Sitting on the bed, I listened to her footsteps descending the stairs. After a few minutes, the door clicked shut. All of Em’s things were there. The red teapot on the window ledge. A pencil tin with I MF still visible in Tipp-Ex on the lid. Martin Frost or … Marcus Fisher? I picked up her hairbrush for a bit and held it. On the dressing table was a black eyeliner. I got it going on the back of my hand and then, in the mirror, I did first one eye and then the other, aiming for flicks, but I’d never been able to get them right. I knocked over two of the ponies and knelt down to set them straight. With one hand, I took the one with the rainbow mane and tail over the jumps, then placed it back on the carpet, but so it was humping the pink one with hearts on its bum. In my head, I heard Em laugh.

The Christmas tapes were on the side by her CD-Double-Cassette player. There was one for each of us. I slipped mine into the machine and lay back on the bed with my head on Em’s pillow, reading through the track listings. Some of the songs she’d taped off the radio and there would be the last second of John Peel introducing them before the music started. She knew what I liked. Seattle sounds, girl punk bands, Leonard Cohen, Elvis Costello. When side one finished, I turned it over and this time I closed my eyes, and for a while I could feel myself held in Em’s mind, could feel her reaching out to me. Songs for Andy, the cassette said, and on the inlay card, she’d drawn a cartoon in pencil, the figure of a girl from behind, looking out into a landscape of Christmas trees and snow, a small moon, hanging like a lantern in a sky studded with stars.

When it came to an end, I took the tape out and put it back in the case and then into my pocket, along with the one for Peter. I looked around, ready to go. In the alcove by the wall was her art stuff, the plastic toolbox full of paints and brushes, sets of pastels and crumbling sticks of charcoal. On the shelf above, her sketchbooks were lined up. I pulled one down, recognizing the cover, and put Marcus’s tape into the player. He liked his music loud and shouty. Didn’t matter if it was rock or rap or rave, just so long as you could take a corner fast to it, shifting up and down the gears with the engine revving.

The sketchbook was the one she had started that summer at the manor. She always left the first few pages blank.

Too much pressure, and if I fuck up the first page, I won’t want to use it anymore.

You could tear it out.