University IV

Alice: What’s up, babe?

Ivy: Just found out my grandma died

Alice: Oh, I’m so sorry. When’s the funeral?

Ivy: Wednesday. Will you come with me?

Alice: Yeah, sure

Ivy: Thanks

Alice: Do you want to talk about her, or...?

Ivy: No. Well, I guess I should, shouldn’t I?

Alice: Only if you want to

Ivy: I don’t. Not really. I’ll start crying if I do. How did you cope, when your grandma died? I know you mentioned her one time.

Alice: Well, I was only five so I barely knew her really. I just remember that she bought me some ballet shoes a few weeks before. Said I had good legs for it.

Ivy: Can’t believe you were so young, losing someone like that

Alice: It was weird, because nobody wanted to tell me she’d died. I just knew everyone was suddenly grey and sad, like in a nightmare, and I thought they’d all changed deliberately to trick me, so I started crying and telling them to change back.

Ivy: Aww

Alice: Eventually my mum took me up in the loft and told me Grandma had just gone away for a while, and we needed to find her favourite hat and send it to her so she wouldn’t get cold.

Ivy: That’s nice

Alice: We were searching for ages, and finally I found it right at the bottom of the last box. And when I lifted it out, these butterflies flew out in all different directions. Somehow they’d got into the loft and started nesting in the hat. I was so scared by them flying at me that I nearly fell down the loft-hatch.

Ivy (laughs): Silly

Alice: Well yeah, my mum started laughing too – which would’ve annoyed me normally but I was so glad to see her happy again that I just laughed too. And some of my relatives downstairs who’d heard us laughing came up the ladder to find out why, and they all started laughing as well. Then my uncle found some nets and we went round catching all the butterflies to release outside. Isn’t that amazing?