Dear Valerie,

It’s strange. You’ve been dead for eighteen years, but if someone asks me who my best friend is, you’re always the first person to come to mind. Eighteen years. A child born on the day of your death can drive a car now—tear around the place in a beat-up VW like the boys in the sixth form, or show off in Mum’s BMW like your cousin. Those kids are older than you ever were.

Eighteen years. Although I know you’ve been dead for so long, I still think of us as being the same age as each other. Isn’t that funny? You’re sixteen and always will be. I’m in my mid-thirties and I’m writing to a teenager.

I’m writing to say goodbye. I’ll keep it short, because it isn’t easy for me. Your mum’s well, so is your brother.

I’m okay, though I’ve had a weird few weeks. I’ve been thinking of you a lot again lately. I suddenly got it into my head that you might not have killed yourself. But you did. You killed yourself. You really did. I must accept that.

Maybe your mum’s right. Maybe nobody’s to blame, including me. Either way, I’m sorry.

When you went…it was like a shadow falling over my life, like perpetual night.

For eighteen years I was sure I was to blame for your death. But that has to stop now, Valerie; it’s time I returned to the light.

I am going to try to think less of you in the coming months—try to let you rest. It won’t be easy, that’s for sure.

And maybe what you wrote is true—maybe I am just a bad person. I’ve thought about it a lot lately. I have so many fucking flaws. And yes, the world is fucking unfair and it’s not often that I feel it in my power to change that. But I do try. And tomorrow I’ll try a little harder.

That’s it, I think.

Norah

P.S. You were wrong about one thing. I do have friends. (You’d like them.)

Norah read the letter through, then went into the bathroom and undressed. Her tattoo was healed; the new skin beneath the scab, fragile and translucent as parchment, no longer hurt when she touched it. Some primeval instinct drove her into the shower to wash; it was like an ancient ritual.

When Norah was finished and had put on clean clothes, she returned to the kitchen and took out the heavy crystal ashtray that she had once bought at a flea market, but never used. She tore the letter out of her notebook, folded it up and put it in the ashtray. Then she took the envelope containing Valerie’s suicide note from her bag, put that in the ashtray too and set fire to the lot.

To her surprise, she suddenly felt weightless. And perhaps, she thought, that was all right. Perhaps she was allowed to be happy. Even after all the mistakes she had made.

Norah watched the flames swallowing the paper.