Help, help, help!’ screamed Iona. Although she was yelling at the top of her voice, she knew nobody would hear her dying pleas. Her voice gradually faded away, like clearing mist. Trying to breathe normally to slow down her demise, Iona slowly lay back on the cold, hard ground. Her vision was blurred by the scarlet blood seeping from her numb cheek. She reached up a delicate hand to wipe it away and let it rest on the cause of her pain. The bullet hole piercing her cheek was already clotting with dry blood the colour of rust. She could still taste the metal of the bullet from the gun thrust into her mouth, feel the indescribable agony that it had inflicted.

For now, Iona wanted to forget about the fatal hole in her cheek, and focus on the best moments of her life. That way, she could die happy, thinking about her late mother, big brother Aiden and adoptive mother, Lucy - who had taken on 5 year old Iona and her 7 year old brother after the tragic death of their parents.

Thinking of Lucy now made tears spill from Iona’s eyes, leaving glistening trails of sadness on her cheeks - one untouched, the other wounded and bloody. How would Lucy feel if another of her loved ones left this world? Wasn’t losing her husband enough? Iona cast her mind back to when they had first met ...

It was a sunny day, but the weather wasn’t reflecting either Iona or Aidan’s mood. Perhaps a stormy sky, alive with lightning and thunder, would have suited better, or a drizzly day which drowned all happiness. But today Mother Nature had chosen a beautiful morning for them to meet their new ‘mother’. Not that they would ever call her that, they had agreed. They would not even call her Lucy. They had already decided to stick with ‘Miss’.

This was all forgotten, however, as soon as they set their mournful eyes upon the lovely Lucy. She was a small, rounded young widow, dressed in a floral sleeveless top with showed off freckled arms, and a long, moss-green skirt which brushed her fine ankles. Golden ringlets cascaded from her shoulders like a waterfall of honey, and her mouth was spread in the widest smile they had ever seen. In that moment both Iona and Aiden knew that they would come to love Lucy dearly.

And now Iona, as realised that she would never get to see the most wonderful people from her life again, felt her sea green eyes well. Slowly the world around her began to fade, and as her eyes flickered and began to close, she took a final breath and whispered,
‘I love you Mum, Aiden, Lucy’, before feeling her chest fall for the very last time. Then, everything went white and she could feel herself floating upwards, towards a familiar kindly laugh that could only belong to her real mother.