A ray of warmth tickled my chest. Everyone was enraptured by Millie – that lilting British accent, the elaborate hand gestures, the whirring confidence with which she spoke. Even Luca was listening intently.
‘It was winter and it was pretty dark, not to mention the streets were deserted because of the rain. After about five minutes, Soph noticed there was someone trailing behind us. A man in a long trench coat was following us! He’d come out of nowhere, and his hood was up so we couldn’t see his face. We upped our pace, and when we looked over our shoulders, the man had sped up too. So we ran, hand in hand, as fast as we could, splashing in and out of puddles until we finally got to the store. I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack. After all that commotion, and the risking of our lives, the cute boys weren’t even there! The place was deserted.
‘Well, naturally I was livid. Soph actually thought it was funny, but she always has had a warped sense of humour. So in the end, we bought a couple of milkshakes, drank them way too quickly, and then ran all the way home, the Trench Coat Villain still hot on our heels!’
A laugh bubbled out of me as the memory crystallized, and for the first time, Luca shifted his attention from Millie to me.
‘When we got back, we slammed the front door behind us and tumbled into Soph’s kitchen. We were panting so hard, we couldn’t even speak, and then the door flew open and who should come in but the Trench Coat Stalker!’
Mrs Bailey actually gasped, grabbing Luca’s arm in her moment of shock, then releasing it in the same instant with an even bigger and much more dramatic gasp at having actually touched a Falcone. Luca didn’t seem to care.
‘And then the stalker lowered his hood, and who was it?’ Millie’s teeth flashed. ‘Celine!’ Laughter filtered through the crowd. ‘She wanted us to have our adventure but she didn’t want us to be in any danger, so she tried to follow us to the store in her own stealth-like way to make sure nothing happened to us.’
‘Only it didn’t work,’ I chimed in. ‘Because her raincoat was terrifying and the hood covered her whole face and made her look like something from a horror movie.’
‘It scared us half to death,’ said Millie, shaking her head, a half-smile still playing on her lips. ‘But it was so funny.’
I remembered how much we had all laughed after that. How hilarious my mother found it that she had been chasing to keep up with us without realizing we were running from her the whole time.
‘But that was Celine,’ said Millie. ‘Kind and protective, and fierce when she had to be. She would do anything for her family. And even though she’s gone now, she’s still here.’ Millie gestured around her, at the air and the trees and gentle sway of the leaves. ‘She’s here.’ She pressed her hand to her heart, and when she spoke again, her words were watery. ‘And most importantly, she’s there.’ She gestured towards me, trying to smile as we locked eyes. ‘She’s in you, Sophie. All the goodness in her is in you now, too. You made her so proud, and I know you always will. You are her heart. Her memory will live on in you.’
A ripple of agreement travelled through the huddle. I swallowed the thickness in my throat. Well, damn. If Millie wasn’t the queen of speeches, I didn’t know who was. She should write for the president. She should be the president. Or the prime minister. Whatever.
I did my best to stand straight and not crumple, because if I let myself ponder Millie’s last line – of my mother’s pride in me, of her place in my life and my future, I would rip my hair out. Today was about saying goodbye. Tomorrow was about revenge. Nothing had changed that. Nothing could change that now.
‘Thank you for all those wonderful tributes,’ I said, picking up the urn and brushing past the heart-crushing sincerity of my best friend’s speech before it demolished me. ‘I’m going to scatter her ashes and then I’m going to say goodbye.’ I turned from them, the urn heavy in my hand, and walked to the edges of the hill before it sloped downwards again. Silence fell across the clearing, the only sounds the distant rumbling of a car engine and the rustling of leaves overhead. I peered at the river below, the wind sailing across my cheeks, as I unclasped the urn.
I love you. I’ll love you for ever.
The wind whipped the ashes into the air and pulled them downstream, to where the river flowed freely, and in that moment, I felt nothing but her, around me, within me, and it was a quiet, fleeting second of happiness that I knew I would not feel again for a very long time.
There was a scuffle behind me – a low rumbling intruding on the quiet reverence. I set the now-empty urn at my feet and turned around, ready to glare at whoever had the audacity to talk during such an important moment. I was all puffed up, irritated and heated, the words ready on my tongue … but in their place, only one slipped out.
‘Dad?’
I froze on the hill over the river, my jaw unhinged, as my father made his way through pockets of mourners. I scanned him, a part of me thinking he wasn’t real, that the grief had finally driven me mad.
It was really him.
Scruffy and thin, and dressed in one of his old suits, the sleeves gaping, the collar of his shirt unstarched. A tracking bracelet around his ankle, a prison guard twelve feet to his left, arms folded across his chest as he waited under a tree. And that word – one of the last he’d said to me before I’d smashed the phone – flashed inside my head. Furlough. I’ve applied for furlough.