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companionship and succour in each other. She might have been four years his junior, but she was his equal in terms of intellect and understanding. Being the elder, and a boy, he had often incurred the brunt of his mother’s temper, and rather than gloat as little sisters were wont to do, Ella did her best to cheer him. She had been more like an elder sister in her apprehension of his pain.
     
    And then at the age of ten she had fallen ill. She had spent long periods in hospital, during which time Bennett was never told of the true seriousness of her illness. He had watched her waste away, never truly understanding what was taking place. Then, the day before Ella was due home for the very last time, his father took him to one side and explained, with a brutality that struck him at the time as cruel, but which later he came to understand was an inability to articulate his feelings, that Ella was dying. ‘I’m afraid she is very ill, Joshua. The medics have told me that there’s no hope.’
     
    He had always assumed she would get better. To be told that Ella would soon die had filled Bennett with a sense of disbelief and, later, anger.
     
    Two days later Ella had died, with Bennett and his parents at her bedside, and with her impossible death something within Bennett seemed to vacate him, leaving in its place a vast and terrible emptiness.
     
    A week after the funeral, his father had interrupted his com-screen lessons. He had done his best to avoid his parents since Ella’s death; he felt a residual resentment at being kept in the dark for so long, and had no desire to see his grief mirrored in theirs. Now his father said: ‘We’ve decided to establish a memorial to Ella, Joshua, in the garden where you played together.’ And he had told his son what it was.
     
    He had avoided going into the garden for a long time after Ella’s death. He did not want to be reminded of his loss. The memorial seemed to him a crass memento of someone once so vital and alive. Later he wondered why people with the Christian beliefs of his parents had erected such a tawdry icon, and came to understand that it was merely their way of coping with a grief just as real and painful as his own.
     
    Perhaps a year after her death, Josh realised that he could no longer hear Ella’s voice in his head. He had forgotten the sound of her confiding words, her excited chatter, and that terrified him. One afternoon, after ensuring that his parents were away from the dome, he had stepped with trepidation and curiosity into the enclosed garden.
     
    Now Bennett pushed open the rusty iron gate to the memorial garden. A riot of untended blooms, frangipani and rude bougainvillaea, crowded the paved enclosure like unwelcome guests at a party. He quickly crossed the garden, his throat tight and sore, swept away fallen leaves from the mock-timber bench and sat down. A high voice asked, ‘Hi, Josh, how’s things in space these days?’
     
    The dark-haired little girl in a blue dress crouched before Bennett, tanned arms wrapped about tanned legs. Her blue eyes, so treacherously alive, stared at him with delight.
     
    He came almost every leave to the memorial garden, and every time the sight of Ella struck him a painful blow in the solar plexus.
     
    ‘Oh, fine . . . you know, it’s a job.’
     
    ‘Anything exciting happened?’
     
    She stood and moved to an overhanging branch, reached up, grasped it and swung back and forth. She was perhaps a metre from him, as visually substantial as the bench on which he sat. He stared at the brown straining muscles of her arms, her impishly pretty face and long black hair. He wanted suddenly to reach out, take her in his arms and crush her to him, and the desire brought tears to his eyes.
     
    ‘I was in a close shave yesterday, Ella,’ he said. He told her about the accident, enjoying her open-mouthed, wide-eyed reaction, her little girl exclamations.
     
    As they chatted, the pain abated. He enjoyed the company