I stand with Mum and Dad by the church gate and watch as Alice’s parents and her sister pick their way through the long grass. Catherine and her dad are either side of her mum, each linking their arm in one of hers, supporting her. She looks so tiny and frail, it’s as if Catherine and her dad are the parents and Mrs. Dawson is their little girl. She’s wearing a black skirt and jacket, and a little pillbox hat with a black chiffon veil. It’s one of the few times I’ve seen her all dressed up. Usually she’s in an old baggy tracksuit, or pajamas and a dressing gown.

When Alice’s grandparents and then her uncles, aunts, and cousins approach the grave, I stare at my feet. It seems wrong, somehow, to look at them. Then again, it seems wrong not to look. Disrespectful almost.

But as I raise my head Catherine turns round and looks straight at us, like she did in the church. There’s something slow and deliberate about the movement of her neck. I tell myself I’m imagining it and that she’s going to do that thing people do with their faces when words are useless. But it isn’t us she’s looking at, it’s me. Her eyes bore into me and a chord of fear vibrates down my spine. She might as well be pointing her finger and saying, “How dare you still be standing there while my little sister is dead! How dare you!”

I turn my head and count to ten, wait for the horrible feeling in my chest to go away, the one that makes me ask that very same question. But when I look back, Catherine Dawson hasn’t moved. She’s still glaring at me, and I wonder if Mum and Dad have noticed, too, but they’re both studying their shoes.

Afterward, when everyone else goes back to Alice’s house for the wake, we go home. When Dad starts up the car, I see Catherine huddled with Melissa Davenport and some of the other girls from my class. They are all holding each other’s shoulders and crying. A lump forms at the back of my throat. I should be there, too, crying with them, being supported. Alice was my best friend, not Melissa’s. As we drive past the church, Catherine lifts her eyes and fixes that same withering stare on me once more.

It’s like…it’s like she knows it’s my fault.

After we buried the ash in the garden, we sat on the canvas swing chair, our bare legs dangling.

“Look,” she said, pointing upward. “Isn’t it beautiful?”