Half an hour passed.
It didn’t feel like time. It felt like something leaking.
The room had been softened for families — lights dimmed, machines quiet, curtains drawn with deliberate care — but Linda still saw the hospital underneath it. The way the floor gleamed too cleanly. The way the air smelled scrubbed, stripped of anything human. The way the bed sat wrong in the space, as if it belonged somewhere else now.
Skye lay where they had left her.
Linda hadn’t moved more than a step away.
She stood with her hip pressed to the bed, one hand curled in the fabric of the sheet, not pulling, not touching skin — just enough contact to know it was there. To know she was there. Her other hand rested flat against Skye’s shoulder, as if keeping her pinned gently to the world.
Cold.
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Not icy. Not yet. But wrong.
Linda stroked Skye’s hair again, slower now, forcing her hands to behave. The strands slid through her fingers without resistance, too easy. She remembered braiding it before school sometimes, Skye squirming and complaining and then refusing to undo it all day because Mum did it.
“You hate the lights,” Linda murmured. The words shook apart halfway through. “You always say they make your head hurt. I—I told them to turn them down.”
Her voice sounded distant to her own ears, like it was coming from another room.
Skye didn’t complain.
Linda adjusted the sheet a fraction, smoothing a crease that didn’t need smoothing. Her nurse-brain intruded without permission — the way it always did.
Positioned carefully. Cleaned. Someone brushed her hair.
Good care.
She hated herself for thinking it.
Her chest tightened, breath hitching hard enough that she had to lean closer, forehead hovering just above Skye’s.
“Don’t—” Linda tried. Stopped. Swallowed. “Don’t be... cold.”
The word stuck. She pressed her palm more firmly against Skye’s shoulder, like pressure might push warmth back in.
Footsteps outside the door.
Linda didn’t look up.
She knew who it would be before they entered. She could feel the shift in the air — the careful way people approached grief when it belonged to one of their own.
Maeve came in first. Her eyes went straight to the bed and filled instantly, like she hadn’t been holding them back so much as containing them until permission arrived.
Behind her, Matron Kelly paused just inside the doorway.
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Kelly took one look at Skye and made a small, broken sound in her throat. Her hand came up to her mouth automatically.
“Oh, Luke,” she whispered.
The name landed wrong.
Linda’s head snapped up.
“Her name is Skye.”
The words came out sharp. Too sharp. They cut the air clean through.
Maeve flinched.
Kelly froze — then nodded immediately, contrite, eyes shining. “I’m sorry. Skye.”
Linda didn’t soften. She turned back to the bed, fingers curling tighter in the sheet.
Kelly stepped closer, careful, voice low and steady in the way she’d used with families a hundred times before. “Linda... love. You’ve been through a lot tonight. We should get you home.”
Home.
Linda laughed — a short, raw sound that didn’t belong to anything like humour.
“She is my home,” she said. Her breath shook so badly she had to stop and try again. “There’s— there’s no home without her.”
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Maeve moved to Linda’s other side, close enough to be felt without touching. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I’m not,” Linda said, too quickly. “I’m— I’m right here.”
She stroked Skye’s hair again, faster now, like she couldn’t remember how to be gentle. “You’re supposed to be warm,” she whispered. “You always run warm. You get it from me.”
Her voice cracked completely on the last word.
Kelly placed a hand on Linda’s shoulder.
The contact grounded her for exactly half a second — long enough for the nurse in her to register the weight, the pressure, the reality of it.
Then everything pushed in.
The lights were too bright again. The smell too sharp. The bed too solid.
“No,” Linda breathed. “Don’t— don’t take her. Please. Just— just give me a minute.”
Kelly didn’t argue. She squeezed Linda’s shoulder once and stepped back, motioning Maeve out with her.
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“We’ll be right outside,” Kelly said softly. “If you need anything.”
The door closed.
Linda was alone with her daughter.
The silence roared.
She bent over Skye then — not carefully, not controlled — and pressed her forehead to Skye’s hair.
“I’m here,” she sobbed. “I’m here, baby. Mum’s here. I shouldn’t have— I should have—”
Her thoughts scattered, impossible to hold in order.
Picking her up.
Calling Simon.
The other child on the table. The bleeding. The choice.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, no, no— you’re not— you’re not gone. You can’t—”
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She pulled back suddenly, panic flaring.
“Wake up,” Linda said, louder now, her voice shredding. “Skye— wake up. Please. I need you to wake up.”
Nothing.
She shook Skye’s shoulder — once, lightly — then immediately froze, horror flooding her.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Her hands hovered uselessly over Skye’s chest, her face, afraid now to touch too hard, afraid to touch at all.
Her nurse-brain surged again, vicious this time.
Time of death. Body temperature. Paperwork.
If she thought those thoughts all the way through, something would lock into place forever.
Linda made a broken sound and slammed that part of herself shut.
“No,” she whispered fiercely. “No. Not yet.”
She pressed her cheek to Skye’s again, gasping at the chill.
“I can’t— I can’t do this without you,” she cried. “I don’t know how. You were— you were the careful one. You watched me. You made me better.”
Her breath came too fast, lungs burning. The room tilted.
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She slid down the side of the bed until she was sitting on the floor, still clutching the sheet like a lifeline. Her head tipped back against the mattress, eyes squeezed shut, body folding in on itself.
Outside, someone laughed — a single, sharp sound — and it felt like being stabbed.
Linda screamed.
Not words. Just sound.
A raw, tearing noise ripped out of her chest, startling even herself. It echoed off the walls and came back wrong, distorted.
The door opened immediately.
Maeve rushed in and dropped to her knees beside Linda, arms wrapping around her shoulders, holding her upright when her body tried to collapse completely.
“I’ve got you,” Maeve said urgently. “I’ve got you.”
Linda clutched at her scrubs, fingers digging in like she might fall through the floor otherwise.
“She’s—” Linda sobbed. “She’s not breathing. She’s cold. I can’t— I can’t—”
Maeve didn’t correct her. She didn’t soothe. She just stayed.
Kelly stood in the doorway, eyes wet, jaw tight. She looked at Skye once more, then back at Linda.
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“We’ll give you time,” she said quietly. “As much as you need.”
Linda shook her head violently.
“I can’t leave her,” she said. “If I leave her, she’s—”
She couldn’t finish.
Maeve tightened her grip.
“I know,” she murmured.
Linda turned her face back toward the bed.
Skye lay exactly as she had before. Pale. Still. Unmoved by the storm ripping her mother apart inches away.
Linda’s voice fell apart into small, broken sounds as she reached up again, fingertips brushing Skye’s hand.
“Skye,” she whispered.
The name felt different now.
Heavier.
Final.
“I promise,” Linda breathed, pressing her forehead to the mattress. “I promise I’ll say it. I promise I’ll always say it. Just— just don’t be gone.”
The room didn’t answer.
The hospital kept breathing around them — distant trolleys, muted voices, a door opening and closing somewhere far away — indifferent, relentless.
Linda clung to her daughter as if refusing separation might still mean something.
And for the first time in her life, every system she trusted failed her completely.
——————
Weeks later...
The church had never been built for this many bodies.
It was a small Suffolk place with old stone that held cold even in summer, pews polished by generations of hands, and a ceiling that always made voices sound slightly too big for the people who owned them. Today it was full past capacity — full in the doorways, full down the aisle, full outside where the open doors let the wind and the murmur of the street bleed into holy space.
Linda felt every pair of eyes before she saw them.
Not staring, not prying — just... there. The weight of a town trying to hold its breath together. Teachers she recognised from assemblies. Parents from the school gates. Kids in uniforms too big for their shoulders, standing awkwardly like they’d been told this matters but hadn’t been taught what to do with their hands.
And cameras.
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Two of them, at least. Tripods set near the side wall, lenses angled carefully toward the front like they were filming a wedding, not a child’s coffin.
Linda’s body reacted before her mind did. Heat surged up her neck. Her fingers tightened on nothing.
“What are they doing?” she whispered.
Simon stood beside her, close enough that their sleeves touched. He was in a dark suit he hadn’t worn in years, collar too tight, jaw set as if he could lock grief behind bone. He didn’t look at the cameras. He didn’t look anywhere for too long.
“The mayor,” he murmured, voice flat. “The Kingsleys asked. Road safety... statement. They—” His throat worked once. “They wanted it public.”
Linda’s head turned, sharp, hunting.
The Kingsleys sat two rows behind, dressed like their own funeral had finished yesterday and they hadn’t found their way back into colour. Mrs Kingsley’s hands were clasped so tightly her knuckles looked bleached. Mr Kingsley’s face was grey, eyes rimmed red, mouth pressed into a line that kept trembling anyway.
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When Mrs Kingsley caught Linda looking, her gaze flickered like a bruise being pressed. She didn’t wave. She didn’t nod. She just stared back with something raw and helpless in it — grief, yes, and something worse underneath. Responsibility that had nowhere to go.
Linda’s stomach twisted.
She turned forward again before she did something she couldn’t undo.
At the front, the coffin sat open.
Linda had thought she was prepared for it. She had held Skye’s hand when it was already cooling. She had pressed her face into Skye’s hair and begged a body to become a child again. She had watched people pull sheets and tidy edges and make the world look kinder than it was.
None of that prepared her for this.
Skye was dressed as if she were going somewhere.
Not in the clothes she’d died in. Not in hospital white. Someone had put her in a pale dress that looked like it belonged at a birthday party, a little cardigan folded neatly over her, hair brushed and parted with care. There was a faint shine on her lips, the kind Linda never allowed on school mornings because it smeared.
Her face was peaceful in a way that felt like theft.
Linda couldn’t decide whether she wanted to climb into the coffin with her or scream at whoever had made her look so... finished.
Beside the coffin, flowers spilled in bright, frantic colour. Cards. Small drawings from children. A printed photo of Skye holding a pen, mouth open mid-laugh, taped to the lectern like proof that she had been real.
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Alice sat in the front pew, one seat away.
She looked present in the way mannequins looked present — upright, dressed, eyes open, soul elsewhere. Jolie had one arm around her, fingers threaded into the sleeve of Alice’s black dress like a tether. Not a friend’s hold. Something closer. Something that said I’m here even if you’re not.
Amelia sat on Alice’s other side and kept glancing between them with a careful softness, like she was watching an animal she didn’t want to spook. When Jolie adjusted her grip, Amelia offered a small, tremulous smile — a permission slip for comfort.
Alice didn’t smile back.
Her gaze was locked on the coffin. On Skye’s face. Like she was trying to memorise what grief had done to her sister so she could punish herself accurately later.
Father Mallory stood at the front, hands folded over his book. He was a broad man with kind eyes and a voice that could fill space without shouting. Linda had seen him bless newborns, marry couples, speak at funerals for old men whose families barely knew their middle names.
He looked tired today.
He cleared his throat, stepped closer to the lectern, and let his eyes move across the packed church with something like disbelief.
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“Well,” he said, voice gentle, and a few people huffed out breaths that weren’t quite laughter, “I’ve done a lot of funerals in this church... but I don’t think I’ve ever had to preach to the entire town at once.”
A ripple went through the room — not humour, exactly. More like recognition that the world had flipped its rules and no one knew how to stand inside it.
Father Mallory looked down, then up again.
“In the Gospel of Matthew,” he said, “Jesus says: ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’”
Linda’s throat tightened so hard it hurt.
She didn’t want comfort. She wanted reversal. She wanted time to behave properly. She wanted someone to tell her what she’d missed — which door to choose, which ten minutes to redo, which ordinary moment to trade for this impossible one.
Father Mallory’s voice softened.
“And in the Psalms: ‘The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’”
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Someone behind Linda made a small sound — a swallowed sob, or a breath that couldn’t get past grief’s grip.
Linda stared at Skye’s face and felt her body do something humiliating: sway, like the floor had moved.
Simon’s hand found the small of her back, steady, practical. His touch didn’t soothe. It just stopped her from falling in front of the whole town.
Father Mallory went on, speaking of Skye the way people spoke of children when they wanted to honour them without turning them into saints.
He talked about a girl who noticed things — whose teachers said she listened like she was really listening, not waiting for her turn. A girl who would stand too close to someone crying because she didn’t know the correct distance, and somehow that made it better, not worse. A girl who wrote stories in a notebook “like the world mattered enough to be described properly.”
Linda’s lungs refused to fill.
Mallory’s gaze slid, carefully, toward Alice.
“And,” he said, “I’ve been told — by more than one person — that Skye’s safest place, most days, was not a room. It was a person.”
Alice’s head lifted a fraction, as if her body had heard her name without permission.
“The bond between sisters,” Mallory said, voice thickening slightly, “is often described as complicated. But I’ve heard, again and again, that these two had something simpler beneath all the noise. A kind of knowing. A kind of loyalty.”
Linda felt tears rise like nausea — not graceful, not chosen. She tried to swallow them back and failed.
Mallory nodded once, as if he’d expected that.
“Simon shared something with me,” he said gently. “A recording. A moment from the garden.”
A small speaker near the front crackled. Someone had plugged in a phone or a player; the technology looked wrong against stained glass.
Then Skye’s voice filled the church.
Thin, bright, laughing.
The recording was shaky with movement — wind, a little distortion — and then the unmistakable start of a song Linda hadn’t heard since she was younger, before motherhood ate her spare time.
Skye’s voice came in first, off-key and fearless. Alice’s followed, louder, trying to be dramatic. There was a burst of laughter from whoever was filming — Simon, Linda realised, because the laugh sounded like his when he forgot to be controlled.
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Skye sang, and in the middle of it, clear as a bell, the words: “You can dance, you can jive...”
Just a fragment — and yet it hit the room like a fist.
Alice broke.
It wasn’t a neat collapse. It was sudden and violent, like her body had been holding itself upright on pure refusal and the refusal finally ran out. Her shoulders shook. Her face folded into Jolie’s neck. Jolie’s arms tightened around her with a fierce, protective tenderness that didn’t care who saw.
Amelia’s eyes flooded. She pressed a hand to her mouth, trying and failing to keep herself quiet.
Two rows back, Mrs Kingsley began to sob — a sound that came out too loud and then couldn’t be taken back. Mr Kingsley stared at the coffin like he was trying to bargain with a dead child through force of will.
Linda made a noise she didn’t recognise as her own.
She reached for the edge of the pew in front of her, fingers digging into the wood until her hands ached. She couldn’t breathe properly. The song on the recording kept going for a few seconds — laughter, Skye shouting the next line, Alice answering — and then Mallory cut it gently, like he couldn’t bear to leave it playing over the sound of a town breaking.
On the side aisle, Margaret Marlowe stood with both hands clasped around the back of a pew, head bowed. Beside her, Elias stared at the coffin without blinking.
He didn’t cry.
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There was something in his stillness that unnerved Linda even through her own grief — not coldness, not cruelty. Something like a man who had seen too many endings to be surprised by another.
Father Mallory swallowed hard.
“She was loved,” he said, voice rough now. “In a way that leaves... an imprint.”
The service moved forward the way services always did, because ritual was what humans used when language failed.
Prayers. Words about rest. Words about peace. Linda heard none of it properly. Her eyes kept sliding back to Skye’s face, to the way her daughter looked finished in that coffin, as if she were a story someone else had closed.
Then the slideshow began — photos and short clips, stitched together with a song that came in soft and aching.
A woman’s voice, gentle and resigned, sang: “When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful...”
Linda’s chest caved in.
The images flickered: Skye on the grass with a notebook. Skye holding a birthday candle, cheeks puffed. Skye in oversized sunglasses, grinning. Skye pressed into Alice’s side on the sofa, half asleep, mouth open, trusting the world too much.
Linda couldn’t stop the sounds that came out of her then. She tried. She failed. She covered her mouth and shook anyway, grief spilling through her fingers like water through a sieve.
Simon didn’t cry loudly. He just... folded inward. His shoulders dipped. His face went tight. Tears slid down without expression, as if his body was leaking while his mind refused to participate.
When the song ended, the church sat in the aftermath — that stunned quiet where you could hear someone’s sleeve brush fabric, someone’s shoe shift on stone.
Then came the line.
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People began to stand, one by one, moving toward the coffin.
Some left flowers. Some left letters. A teacher placed a small stack of coloured pens like an offering.Ben approached with his parents; his eyes were huge behind new glasses, and he put something on the edge of the coffin — a folded drawing, held out with both hands like it weighed a tonne. He whispered something Linda couldn’t hear.
Alice went next.
Jolie walked with her, hand at her elbow like a guide through fog. Alice’s movements were slow, jerky, like her limbs didn’t belong to her.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a small makeup palette — expensive, untouched. The kind she never let Skye touch because it was hers and Skye was too young and Linda had said no without thinking about how often she said no.
Alice placed it near Skye’s hand, then hovered, frozen, eyes searching her sister’s face for an instruction that wasn’t coming.
Jolie leaned in and whispered something into Alice’s hair. Alice nodded once, like a child being told what to do at the edge of a cliff.
Simon went after.
He didn’t linger. He placed a small object — something metallic and worn, maybe a keyring, maybe a charm from a holiday — near Skye’s shoulder. His fingers shook as he withdrew them. He brushed Skye’s hair back once, very lightly, like he was afraid of breaking her again.
Then it was Linda’s turn.
Her legs didn’t want to move. Simon came with her automatically, close enough that people made space without being asked. Linda heard camera shutters and felt rage spike through her grief like electricity.
Don’t you dare make this yours.
She reached into her pocket with fingers that didn’t feel real and pulled out the thing she’d clung to through every shift, every argument, every day she’d told herself she was coping:
Her hospital badge.
The plastic was scuffed. The clip was cracked. Her name printed in block letters above her photo, smiling in a way she couldn’t remember doing.
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Linda stared at it like it belonged to someone else.
Then she placed it in the coffin, right by Skye’s folded hands.
It was the only piece of herself she knew how to give away.
“There,” she whispered, voice barely present. “Mum’s not... Mum’s not—” She couldn’t finish. Her lungs refused.
Skye’s face didn’t change.
Linda’s hands hovered above her daughter for a second, shaking, desperate to touch and terrified to touch, because touch didn’t fix anything anymore.
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Simon’s hand closed around Linda’s forearm, gentle but firm.
He guided her back like she was the one in need of carrying now.
When the time came, the casket was closed.
The sound of it — the soft, final click — made something inside Linda go quiet in a way that scared her more than crying had.
Outside, the town stood waiting.
Men stepped forward to lift the coffin. Simon was one of them.
Linda watched, detached and horrified, as her husband put his hands under the weight and raised their daughter as if she were cargo. His face didn’t crumble. It just drained, grey and determined, like he could not afford to be anything else while he carried her.
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People followed to the graveside in a slow, stunned procession — cameras kept at a respectful distance, the town spilling along the path like a river that didn’t know where to go.
Father Mallory spoke again at the earth, words about dust and return, about being held by God when hands could no longer hold.
He said Skye’s name.
He said it carefully, clearly, like it mattered.
Linda heard it and felt something twist — grief, yes, but also a hard, bitter vow forming under the grief, beginning to take shape whether she wanted it to or not.
When the coffin was lowered, when the ropes slid and the wood disappeared into the mouth of the ground, Linda made a sound like an animal.
Simon gripped her tighter.
Alice stood with Jolie’s arms around her, face blank again, as if her breakdown had burned through what was left of her and left only ash.
Behind them, Margaret bowed her head. Elias stared into the grave like he was measuring it, like he was memorising the exact shape of a loss.
And Linda — hollowed out, furious, ruined — watched the earth prepare to cover her child and felt the world tilt again, not with surprise this time, but with the terrible certainty that nothing would ever be ordinary after this.
Not for any of them.
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and then Add to home screen.