I lift my head and find myself overwhelmed with sadness. The towels on the rail are monogrammed, pink letters on white cotton. Her bottles of expensive shampoo and conditioner line the edge of the bath. The smell of her soap, heady with notes of pear and ginger, rushes at me, mingling with the scent of her matching body lotion, as though she used it that morning and the smell of it is still fragrancing the room. Her hairbrush is balanced next to the basin, long strands of her dark hair clinging to the bristles, her leopard print scrunchy looped around the bright pink handle.

Everything is as she left it on the morning she came to meet me, the morning I tricked her into meeting Tracey. I get to my feet, my legs unstable. Through the door I can see a pile of clothes discarded on her bedroom floor. It is what she was wearing to the party. Flung off drunkenly and never to be worn again.

The bed is unmade, the duvet flung back, releasing her last dream into the air. The pillow is still indented.

My breath hitches into the silence, almost a sob but with no tears. I haven’t been able to cry since it happened. It is like my emotions have shut down and I have dried up, like a husk. I walk to her desk, run my fingers over the photos of us pinned tightly to the board on the wall, different places and moments of time, but faces I no longer recognise.

I sit on the edge of the bed, hang my head.

I sense someone behind me and I turn to see Eloise’s mother in the doorway. I shoot to my feet, feeling like an intruder. “Um, sorry, I…”

She smiles a little, says, “No, please, sit.”

She comes to sit next to me. The air is still, the distant sounds of voices from below muted. Dust dances in the light and my stomach lurches again as it crosses my mind that those particles are little pieces of her, clinging to my hair and face, breathing into my lungs. But I can’t move because her mother has reached out and taken my hand, is clasping it tightly, her fingers cold. I take a deep breath, focus on the pressure of her grip.

She says, “You were such a good friend to her. She loved you like a sister, would’ve done anything for you. You must be feeling so lost right now too.” Then in a whisper, she adds, “I miss her so much, I can hardly breathe.”

I don’t know what to say in return. Everything seems too lame, too insubstantial.