“Never apologise for feeling emotion, Felan. It takes a strong person to recognise it, and it takes an even stronger one to feel it.” Felan looked back. She was smiling. “Never be afraid to simply let yourself feel.”

Her absence dangled above Felan like a lure, like the esca from those anglerfish he’d read about once, and the sadness that came hand in hand with her loss riddled his body like a volatile disease.

“I didn’t love you because I was lonely. My love for you wasn’t born from loneliness, or from fear. My love for you was born from you, because you were light, and I was stuck, steadfast, in the dark.”

“Your story is different to a lot of the other kids that come through these doors, but there’s nothing wrong with just surviving.”

Despair didn’t ride in on a white horse. In fact, it crashed in with the thunder clouds, struck devoted hearts like lightning bolts, devouring everything in its path. And it was enough to send a little kid running into the pouring rain, because if there was no hope, what did he have left?

The poppies in the flower bed had taken a bit of a beating due to the heavy rain over the last few days. Their heads hung limp and weak, their red petals drooping and tearing, and he thought that the smallest gust of wind would snap them. Fragile, that’s how he felt, like one more hit would shatter him completely into broken pieces that would be impossible to put back together again. Not that he’d ever admit that out loud.

He’d forgotten what her touch felt like and her face was beginning to lose focus in his memory; it was fading and blurring into a stranger and he had no way of fixing it. He had no photos of her to look at when he couldn’t quite picture her loving smile. Even the echo of her laughter was distorted and crackly like a broken radio.