Linda stood on the step for a second longer, breathing carefully, then started down the path—already rehearsing what she would say, and what she wouldn’t—unaware that the house behind her was holding its breath for what came next.

  Linda didn’t go far before the rain found her properly.

  Not the earlier thin mist that sat in the air like breath.

  This was heavier—cold drops that gathered on her lashes and slipped down her cheeks until her face felt indistinguishable from crying.

  She kept walking anyway.

  The street had that mid-morning hush that wasn’t peaceful so much as withheld. Curtains drawn. Bins half out. The odd car coughing into life and then disappearing, tyres whispering over wet tarmac like it didn’t want to be noticed.

  Linda held her keys in her pocket so hard the teeth bit her palm through the fabric.

  Don’t think about the cupboard.

  Don’t think about tonight.

  She cut down away from Finborough Road and into the town proper, the route something her body still knew even after years of avoiding it.

  Past the places that had changed their paint but not their tiredness. Past a bus stop with damp posters curling at the edges. Past a corner where the pavement dipped and puddles gathered in the same old hollow like the ground remembered.

  Combs Ford came up in front of her in sections—road sheen, traffic hiss, the smell of wet brick and diesel.

  At the junction where Violet Hill met the flow, the wind came through with purpose, pushing rain sideways. She put her head down and crossed without looking up at the windows. There were always eyes. There had always been eyes. They just hadn’t mattered until they did.

  The Co-op sat where it always had—practical, square, bright signage cutting against the grey, as if the building refused to learn the weather’s mood. The automatic doors breathed open and closed for strangers all day, indifferent as a machine could be.

  Linda’s shoes squeaked on the mat inside. Warm air hit her face and brought the smell of bread and floor cleaner and something faintly metallic from the fridges.

  For half a second, it felt like stepping into a different life.

  She grabbed a basket because that was what you did when you pretended you were normal.

  Milk. Bread. Something small and purposeful she could point to later if anyone asked where she’d been. Proof.

  She moved down the first aisle without seeing the shelves. Her eyes kept catching on children without meaning to—school jumpers, bright trainers, hair tied back with cheap elastics. Each one a quick, involuntary jolt.

  Not her.

  Not—

  She turned the corner toward the chilled section and saw them.

  Simon stood with a hand on the trolley handle like he was trying to remember what to do with his body. His coat was damp at the shoulders. His hair was darker with rain. His jaw was rough with stubble that didn’t look accidental so much as surrendered to. Even in supermarket light he carried the look of someone who slept in fragments and pretended it was enough.

  Beside him was a woman Linda recognised only from distance and inference—clean posture, hair pulled back, the kind of calm that came from being trained to keep it. Christina.

  And between them, slightly ahead, reaching for something on the lower shelf with the concentrated seriousness of a child, was a girl.

  Brown hair. A fringe that fell wrong in her eyes. The same narrow shoulders. The same way she angled her feet inward without noticing.

  Linda’s basket dipped.

  For a moment her body didn’t understand what it was seeing, only that it was wrong in a way that made her skin go cold.

  The girl turned her head to ask Christina something—mouth opening on a question—then looked back to the shelf and dragged a packet of ham closer with both hands.

  The movement landed in Linda’s chest like a punch.

  Not because she thought the child was Skye.

  Because Simon was standing there like he could borrow the shape of her and carry on.

  Simon looked up. His face changed in a clean, startled way, the way it did when you walked into a room and found something you hadn’t prepared for.

  “Lin,” he said automatically.

  Linda didn’t answer.

  Christina turned, eyes sharp first—assessing—then softening when she saw Linda’s face properly, like she’d recognised the shape of grief even if she didn’t know its details.

  “Hi,” Christina said, careful. Not too bright. Not too familiar. “Linda, isn’t it?”

  Linda’s throat worked. Nothing came out.

  The girl glanced up at Linda with quick child interest, then back down, already bored. Her hand went for the trolley again. Christina’s fingers slid to the girl’s shoulder without gripping—guiding, protective.

  Simon took a step forward, stopping himself as if he didn’t know whether proximity was allowed.

  “You’re—” he began, and then swallowed the rest. He looked at the basket in Linda’s hand like it might explain why she was here. “Are you alright?”

  Linda stared at the girl.

  Simon followed her gaze and, for a second, his face did something complicated—something tight, apologetic, and helpless all at once.

  Christina’s posture shifted. Not blocking. Just present in the way people were present when they were trained to step in before something broke.

  Linda’s voice came out flat. “Is this a joke?”

  Simon blinked. “What?”

  Linda lifted the basket a fraction as if she might throw it and didn’t. “You bring her here.”

  Christina’s brow creased. “Linda—”

  Linda’s eyes flicked to her. “Don’t.”

  Christina held still. She didn’t retreat. She didn’t push. She just watched, like she’d learned the difference between anger and danger and wasn’t willing to misread it.

  Simon tried again, quieter. “She’s Christina’s daughter.”

  Linda laughed once. It sounded wrong against the hummed refrigeration and tinny radio somewhere up near the tills.

  “She looks like her,” Linda said.

  Simon didn’t deny it.

  His silence was an answer, and it made Linda’s stomach turn—not because of what it implied about the child, but because of what it implied about him.

  “You think I don’t see what you’re doing?” she said, voice rising despite her. “You think I don’t understand it?”

  “Linda,” Simon said, and his voice was too soft for the volume she was building. “Please. Not here.”

  The girl looked up again, this time because the tone had changed. Her forehead creased slightly, as if she’d heard her own name without hearing it.

  Christina’s hand tightened slightly on her shoulder.

  Christina spoke with a quiet firmness that had been used on frightened patients and panicking soldiers. “Sweetheart, can you go choose the cereal you like? The one with the—”

  “The dinosaur,” the girl supplied, already turning away, and trotted toward the next aisle with a quick, careless confidence.

  Linda watched her go like she couldn’t stop herself.

  Then she looked back at Simon and felt something in her snap into heat.

  It wasn’t jealousy.

  It was betrayal.

  “Not here,” she repeated, sharper. “Where then? In your girlfriend’s kitchen? In your new house? In the place where my daughter doesn’t exist?”

  Simon’s jaw tightened. “It’s not like that.”

  “It is exactly like that,” Linda said. “You stand there like it didn’t happen. Like it didn’t tear us apart. Like you can just... restart.”

  People had started to look. A man by the ready meals slowed. A woman with a toddler paused mid-reach for yoghurt. Everyone pretending they weren’t listening while listening anyway.

  Christina stepped in half a pace, voice still controlled. “Linda, no one is trying to erase—”

  Linda turned on her so fast the words almost stumbled. “You don’t get to talk about it.”

  Christina’s eyes didn’t flinch. “I’m not trying to take anything from you.”

  Linda’s laugh came again, bitter. “You don’t have to try. You just get to be here. With him. In daylight. Shopping.”

  Simon’s face went pale. “Linda, stop.”

  “Stop what?” Linda said. “Stop watching you play happy families?”

  Simon’s mouth opened. Closed. He looked, suddenly, exhausted.

  “I haven’t replaced anyone,” he said, and there was steel under it now. “Don’t do that.”

  “Don’t do what?” Linda pushed. “Say it out loud? Name it? Call you what you are?”

  Christina’s voice sharpened slightly, not angry but protective. “Simon isn’t a villain for—”

  “For what?” Linda cut in. “For finding a life that lets him forget?”

  Simon flinched as if the line had hit somewhere tender he’d been trying not to touch.

  “That’s not fair,” he said, and his voice cracked on the last word.

  Linda stepped closer without noticing. Her basket bumped the side of the trolley with a hollow plastic knock.

  “You think it’s fair?” she whispered, low and vicious. “You think it’s fair that I wake up and she’s still gone, and you wake up and you can go buy ham with a child who looks like her and pretend you’ve survived it?”

  Christina’s gaze flicked once toward the aisle where her daughter had gone, then back. She lowered her voice to match Linda’s, still steady. “I know you’re in pain.”

  Linda’s eyes burned. “Do you.”

  Christina didn’t take the bait. “I’ve seen what loss does to people,” she said. “I’ve seen parents walk out of wards with their hands empty. I hope—” She swallowed, and for the first time her composure showed a thin crack. “I hope I never understand it the way you do.”

  Linda stared at her, breath coming too sharp.

  Christina’s expression stayed gentle, but her spine didn’t soften. “But I do understand this much: your grief doesn’t get to make my child feel unsafe in a supermarket.”

  Linda’s head snapped. “I haven’t spoken to her.”

  “Not yet,” Christina said quietly.

  Simon rubbed a hand over his face. He looked older than he used to. Not in years—just in weight.

  “Linda,” he said, and it was almost pleading now. “She’s a kid. She’s not—she’s not part of this.”

  Linda’s eyes flicked again to the aisle. The girl’s laugh floated faintly back—bright, careless, a sound that didn’t belong to Linda’s life.

  It did something to her. Not softening.

  Worse.

  Her voice went too loud, spilling out before she could catch it. “How can you stand it?”

  Heads turned fully now. The pretence dropped.

  A member of staff in a black fleece looked up from stacking bread, then froze, uncertain. The security guard—an older man with a shaved head and a yellow high-vis—began to move, slow but purposeful.

  Simon’s shoulders tightened. “Linda, please.”

  “How can you stand looking at her?” Linda said, and her voice broke on the last word like her body couldn’t keep it sharp. “Every day. In your house. In your arms. In your—”

  Her mouth failed her.

  For a second, the anger slipped and what showed underneath was raw and uncontained.

  Simon’s face softened despite himself. “Because I don’t get to stop living,” he said. “Because if I stop, nothing changes. She’s still gone.”

  Linda shook her head hard, like she could dislodge the sentence. “Don’t say it like that.”

  “Like what?” Simon snapped, and the edge surprised even him. “Like it’s true?”

  Christina’s hand came up slightly, a quiet signal. Not to stop him. To keep him from stepping into the fire.

  Simon ignored it.

  “Do you think I don’t think of her?” he said, voice climbing. “Do you think I don’t hear her in the house that isn’t even mine anymore? Do you think I don’t wake up and reach for something that isn’t there?”

  Linda’s chest heaved. The basket in her hand trembled.

  “And yes,” Simon said, and his voice went rough, “my stepdaughter looks like her. Some days it makes me sick.”

  “Some days it’s the only thing that stops me from driving into a tree because I can’t stand the quiet.”

  The words landed badly.

  Not because they were cruel.

  Because they were honest enough to sound like a confession.

  From the aisle near the front, the girl’s laughter stopped.

  A small pause. A shift.

  Mia appeared at the endcap by the cereal—half-hidden, box in her arms, eyes fixed on Linda with a cautious, animal stillness. Not understanding all the words. Understanding enough.

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  Linda saw her and something sharp went through her—not remorse, not softness. Just the awareness of collateral.

  The security guard arrived at the edge of the aisle. “Alright,” he said, not aggressive but firm. “Let’s keep it down.”

  A manager appeared behind him, a woman with a lanyard and a face that had dealt with shoplifting and fights and drunk grief before. She looked between them quickly, reading roles, picking the safest line.

  “Is everything okay here?” she asked.

  “No,” Linda said, too honest.

  Christina spoke over it smoothly. “We’re fine. We’ll leave.”

  Simon’s head snapped toward her. “No—”

  Christina’s eyes held his. Not here, the look said. Not with her watching. Not with them watching.

  Mia had retreated without running.

  She stood now near the front—by the magazine rack as if she’d been instructed to be there for years. The cereal was still hugged tight to her chest, fingers digging into the cardboard.

  Linda’s gaze slid to her—couldn’t help it.

  The child looked back.

  Not bored now.

  Wary. Hurt. Like she’d been made into something without consent.

  Christina’s entire body turned toward her, protective. “Sweetheart, go stand by the tills for me, yeah? Just by the magazine rack.”

  Mia hesitated.

  Her mouth opened—then closed.

  Not defiant.

  Just trying to decide whether moving would make her smaller or safer.

  Christina didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t soften it either. “Now.”

  Mia went, quicker.

  Linda watched her leave and something in her collapsed inward, as if the anger had been holding her upright and without it there was only empty.

  She looked at Simon again, and her voice came out smaller. “I hope your Skye replacement makes you happy,” she said, and it sounded like poison and grief welded together. “I hope she makes you forget her.”

  Mia stopped dead by the magazines.

  Her head turned back. Slow.

  That one landed.

  Not because she understood Skye.

  Because she understood replacement.

  Simon went still.

  Then, quietly—so quietly the aisle had to lean in to hear—he said, “It won’t.”

  Linda’s breath hitched.

  “Every day,” Simon said, and his throat worked hard around the words, “I think of her. Every day I see something and it’s her and it isn’t. And yes, she looks like her—but she’s a different person. She can’t replace her. No one can.”

  Linda stared at him like she couldn’t decide whether to hate him for saying it or break for hearing it.

  Christina stepped closer to Simon without touching him, anchoring.

  The manager cleared her throat. “If you need to take this outside—”

  Linda swallowed, jaw trembling. She reached into her coat pocket with hands that didn’t feel like hers and pulled out an envelope that had already gone soft at the edges from sweat and rain.

  “I just wanted to say goodbye,” she said.

  Simon’s eyes dropped to the envelope as if it had weight.

  “Linda—” he started.

  She shoved it into his hand like contact might undo her.

  Christina’s face tightened. “Linda, what is that?”

  “It’s not for you,” Linda said, and the cruelty in it was reflex, automatic as flinching.

  Christina didn’t rise. “I’m still going to care,” she said, calm and infuriating.

  Linda’s mouth wobbled.

  She looked past Christina at the doorway, at the grey light outside, at the way the rain skated across the glass like it was eager to get in.

  She didn’t look at Simon again. She couldn’t.

  She turned and walked.

  The security guard stepped aside, eyes on her face now, seeing something he didn’t like. “Love—” he began, unsure.

  Linda didn’t stop.

  The automatic doors opened for her like the building was spitting her out.

  Cold hit her hard enough to sting. Rain slapped her cheeks. The wind yanked at her coat as if it wanted her back.

  Behind her, she heard Simon say her name once—loud, stripped bare.

  “Linda!”

  She kept walking.

  Not running. Not dramatic. Just moving because stopping would mean turning back, and turning back would mean staying alive for reasons she couldn’t hold.

  Inside the store, Simon stared down at the envelope.

  Christina was saying something—low, urgent—her hand at his arm now, trying to keep him in place for her daughter, for the public, for whatever order still existed.

  Simon didn’t hear her properly.

  He tore it open with shaking fingers.

  Read.

  The colour left his face so fast it looked like a trick.

  Not shock.

  Recognition.

  Christina saw it and went still. “Simon?”

  He dragged air in, too shallow.

  His thumb was already on his phone without him deciding it.

  Alice’s contact sat pinned at the top—ALICE—a photo from years ago before everything got sharp. His finger hovered.

  He pictured her answering and hearing it, hearing your mum, hearing goodbye, and turning into twelve different versions of herself at once—angry, terrified, guilty, running.

  He pictured her not answering at all. He pictured the voicemail tone. He pictured wasting ten seconds, twenty—

  He looked through the glass doors.

  Linda’s coat was already a dark shape moving away into the rain.

  Whatever he did next had to be physical. Immediate. Something he could put his body in front of.

  He shoved the note into his pocket.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Christina, already backing away. “I’m—Christina, I’m sorry.”

  “Simon—” Christina snapped, and the mother in her came out hard now. “My daughter—”

  He turned toward the front where Mia stood by the magazines, clutching her cereal like a shield. He forced himself to stop long enough to crouch, quick and awkward.

  “Hey,” he said, too fast. “I need to go talk to someone for a minute, alright? I’ll be right back. Stay with Christina.”

  Mia stared at him. “Are you mad?”

  The question wasn’t about the shouting now.

  It was about whether she’d become the reason he left.

  Simon’s throat worked. “No. No, love. I’m not mad. I just—” He swallowed. “I have to fix something.”

  Mia hugged the cereal tighter. “Is it because of what she said?”

  His face tightened—just a flicker.

  He smoothed it out fast. “It’s not you,” he said. “It’s grown-up stuff that shouldn’t have happened where you could hear it.”

  Mia didn’t look convinced.

  Christina’s eyes held his over the girl’s head—hard, controlled fear.

  “Go,” she said, jaw tight. “But you come back.”

  Simon didn’t promise. He couldn’t.

  He ran for the doors, the manager calling after him, the security guard moving to intercept and then stopping when he saw the man’s face.

  Outside, the rain hit Simon like punishment.

  He spotted Linda’s coat ahead of him, dark against the wet street, moving toward the corner as if she had somewhere to be.

  He lifted the phone again as he ran, thumb shaking over TES.

  Not yet, he told himself.

  Not until I can tell her where. Not until it’s real. Not until I’m looking at your mum and I can keep her breathing while I say it.

  He shoved the phone into his pocket and ran harder.

  He shouted her name again.

  And this time, beneath the storm and the hiss of tyres on flooded road, there was another sound—sharp, wrong, too close to home.

  A crack of something giving way in the wind.

  A tree? A branch?

  Or something else breaking that had been held together for too long.

  Simon didn’t slow.

  He ran after her into the rain.

  The rain had turned violent by the time Simon caught up to her.

  Not heavy. Aggressive.

  It came sideways, stinging skin, flattening breath, making the street feel narrower than it was.

  Water ran in quick, shining sheets along the kerb, swallowing leaves and grit and whatever else the town hadn’t bothered to secure.

  A bin lay on its side halfway down the road, lid clattering like it was trying to say something.

  “Linda!”

  His voice tore out of him, rawer than he meant it to be.

  She didn’t stop.

  Her coat was dark with rain, hair already plastered to her cheeks, head down like she was bracing into wind rather than weather.

  She moved fast, not running, not hesitating — the pace of someone who knew exactly where they were going and didn’t intend to be argued out of it.

  “Linda!”

  She slowed then. Not because of the shout — because the pavement dipped unexpectedly and she nearly lost her footing.

  Her hand shot out, caught a lamppost, fingers white against the metal.

  Simon reached her just as she steadied.

  Up close, she looked wrecked. Not dramatic. Worse than that. Hollowed, eyes too bright, breath coming sharp and shallow like her lungs hadn’t quite agreed to the situation yet.

  “Don’t,” she said before he could speak. Her voice shook once and then steadied.

  “Don’t shout.”

  “I’m not—” He cut himself off, dragged a breath in through his nose, tried again. “You can’t just walk off like that.”

  She laughed — short, incredulous. “Watch me.”

  Rain ran down her face in rivulets, indistinguishable from tears.

  Her hands were clenched tight in the pockets of her coat, shoulders hunched like she was bracing against a blow that hadn’t landed yet.

  “What was that?” he demanded. “In the shop. What the hell was that?”

  She turned on him then, sudden and sharp.

  “You don’t get to ask me that.”

  “I do,” he shot back. “I absolutely do.”

  Her jaw tightened. “You don’t.”

  He took a step closer and stopped himself. Old instinct. Don’t crowd. Don’t corner.

  “Linda,” he said, and his voice broke on her name despite him trying to keep it level.

  “You handed me a goodbye note.”

  Her eyes flicked — just once — to the pocket inside his coat where she knew it was now.

  “It wasn’t a note,” she said flatly.

  “It was goodbye,” he snapped. “Don’t do that.”

  Rain hammered between them, loud enough that passing cars blurred into hissing shapes, drivers unwilling to slow for anything that wasn’t directly in front of them.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why now?”

  She stared at him like the question didn’t make sense.

  “Because Skye needs me.”

  The words landed clean. No apology. No ornament.

  Simon felt something cold slip into his chest.

  “She’s dead,” he said, too fast. Too sharp. “Linda, she’s dead.”

  Her face changed — not anger, not shock. Something quieter. Something more dangerous.

  “That’s what you think,” she said.

  He shook his head hard. “No. Don’t. Don’t do this.”

  “She’s alone,” Linda continued, voice steady in a way that made his stomach drop.

  “She’s calling and no one’s answering.”

  “Linda—”

  “You didn’t hear her,” she said. “I did.”

  Rain lashed them again, wind surging hard enough that Simon had to widen his stance.

  “This is grief,” he said, trying to keep his voice from rising. “This is shock. This is—”

  “This is instinct,” she cut in. “This is what mothers do.”

  His throat tightened. “No. Mothers stay.”

  Her eyes flickered then — something like doubt, quickly buried.

  “Alice needs you,” he said, pushing through. “She needs you alive.”

  Linda flinched.

  Good, he thought. There. I’ve reached her.

  “She’s not a child,” Linda said after a beat. “She’s strong.”

  “She’s not finished,” he snapped. “None of us are.”

  Linda shook her head slowly. “You don’t get to tell me what unfinished looks like.”

  Rainwater dripped from his beard, soaked his collar. He didn’t wipe it away.

  “You think this will fix it?” he demanded. “You think following her into the dark makes anything better?”

  “It makes her not alone,” Linda said.

  “And what about the people still here?” His voice cracked despite himself. “What about me?”

  She looked at him then — really looked — and something like guilt passed over her face.

  “You stopped being my reason,” she said quietly.

  That one hurt.

  He swallowed, forced himself to keep going. “I never replaced her.”

  “You tried,” Linda said. “You stood there with her face in a supermarket trolley and expected me not to see it.”

  “She’s a child,” he said again, desperate now. “She didn’t choose that.”

  “I know,” Linda said. “That’s why I walked away.”

  The rain surged harder, sudden and vicious, rattling the trees overhead. Somewhere behind them, a branch cracked with a sharp, echoing snap.

  Simon exhaled shakily.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  She hesitated.

  Just long enough to register.

  “Alice’s,” she said.

  Relief hit him so hard his knees almost buckled.

  “Good,” he said immediately. “Good. I’ll take you.”

  “No.”

  “Linda—”

  “I need to do it myself.”

  “Do what?”

  “Say enough,” she said. “Before it’s too late.”

  That sounded right enough to hold onto.

  He searched her face, rain blurring everything, trying to read what was real and what wasn’t.

  “Let me come with you,” he said. “Please.”

  “If you do,” she said evenly, “I won’t go.”

  He stilled.

  “You’ll turn around.”

  “Yes.”

  “And go where?”

  “Somewhere I shouldn’t,” she said.

  That did it.

  He dragged a hand down his face, water slicking his palm. The fight went out of him in stages — first his shoulders, then his jaw.

  “Then text me,” he said. “When you get there.”

  She hesitated again. Longer this time.

  “Linda.”

  “I will,” she said finally.

  He nodded, clinging to it.

  “Promise?”

  She looked away. “Yes.”

  The word sounded ordinary.

  That terrified him.

  “Take your phone,” he said.

  She tapped her pocket. “I have it.”

  “Don’t turn it off.”

  “I won’t.”

  He stepped back, giving her space with visible effort.

  “Linda,” he said one last time. “Please.”

  She didn’t answer.

  She turned and walked away into the rain.

  Not running.

  Not looking back.

  Simon stood there, rain soaking him through, watching her disappear around the corner like the street itself had swallowed her.

  He let out a breath he didn’t remember holding.

  “She’s going to Alice,” he told himself aloud. “She’s going to Alice.”

  He pulled his phone out, thumb hovering over ALICE.

  Not yet, he thought. Not until she gets there.

  He waited.

  The rain battered the street, relentless. Somewhere, a streetlight flickered — dimmed to amber — then steadied again, as if nothing had happened.

  Simon turned back toward his car, convinced — desperately — that he’d stopped something.

  Behind him, the road kept running.

  ——————-

  Rain still followed her, even after the Co-op.

  It thinned as she cut away from the main road—less slap, more cold insistence—caught in her hair and the collar of her coat, slipping down her jaw like the world couldn’t tell the difference between weather and grief.

  Alice and Jolie’s place sat above a row of shops that never quite looked open even when they were. A narrow stairwell to the side, paint flaked where hands had dragged keys and knuckles against it, the kind of entrance you could walk past for years without realising people lived up there.

  Linda stopped at the bottom step.

  Look up. Knock. Say her name.

  Her chest tightened so hard it felt like her ribs were being cinched.

  She climbed anyway.

  Each step made its own small complaint under her weight. The stairwell smelled of damp plaster and someone else’s cooking—fried onions, old oil, the ghost of curry powder that had settled into the walls years ago and refused to leave. Halfway up, a strip light flickered once, then steadied, as if it had almost given up.

  At the landing, Alice’s door was exactly where Linda remembered it—same scuffed paint at hip height, same crescent of peeled varnish around the letterbox where flyers had been shoved through too aggressively.

  Linda lifted her hand.

  Her knuckles hovered a few inches from the wood.

  She imagined Alice opening it.

  Not her face first—her posture. The braced stance. The split second of recognition turning into defence.

  And then the words. The ones that would come no matter how carefully Linda shaped her own.

  What now.

  Why are you here.

  What are you doing.

  Linda’s hand fell back to her side like it had been slapped.

  She took the envelope from her inside pocket.

  It was soft at the edges now, warmed by her body, the paper inside holding the shape of a decision she had made and couldn’t unmake. Her thumb rubbed once over Alice’s name on the front, smearing nothing, as if touch alone might undo it.

  Not yet.

  Not like this.

  She knelt anyway—slowly, joints complaining—and slid the envelope through the letterbox.

  The flap scraped as it passed. A small, ugly sound.

  Then it was gone.

  Linda stayed kneeling for a second longer than necessary, staring at the line where the door met the frame as if the gap might widen and swallow her with it.

  She stood.

  Turned—

  —and almost collided with a man coming out of the flat opposite, wrestling with a set of keys and a dog that was already trying to haul him down the stairs like the world might contain something urgent and edible.

  “Sorry—” he started, then stopped.

  He blinked. His face rearranged itself into recognition he didn’t quite want.

  “Mrs Harper,” he said, like the name had dust on it. “You— Christ. You’re... you’re Alice’s mum.”

  Linda’s throat worked. “Hi.”

  The dog—stocky, brindled, hopeful—looked up at her as if her sadness were simply another scent to catalogue. Its tail thumped once against the man’s shin.

  “I haven’t seen you in—” He waved vaguely. “Months. Thought maybe you’d moved. Or... sorry. None of my business.”

  “It’s fine,” Linda said, because the word was easier than the truth.

  His eyes flicked to Alice’s door, then back again. “You looking for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, she’s not in. She’s at work—over Mick’s. The bar.”

  Linda nodded. Her fingers tightened inside her coat pocket, checking without thinking.

  The man hesitated. Shifted his weight. The dog strained at the lead again.

  “Look, I’m not trying to pry,” he said. “But... she used to pop in, you know. Alice. Back when things were... less—” He stopped, embarrassed by his own sentence.

  Linda swallowed. “I’m not welcome in my daughter’s life anymore.”

  The words landed between them and stayed there.

  “Oh,” he said, quieter. “I— I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s alright,” Linda said. It sounded rehearsed. It wasn’t true.

  Another pause. Rain ticked against the stairwell window.

  He cleared his throat. “She’ll be at work a while. They’re short staffed. Always are.” Then, awkwardly: “You don’t have to stand out here. If you want. You can come in for five minutes. Just until the rain eases.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “I know,” he said quickly. “Sorry. I just—” He gestured vaguely at the stairwell. “It’s miserable. And you look like you’ve been walking for... a bit.”

  The dog chose that moment to push its nose against Linda’s hand, warm and solid, insistent in a way that didn’t ask permission.

  Her breath caught.

  She pictured Skye on the floor at home, cheek pressed to fur, laughing at nothing, the uncomplicated joy of an animal that didn’t care who you were yesterday.

  “Alright,” Linda heard herself say.

  Relief flickered across his face, gone almost as quickly as it came. “Just a minute, then.”

  His flat smelled like dog and aftershave and something fried earlier that day. Lived-in. Untidy without being dirty. Shoes by the radiator. A sofa with a blanket thrown over one arm like someone had stopped mid-thought.

  Above the television hung a framed photo: him, younger, arm around a woman laughing into the camera, sunlight caught in her hair like it had been invited.

  The dog dragged Linda two steps inside, then released her, circling once before flopping onto the rug with theatrical satisfaction.

  “He’s friendly,” the man said, toeing a sock out of sight. “Just assumes everyone’s here for him.”

  Linda crouched and let the dog sniff her properly.

  “He’s lovely.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Good with kids. Always was.”

  The words slipped out before she could stop them. “Skye would’ve loved him.”

  He glanced at her, then nodded. “Yeah. I reckon she would’ve.”

  He shrugged, but his mouth pulled tight at one corner. “It’s alright. We knew it was coming.” Then, after a beat, as if he couldn’t stop himself: “Not... not like yours. Losing a child.”

  Linda looked at him.

  The flat hummed faintly—fridge motor, rain against the window, the dog’s slow breathing as it settled.

  “Every loss damages you,” Linda said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a child. Or a mother. A father. A sister. A brother. Someone’s partner.” The last word landed harder than she meant it to, and she felt her own mouth try to close around it too late.

  The man nodded quickly, grateful for the permission not to compete with grief. “Tea,” he said, seizing the exit. “What do you like? Builder’s? Milk? Sugar?”

  “Milk,” Linda said. “No sugar.”

  “Right.”

  While the kettle filled, Linda sat on the edge of the sofa like she didn’t trust it to hold her. Her hands shook in her lap. She pressed her thumb into the heel of her palm until the pain cut through the noise.

  The man returned with two mugs, steam curling between them.

  “Careful,” he said. “It’s hotter than it looks.”

  She wrapped her hands around it, letting the heat sting just enough to anchor her.

  Silence settled. Not awkward. Just... waiting.

  The man followed her gaze to the photograph again.

  “That was her favourite jumper,” he said. “The yellow one. She said it made her look like she knew what she was doing.”

  “She looks happy.”

  “She was,” he said. “Most days.”

  He sat back, staring into his mug.

  “She used to sing when she cooked,” he said. “Didn’t matter what it was. Burnt toast, pasta. Always singing. Loud. Wrong notes. I’d tell her she was ruining the food and she’d tell me I was ruining the mood.”

  Linda smiled before she meant to.

  “She hid my socks,” he added. “Not wore them. Hid them. Oven drawer once. Fridge another time. Said it kept me humble.”

  “That’s cruel,” Linda said softly.

  “She thought it was hilarious.”

  Linda looked down at her tea. “Skye hid my things too. Keys. Phone. Once my shoe. Just one.” Her throat tightened. “She liked watching me panic.”

  “She was testing the edges,” he said. “Kids do that.”

  “I went sharp,” Linda said. “Not loud. Just... sharp. I hated that part of myself.”

  “She still came back,” he said gently.

  Linda swallowed. “I called her Luke,” she said. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Giving her space.” Her voice thinned. “I didn’t call her Skye until it was too late.”

  The mug trembled in her hands. She set it down.

  “I keep thinking,” she said, “that if I’d said her name more—let it live in the house—maybe she would’ve felt seen enough to stay.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think love works on quotas.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No,” he said. “But I know this: when my partner was dying, there were days she couldn’t talk. I’d sit there and tell her the same stories again and again. And one day she squeezed my hand and said, ‘Even if I forget the details, I’ll remember how this feels.’”

  Linda closed her eyes.

  “Maybe that’s what sticks,” he said. “Not timing. Not names. The shape of being loved.”

  The dog nudged her knee. She rested her hand on its head. It leaned into her, trusting.

  “I don’t know how to do this anymore,” Linda said. “Being here.”

  He nodded. “Some days I think I’ve missed a step. Like the world moved on without telling me.”

  “And some days?”

  “And some days I smile before I realise I’m doing it.” He met her eyes. “I don’t think that means I’ve let her go.”

  Linda stood slowly. Her legs felt heavy.

  “I should go.”

  “Any time,” he said. “Even if you just need the dog.”

  At the door, she paused. “I’m glad she had you.”

  He swallowed. “Me too.”

  The stairwell felt colder on the way down.

  The envelope for Alice was gone.

  Linda’s hand brushed the inside of her coat, checking again.

  Her chest tightened—not with certainty, not with relief—but with doubt.

  Not enough to stop what she’d planned.

  Enough to make it waver.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she paused, looking out toward the street.

  Toward Mick’s bar.

  Toward the long stretch of night still waiting.

  Skye’s laugh surfaced in her mind—not crying. Laughing.

  Linda stepped out into the rain.

  And walked.