She loved rainbow sprinkles. Once she had a shaker of the things you could not pry them from her tiny fingers. She could put them on anything, make them fly all over the carpet, drop them over the side of a bridge and watch them fall into their own rainbow; she was always happy with them.

The can now sits on the mantlepiece and there are no rainbow sprinkles inside. They were displaced a long time ago with something as precious to us as the sweets were to her. Sometimes, when the life is gone from the day, I sit and cradle the can in my arms, like I used to with my daughter – my beautiful daughter.

It was the bridge and it was my nephew. He was just playing with her and she was playing with the sprinkles. He didn’t mean to drop her; he couldn’t mean to! He was only twelve. There was no gleeful sinning smile across his face as my own face dropped. I couldn’t scream. How could I scream?

I simply froze, and all too quickly I was in black, and my precious thing had displaced her own inside that too small can.