this isn’t how I thought my life would end, but if this is how it starts again, at least I have them.

As we walk back to the bookshop, I hear something when we’re passing the Dome and stop.

It’s her.

Her laugh.

The fake one she puts on when she’s talking to her father on the phone.

I swear I feel my heart for the first time in weeks, or at least some echo of it, like a song playing in another room. I tell myself that I’m imagining it, that it can’t be, that I’ve conjured the sound because I’m here, surrounded by people when she’s the only one I want to see. But then I see a flash of red ahead of me and before I can stop myself, I’m running.