She heard the girl before she saw her, howling ‘Mum! Mum! Where are you?’ Her voice was coming from the spooky section, where gnarled trees had grown wild and now encased the gothic monuments. This place was cobwebby and shadowy; magical and scary; overgrown foliage in bright, jumping LSD greens. Mary, Roddie and Jack used to do ghost tours here, taking turns to scare the shit out of each other.

She walked past headstones that had toppled face down into the cloggy earth. No-one was alive to maintain the memorials of Archibald Jamieson and Margaret Thom and Eleanor McWilliams. Their names would be mud for eternity. Mary walked to the top of the hill, taking in the view of compact, sensible Glasgow, its mountain edges visible from every angle. There was Holly, running on the soft grass between the lines of the long dead, checking each name as she ran, frantic and sobbing.

When she spotted Mary, she howled: ‘I can’t find her. I’ve been looking for hours. She’s gone.’ She pushed an overgrown shrub off an epitaph. ‘I don’t remember where she is.’

It was raining, and Holly’s hair and clothes were drenched. Mary wrapped a jumper around her shoulders. ‘She won’t be here, hon. Come, the new part’s over there.’

They walked in silence across to the new section, a grassy woodland path encasing them then clearing to reveal a sea of new dead. Mary worked methodically, and they found Holly’s mother’s plaque in the eighteenth row.

ISABELLA DUFF
BELOVED MOTHER OF HOLLY

Holly fell to her knees, crying. She brushed mud from her mother’s name: ‘Beloved mother.’

Mary found herself crying too and knelt on the wet grass beside the girl. ‘What was she like?’

Holly always thought hard before answering a question, a skill Mary peddled but did not have. ‘I’m looking forward to remembering.’ She considered the question again. ‘Energetic. She was energetic. Always had to have five things to look forward to. That was her rule. Five things to look forward to.’ Holly had brought yellow roses, which she placed on the plaque. She stood again and wiped her tears. ‘Where am I supposed to bury him?’

‘You’re gonna get a cold. Come on.’ Mary took Holly’s arm and began walking back to the car. ‘You could cremate him – scatter his ashes on the Braes, above Castlemilk. In one of his letters he said he was happy there, as a child.’

Holly thought about it and nodded.

The heavens opened, huge thick droplets like the ones they get in nice warm places.

‘Wanna run for it?’ Mary said.

‘Not really.’ But Holly had taken off already.

When they arrived at Holly’s, Jack was waiting on the step. The two of them were still embracing when Mary turned the corner.

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