Unable to sleep, Edie lay in bed and tried not to think about the day she’d been dreading for weeks. Staring at the ceiling, she wondered about what determined the different things that happened to different people: whether you had a brother or a sister, whether you were born into a slum in the suburbs of New Delhi or a privileged home in north London, whether you were popular at school or not, whether your mum lived or died.

Eventually, Edie’s dad came into the room.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, perching on the edge of Edie’s bed.

‘Okay,’ Edie replied, although ‘numb’ would have been a truer answer.

‘I know this will be a hard day,’ Dad continued, gently touching her hand. ‘But we’ll get through it together and move on.’

The evidence around Edie suggested that nobody had moved on yet. Her brother Eli, who was now ten, had withdrawn into his shell since Mum’s death. He refused to talk about her or even join in looking at old photographs. Although he had friends, Eli seemed increasingly to prefer playing alone. And he wetted his bed – not every night, but two or three times a week since the tragedy. Dad had done his utmost to keep everything together, but he was still suffering badly himself. In the evenings, Edie sometimes heard her dad sobbing quietly in the lounge, turning up the volume on the TV to mask the noise. He’d immersed himself in work and was drinking more whisky than ever.

As for herself, Edie knew that she hadn’t moved on yet and still couldn’t understand – truly understand – why her world had been turned upside down. Edie woke up every day thinking about Mum and fell asleep comforted by the image of her mother – her beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed mother – stroking her hair. Edie’s schoolwork had suffered and her friends didn’t seem to know what to say to her. Worst, perhaps, were the nightmares that just wouldn’t go away.

Edie eventually managed to drag herself out of bed, put on her slippers and a fleece, and made her way downstairs. On the last step, still half asleep, Edie slipped and lost her footing. She gasped and looked down at the Buffy slippers with their poor grip. Mum had bought them the week before she died and seemed to find them cute. It was just like Mum, so busy with her own work that she didn’t realise the vampire slayer was old news.

‘Crunchy Nut cornflakes?’ asked Dad, too perkily for this day.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Edie replied.

‘You’ve got to eat something, luv,’ he continued. ‘It’s going to be a long day. What about your favourite, one of those Müller yoghurts?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Edie repeated more firmly. She glanced over at Eli sitting quietly at the table, munching on some peanut-buttery toast. He seemed oblivious to it all, concentrating on the football pages of the newspaper. Inside, though, she knew he was anxious.

‘I’ll make you something else then, maybe some eggs on—’

Edie raised her voice further. ‘I told you, I’m not hungry!’ After a short-lived but fierce glare, Edie grabbed something from the fridge then turned defiantly and left the kitchen for the playroom.

It was here that Edie found solace, not just on this day but often since her mum had died. In truth, it wasn’t the playroom that provided the comfort but what lay right outside on the outdoor decking. Edie opened the back door, took a couple of steps into the garden, crouched down and looked inside the cage.

‘Where are you Günther, my little fella?’ she called.

A shuffle of claws on wood, the shifting of straw and her treasured guinea pig’s face popped out from the bedding. Edie released the cage door, felt around and pulled out her cuddly brown and white friend. Back inside the playroom, she held him up to her chest and peered into his eyes. Günther squeaked at her lovingly, twitching his little whiskers. ‘What’s it like to be a guinea pig?’ Edie wondered momentarily, then instinctively knew the answer: a lot less complicated than being a human.

Edie sat on the sofa and stroked her warm companion’s furry back as he gazed around the room. Günther nibbled on the carrot Edie had brought from the fridge, then decided he preferred her fleece zipper. His little claws held on to her thumb. Fifteen minutes of quiet affection, including changing his water and food and freshening up his hay, was all Edie needed in the mornings. By then, she normally felt emotionally refreshed. Today, however, Edie lingered, until interrupted by a shout from the next room.

‘Come on, luv – we’re leaving at nine o’clock.’

Taking her time, Edie placed Günther carefully back in his cage, locked the door and went back upstairs to get dressed.

‘What does a thirteen-year-old girl wear for a stone-setting?’ Edie pondered as she rummaged through her wardrobe. The sombre occasion marked a year after a person’s death in the Jewish religion, probably meaning similar clothes to a funeral, so Edie picked out black tights, a grey sleeveless dress with thick shoulder-straps and a white long-sleeved T-shirt to go underneath. Another reminder: her mum had bought her this dress for an eco-award ceremony a month before her death, where she’d been given a prize for exposing a water pollution scandal. Just the two of them went, as Dad had been on call for the surgery, and Edie had been so proud of her mum.

Last, Edie opened the top drawer of her bedside table and reached for the ceramic dish that contained her few items of jewellery. Edie picked out the heart-shaped locket that Mum had given her on her eleventh birthday. The locket had originally belonged to Edie’s mum’s mother – or Mama, as the kids called her – and had been lovingly handed down. The gold was tarnished and the chain had been replaced, but the locket still opened with a crisp click to reveal a tiny old photo of Mum as a young teenager. Edie had carefully cut out and inserted that photo the day before the funeral, and Edie wore the locket at those times when she really needed her mum’s presence. A day like today.

Downstairs they were still getting ready. Eli was wearing an olive coloured shirt and brown corduroy trousers which made him look too grown-up and silly. Her dad wore a dark-blue suit, white shirt and plain tie. Always appropriate, never wanting to stick out. The doorbell rang.

‘Are we ready, then?’ Dad asked. Nobody answered.

‘Come on, kids,’ Dad continued. ‘Let’s not make this harder than it needs to be.’

Eli put on his black school shoes and Edie was about to do likewise, but then noticed her brown calf-length suede boots which would be more comfortable for trudging around the cemetery.

As Edie reached for her warm school coat something stirred within her, but she couldn’t work it out for a moment. Then Edie remembered. It was one of her dreams, a recent one in which she was at the cemetery but she wasn’t wearing her school coat. Instead, Edie had on the sheepskin coat her mum had bought for her – the coat Edie had been wearing when the teacher had approached her in the school playground with the forlorn expression of someone bearing dreadful news. The coat Edie associated with that moment and had never worn since.

Edie bolted upstairs, grabbed the sheepskin from her cupboard and slung it on. She ran back down to join the others in the minicab and off they set.

‘Can we watch the game later?’ Eli asked, as they snaked through the traffic towards Edgwarebury Cemetery in north London.

Dad didn’t answer at first and stared blankly through the window.

‘I don’t know,’ he responded eventually, without averting his look to face the children. ‘Let’s see how things go and what time we get back.’

‘Will Aubameyang be playing?’ her brother continued, seemingly oblivious to the gravity of the day.

‘Can’t you ever stop talking about football?’ Edie interrupted angrily. ‘We’re on the way to Mum’s stone-setting and all you can think about is stupid footballers.’

Eli winced for a moment when Edie raised her voice, then just continued to gaze out at the road. He still seemed to be keeping his sadness deep inside.

‘I know how hard today is,’ Dad said quietly. ‘But it’s hard for us all, luv. Please try not to take it out on your brother.’

Edie knew her dad was right, but she found it hard and got upset easily. As silence descended, Edie went to that familiar place inside her mind. If her dad had only driven Mum to the appointment that fateful day a year ago, Edie’s world wouldn’t have changed forever. Edie remembered...