I am left behind. Empty and bereft, with no desire to carry on. But I must, and I will. Because she has lost her entire world too and I swear to do all that I can to try and piece it back together somehow. I will love her with all my heart and show her that, despite all the sadness, we can always rely on one another to search out the light, the song, the laughter.

CMR

19

ROBIN

Erithacus rubecula

“She was singing to me.” Emily gasped.

“What? Who?”

A web of tangled memories with the merest suggestion of something more. Something that was asking Emily to draw back the shutter she had put over the past and force herself to remember.

“She was singing to me. Then all of a sudden she stopped.”

“Emily?” Tyler was looking at her, waiting for her to say something more.

Time suddenly slowed, revealing gaps and cracks she had never dared to look through before, and then the memories began anew, swirling through one another, a series of images on a loop she could not escape from.

Images from the day she had no desire to see.

“Make it stop,” she gasped, clutching at her heart, the words coming out between labored breaths. “Make the pain stop.” She fell against the table, sent glasses and cutlery scattering to the ground, sank into a chair and looked out at a world she was unable to see, to focus on.

“She’s having a panic attack.” Tyler glanced at Phoebe.

No, this is worse, Emily thought to herself. Like a long, sharp needle pressing against her heart, bringing new stabs of pain each time she tried to breathe.

“Put your head between your legs.” Phoebe placed a hand at the back of Emily’s head, but she pushed her away.

“Get off me,” she cried, and her grandmother’s pages tumbled to the floor. Phoebe picked them up, took a few steps away.

“Emily, what’s wrong?” Tyler bent down to her height, tried to make her look at him. “What was in her diary?”

Her body and mind were at a loss for any kind of reaction. It made her feel like she was back in that hospital bed, seeing the world through an unwanted but familiar lens.

All was changed, and she could never go back to how it was before. Just like then. Just as when she woke up to a room silent apart from the sound of her grandmother breathing. She was slumped in a wing-backed armchair, over by the window through which Emily could see the sun rising over the rooftops of London.

There were people, words, tastes. A biscuit on a plate that crumbled like ash and she hadn’t been able to eat because her jaw was wired shut. But she could remember.

She had never wanted to remember.

The low note of pain that had escaped her chapped lips, woken her grandmother from a restless sleep, who then came over and tried to give comfort when she had no idea how.