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there was a reason I liked Cheerios. Katarina poured me coffee which, like the day before, was black and bitter, and again like the day before I drank it down like medicine. I liked my coffee milky and best of all when sweetened with caramel syrup. I was sometimes told that I was lucky I wasn’t fat when I had such a sweet tooth. I said luck had nothing to do with it; I simply cut back on real food. It was a simple enough measure available to anyone.
    Looking out of the window, we all agreed it looked like it was going to be a lovely day and Uncle Ian and I retired to the glass veranda. My body had noted the word ‘veranda’ and anticipating cold, shuddered, but although three of the walls were glass it felt snug enough as we sat down side by side each in our white painted wicker armchairs that faced the snow-covered garden and the fields beyond. The sun had risen as far as it would go, hanging exhausted just above the tree line, shedding its pallid light.
    ‘I have no one to talk to about her, about Rose. I speak of her and people look at me with a mixture of pity and boredom and I think that to them all she means is the social awkwardness of a long ago tragedy. The worst of it is, sometimes I can’t remember. Talk to me about Rose, Eliza.’
    Talk to him about her, my shadow companion. I closed my eyes. I searched my mind, but to my distress all I could see was my own guilt and shame like a grubby overlay obscuring the view of Rose herself.
    He turned his head slowly as if he were pushing something heavy with the side of his face. Age was working against him, age that acted as a counterweight to everything he wanted to do. ‘I know you remember.’
    I felt so ashamed now at how hard I had worked not to remember. Ashamed of how I had skipped nimbly over memories that lay like jagged stones in my path. The lighter I stepped the less I felt.
    I said, ‘She was very beautiful.’
    ‘Of course she was. That much is obvious from any photographs.’
    ‘She loved parties,’ I said. ‘And dressing up. Do you remember the trunk full of old clothes and costume jewellery and hats and bags that Grandmother . . . your mother kept for us?’
    He sighed impatiently. ‘You could be talking about any one of a thousand sixteen-year-old girls.’
    I closed my eyes. If I could just think of Rose up until that night and no further. If I could allow her to live in my mind how she had been up until that night then slam a door on what followed.
    ‘What else do you remember?’ Uncle Ian was growing impatient.
    ‘She was funny.’
    ‘Was she funny? I don’t remember her being particularly funny. You were the funny one. You were precocious, quick. I’m afraid that used to annoy me. Rose’s mother always accused me of turning everything into a competition and she was right.’
    ‘I always knew I annoyed you.’ I smiled. ‘I just assumed it was because I was an annoying child.’
    He gave a dry little laugh. ‘Well, there was that too.’
    ‘I don’t mean she was particularly funny as in telling lots of jokes or saying funny things but she was so sweet, so other-worldly, in a funny way. She was funny-sweet.’
    ‘Funny-sweet. I don’t know what that means. What did she want to do with her life? What were her plans? Her hobbies? She liked ballet, I remember that.’
    ‘She wanted to be an actress.’
    He sighed. ‘All young girls want to be actresses. Did she display any particular talent to mark her out in that field? And I don’t want a whole load of polite waffling, Eliza. I don’t have time for that.’
    ‘I think she did.’ I smiled as I did recall something concrete. ‘Our drama teacher, Mr . . . Oh . . . Mr Whatever, I remember him saying that Rose reminded him of Vivien Leigh.’
    ‘Did he really? Vivien Leigh.’ He gave a delighted little laugh. ‘You know now you point it out I can see similarities.’
    ‘It wasn’t just the looks but Rose had that same air of fragility. And these days people agree that