Page 91 of Winter With You

Gabriella nodded, emotion knotting in her throat. ‘Yeah.’

‘So,’ Phoebe continued. ‘Does she talk back to you? I mean, I know she can’t talk back but… do you hear her voice?’

Gabriella swallowed. ‘Do you?’

‘I asked you first.’

She had asked her first and Gabriella needed to do two things now. She needed to remember that she was the grown-up and that opening up to Phoebe like this was the beginning of tentatively unlocking a joint vulnerability.

‘Yes,’ Gabriella said, nodding. ‘I hear her voice.’

Phoebe nodded back, a smile on her face. ‘Me too. And it’s so clear and the things she says are things that she would say.’

Gabriella smiled. ‘Yes, it’s the same for me.’

‘I like it,’ Phoebe said with a soft sigh. ‘Even though I know it’s really just my thoughts, it feels real. Like when I told you that sometimes I feel she’s still with us.’

‘Well,’ Gabriella said. ‘Maybe in a way she is.’ She took a breath and held one of Phoebe’s hands in hers. ‘Because of all the memories we shared with her. There were so many fun ones even when times were difficult.’

Phoebe nodded. ‘Like when she threw paint over my dad’s car and then jumped on the roof and danced in the paint and pretended to be Shakira.’

‘Your dad went mad,’ Gabriella reminded.

‘He was always mad about something,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’m glad he moved away.’

‘Do you ever feel like contacting him?’ Gabriella asked. ‘Because if you do, we can and⁠—’

Phoebe shook her head. ‘We’re not the same.’

‘People don’t need to be the same to get along.’

‘But if one person is nice and the other person is horrible, that’s a problem.’

Gabriella couldn’t disagree. She smiled. ‘I think that’s exactly how your mum felt about him in the end.’

‘And probably the beginning too,’ Phoebe said. ‘If she was honest with herself. I think she only stayed with him so long because of me.’

‘She would have done anything for you,’ Gabriella said, nodding.

Phoebe sighed. ‘I know she loved me, but there was one thing she didn’t do for me.’

‘What?’ Gabriella asked, squeezing her hand.

‘She didn’t stay.’

And as sadness and grief filled Gabriella’s heart at Phoebe’s statement, she leaned in, attempting to draw her close. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘But, you know, that wasn’t her choice. It was an⁠—’

‘Please, Gabriella,’ Phoebe broke in, pulling away as her voice cracked a little. ‘Don’t say it was an accident.’

Gabriella’s heart stalled. ‘What?’

‘Don’t you think it’s time we started telling the truth?’ Phoebe asked. ‘To everybody.’

Gabriella lifted her head and went to say something else, anything else to make this conversation better. Then she remembered what Phoebe had said to her before. Stop papering over the cracks.

‘Gabriella,’ Phoebe said, eyes now not looking like they were watering from the perfume incident. ‘I know Mum had depression. Everyone knows she had depression. But I also know that what happened to Mum that night wasn’t an accident like Grandmama tells her friends and the reporters who turn up.’ She sighed. ‘I know that whatever happened on the edge of the balcony, she put herself there because she wanted to be there… because she couldn’t face anything else anymore.’

Before Gabriella really realised it there were tears spilling from her own eyes as if someone had opened up a dam of emotions that had been stockaded for as long as she could remember.