Forget Me Never

have a look, I thought, booting up Edith, my laptop. She had been Dani’s, and Dani had lent her to me that last weekend to help me with my GCSE revision. I’d called her Edith because she was a bit slow and unsteady, like a little old lady. When Edith finally allowed me to view the USB’s contents, I saw folders of photos pop up. Curious, I clicked on the first and saw a familiar face.
    I swear the world stopped moving. It was Danielle, posing with a brightly coloured cocktail. I’d never seen this photo before. I only had a few ancient pictures of her. I opened up more folders – these were Danielle too. God, I must have stumbled upon her entire photo collection.
    Almost heady with excitement, I scrolled through, eager to view each new snapshot into my cousin’s life. After a couple of albums though, I had to pause.
    It was too much, too much all at once. I felt a little floaty, as though part of me was somewhere else. They captured parts of her life I’d never known existed, and they made me realize how many opportunities I’d missed to get to know her better. And now, I never would.
    It felt like someone had punched me hard in the gut, slamming home the emotions I was usually so good at ignoring. Tears spilt down my cheeks, my heart pounding.
    I don’t know how long I sat there. Eventually my tears dried and I curled up on my bed, feeling exhausted. I looked across at the picture that was still on the screen. It was from a folder labelled ‘Party’. It showed Danielle standing in a door frame, wearing a floral smock over skinny jeans and at least three different necklaces.
    I look a lot like her now, I thought. We both took after our mums, who’d been sisters. The same fair complexion, long necks, strong eyebrows and dark hair, though Dani’s had always been dead straight while mine had a wave to it. We had different builds – Dani was curvier and shorter than I was. Apparently height was something I’d got from my dad – not that I would know. I’d never met him, and what I knew about him barely covered a Post-it note. He probably didn’t know I existed.
    After a while I got up and returned to my desk. I didn’t really want to look at the photos any more, but I also didn’t feel like I could do anything else. As I browsed further, I began to realize that Danielle had had a boyfriend. He was in a lot of the party shots and it looked like they’d gone on holiday together too. I half smiled; Danielle had always been obsessed with the sun, even though we both burned rather than tanned. The boyfriend was cute too, if you liked that kind of thing – he looked a bit like he’d stepped out of a boy band, with carefully ruffled blond hair and a photogenic smile, and he seemed to like wearing tight T-shirts that showed off his six-pack. The photos showed the date in the bottom left-hand corner – three months before Danielle had died.
    I wondered where he was now and why Dani had never mentioned him to me. He definitely hadn’t been at her funeral – they must have split up. Maybe she’d been really gutted. That could even have been the reason she’d killed herself, and why she’d hidden her depression from me. Though I’d never have said it, I’d always thought Dani was needy around people. She was incredibly quick to trust, something I noticed because I was the opposite, and I suspected part of her generosity sprang from wanting to be liked. It seemed a bit of a contradiction for someone academically smart like Dani to be so naive, but I guess book-smarts don’t necessarily equal being streetwise.
    The clock in the hall chimed; I jumped. Twelve o’clock – I’d been looking at photos for well over an hour. Realizing how dry my throat was, I went downstairs and picked up a can of cola. Luckily Julie and the kids were out – I didn’t fancy explaining why my face was so red and blotchy.
    Is it good or bad that I found the memory stick? I asked myself as I returned to my room. Bad – because I felt awful, and somehow I knew this sense of loss wasn’t going to ever leave me. But good too – because now I had more to remember my cousin by.
    I looked through the photos again, pausing on a shot of Danielle’s boyfriend. I hadn’t paid it much attention the first time – it was poorly composed, perhaps taken by accident – but this time something about it made me look more closely.
    I frowned, chewing the top of my straw and blowing bubbles into my cola. He reminded me of someone . .