We say goodbye to Elise today, and I’m standing at the back of the crematorium, a sea of pink outfits – at Neil’s request – in front of me, and so many more people spilling out of the door behind me. She was a popular girl.

Neil calls it a celebration of Elise’s life, not a funeral – and I get that. However fleeting her time here, it should be celebrated. Though in equal measures I admit to struggling. How can you celebrate the murder of a teenage girl?

I read how Rosamund led the police to where she buried poor Elise in a field near her home. It hadn’t taken the police long to find her. Or discover the bloodied jacket Rosamund wore when she killed Maddie, which she’d hidden in a hollowed tree trunk near Kyla’s bench. They’d also found remains of the jacket she wore when she killed Ruth, on the fire that Dad had made outside the cottage at Drummondale House. She’d been arrested for the young girl’s murder, and those of Ruth and Maddie, plus the attempted murder of Finn. The guilt that it was me who stabbed Finn still hangs heavy. In fact, it all feels surreal. A nightmare I can’t wake up from.

Neil rises, approaches the lectern, and puts down a sheet of paper with shaking hands. He’s lost weight, his face ashen. He clears his throat, and begins, ‘There’s got to be somewhere else.’ A beat. ‘I keep telling myself that. That somewhere, someday, I’ll see you again, and we’ll laugh and talk, and you can tell me about your day, and I will hold you in my arms, and tell you everything will be OK.’ His voice cracks, and he takes a deep breath. ‘Elise … Elise was my everything.’

He crumples, breaks down in tears – pushes his head into his hands. There’s movement in the front row, and an older man with a shock of white hair rises, stands beside him, and takes Neil’s arm.

Neil lifts his head from his hands, and goes on, ‘Elise was a bright, intelligent young woman setting out on life, who was taken long before she should have been. They say the departed wouldn’t want us to be sad, that they are at peace, but I know my Elise, and I’m pretty sure she’ll be bloody fuming that she’s up there too soon.’ He raises watery eyes to the congregation, as a low ripple of laughter drifts around the room.

We all struggle through heart-wrenching poems, a hymn, and words from the celebrant telling us about Elise’s short life. This is too much.

After the service, we are led out to the sound of Avril Lavigne singing ‘Keep Holding On’, and I look about me, witnessing so many tears. This tragedy will stay with me forever.

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