She stayed with Mabel for a little longer before going upstairs to her room, ostensibly to get some sleep, although strangely, in spite of having been on the go for over twenty-four hours and feeling exhausted in mind and body, she knew she wouldn’t be able to drop off. Her mind was buzzing and going round and round in endless circles as she lay in bed staring up at the ceiling she and Ellie had painted together. She would give the world to be able to go back in time to the moment when she’d agreed that Ellie could come with her to Newcastle. No, even before that, to when she had stood in Snowdrop Lane and listened to Adam tearing her world apart. She should have gone home, packed a bag and left Sunderland that very night, and written to Ellie later. Different scenarios poured through her head, each one more extreme than the last, and at some point she must have fallen asleep because she awoke to a room filled with twilight and Mabel knocking on her door with a cup of tea.

And once she was alone again, she realized something had happened during the time she had been sleeping. She needed to go and see her mam and da, and yes, Olive too. She had been putting it off for a long time, but it needed to be done if she was ever really going to lay the ghosts of the past. Ellie’s passing was at the back of this decision but as to the reasoning she couldn’t search herself now; it was too painful, but it was all mixed up with Ellie being like family to her.

She sat on the bed sipping the tea as her thoughts began to clarify. She would take two days’ unpaid leave from the laundry and explain she had certain urgent family matters to attend to in Sunderland, which was the truth, after all. She needn’t be more specific than that. And once she had been home, she would see about looking for a property where she could make the dream of her dress shop come true. There were too many painful reminders of Ellie connected both here with this room and with her present job. She would go stark staring mad if she didn’t have something to occupy her fully in the months ahead, and her position at the laundry no longer did that. She could have done the work in her sleep the last year or so.