She died. She died at about 11.25 on Monday night. He texted him to tell him. She died peacefully, he wrote. Last night he texed him again to say that he and the sisters were on their third bottle of Cava and that now and again one of them would start crying. She would’ve been furious, he told him, that she wasn’t able to join in. I can still see her in my mind’s eye, as clear as day, laughing. We’d sat out in their garden. A lovely hot sunny day. Her hair had gone grey and the cancer was taking root but she was still able to walk and sit and entertain. She’d talked about taking her little sister to school on the bus as a child. She’d laughed about the then fay-ness of her sibling, and how she’d stop to look at every buttercup, “off with the fairies, most of the time”, she said. I liked hearing her stories, her voice and seeing those blue eyes shine with the reminiscence of it all. Rest in peace, dear girl.
