The lawn in the backyard was covered in snow. I use to hate the snow. I hated winter for a long time. Until I had my own child, who reminded me of the fun you could have in the snow. It took away the pain that winter use to bring me. The incident that happened in my teen years that affected me until this day.

"Mommy, mommy, can I go outside?!" My daughter, Suzy, cried.

I smiled at her, dazed in my own thinking. "What did daddy say?"

"He said yes," My husband, Sam, comes in, smiling brightly. His brown eyes shine in the soft glow of the kitchen.

"Well," I say, standing up and walking over to the coat rack and taking Suzy's coat off the hook, "You better wrap up. Stay near the window okay?" I ask once her coat is completely on.

"I will," Suzy replies, skipping out of the back door without a second thought. It's strange how she was here one moment, then gone the next.

Sam wraps his arms round me and we both watch our eleven year old daughter play. I want to capture how old she will be in this moment. When she is just a young girl, with no worries to weigh her down.

"You okay?"

I nod in response and pull away from Sam. Today has been hard for one reason: twenty years ago, my big sister Susie was murdered. It's why the coldness of winter brings coldness into my heart. It's why every 6th of December I cry for all the year I've tried holding it together. It's why I miss putting the decorations up with my big sister.

"You go play with her," I smile. "I think right now she needs her daddy."

My dad misses my big sister everyday. My parents call every day. They've already called this morning. My mom sobbed all the time and my dad cried, reminiscing on his favourite times with my oldest sister. I knew that she was his favourite daughter. It use to bother me, but now I would give anything to see him hug her.

Knowing that Suzy is being looked after by Sam, I walk into my bedroom and switch on the light. The sky is beginning to turn to a milky blue outside. I wrap my cardigan round me and walk to my dresser, where several pictures of my family are displayed. The living room is pictures of only Sam, me and Suzy: Sam and I on our wedding day, Sam holding Suzy for the first time after she was born, Suzy's first day at school. In here, however, is the family I grew up with.

I pick up a picture of me on my graduation. I look so much younger in my robes, my parents either side of me smiling proudly, my younger brother also looking happy. But in my parent's faces I know that they feel a piece missing. Susie should have been there. I imagine everyday how she would look like.

The picture next to it is one of me and Susie together. It was taken only a few weeks before she disaperred. Just then, as that click of the camera went and locked us both in a photo forever, I wouldn't know that in a few weeks time, she would never come back to us. Her bright brown hair fell in beautiful waves; her shinny blue eyes gleamed as the flash of the camera went off. She was the pretty one. She never had to have braces like I did; her hair was a natural beauty. I can never talk about her to Buckley. Buckley was only four when she died and he remembers the odd memory but nothing like I do. She wasn't only a sister, she was my best friend.

I feel tears running down my face and soon I'm sobbing so uncontrollably.

"Oh, Susie!" I whisper urgently. I wish I could hear her soft voice again, her happy laughter. "Come back."

"Mommy, why are you crying?"

I jerk up and the picture falls to the floor. Suzy walks in, her cheeks flushed from the cold. Even though she's eleven she still calls me mommy. I wonder when I stopped calling my mom mommy. She picks the picture up and studies it with her brown eyes as she sits next to me. I twirl her silky blonde hair in my fingers, pulling her close to me.

"When will I be an older sister?"

I close my eyes and let a tear fall down my cheek. Sam and I wanted another child, but it never happened. Maybe there is still hope, but I'm scared. I'm so scared, and I don't know why.

"One day," I say.

"Would she have loved me?"

I hold her tighter. "Of course she would have. She would have adored you like anything." I think about how Suzy would have had a cousin by now as well, and me and Susie would have helped each other raise our children, just like we use to do with out plastic dolls as children.

Suzy snuggles closer and puts the picture down beside her. "One day, I want you to tell me how she died and what really happened. I'm almost a teenager."

I nod, knowing that she is getting too grown up for me to just say that she disappeared and found an angel and never came back. She stands up and hugs me.

"Daddy is cooking dinner tonight." She whispers and with that she leaves, closing the door behind her.

The sky has turned darker so I switch my bedside lamp on. A warm glow fills the room. I look at my reflection in the window. I tried to contact Buckley, but he's on a holiday with his friends, living his youthful life. Sometimes I wonder whether he really thinks about Susie. What is there for him to remember? Only photographs capture the memories he tries to think about.

I look up and see her. I see her. Standing behind me.

I turn round and she's there.

"Oh my God," I say but she puts a finger to her lips.

My big sister is standing in my room. She's still wearing the clothes I last saw her in: her dark blue parka, her mustard yellow bell bottoms that I haven't seen anyone wear for at least ten years. Her hat is absent however, as that is what the police found.

"Is…is that you?"

She smiles and nods. "I'm here." Her voice. Oh her sweet voice that always brought comfort to me as a little sister.

I sit in the middle of the bed.

"I found you." She smiles. "I have been looking for you…for so long."

"I miss you."

"I miss you more," She giggles. All of a sudden I feel like her big sister. I feel nostalgia at the way we would giggle like this, at anything at all that wasn't even funny.

Her huge eyes look towards my bedside table. "My snow globe."

I look at it too. I kept her snow globe all the time, the little penguin in the middle of the snow looks new as ever.

I pick it up and turn it round, and we watch the snow fall.

"You remember this?"

"Of course. Dad would roll his eyes at what I would say about the penguin being stuck."

"I remember. Oh Susie. Why?"

Her face turns solemn. "I'm here. I want to be here forever. But…it's not my destiny anymore. I don't belong here." I feel tears fill my eyes. "Lindsey, I died so long ago. I couldn't move on for so long. I couldn't believe that my life was over. I wouldn't accept it. But Holly…she helped me understand that I didn't belong."

"You will always belong in my heart. Don't ever say that."

She reaches forward and takes my hands in hers. Her skin is cool but not icy like I thought they would be. She's not there but she is there at the same time.

"I know, and I belong in mom and dad's hearts too."

"I think about that night, how…I wish I'd waited with you after film club."

"I think about if I wasn't so stupid." She says. Her eyes find the photo I was looking at. I pick it up and show her.

"My little sister." Her vibrant eyes fill with tears.

"If I could bring you back, I would. You know that. There is not a single day that I don't think about you."

"I know. But Lindsey, move on and live. Live with Sam and Suzy; make the most of mom and dad's days, and Buckley's. Live them because…I never will."

We stare into each other's eyes. I look different to her, but inside I feel like that little sister I always was.

"I have to go." Susie whispers.

"No! Please…stay. When will I see you again?"

"When it is time, Lindsey."

Silence fills the bedroom. I don't want to ever leave my room. I want to stay here for as long as I can. I want to be back in 1973, not forever, but for long enough to see Susie when she was last alive.

A knock at the door startles me and I let go of Susie's hands.

"Yes?" I sniff, wiping my cheeks.

"Can I come in?" It's Sam.

"Stay here," I say to Susie.

I open the door a fraction, the hallway light making my eyes squint.

"You okay? Dinner's being served, Suzy is dishing up."

I almost have to think. I'm so use to only my daughter being called Susie in my life now, as less and less people mention my sister, that it feels strange to have my sister Susie in my bedroom.

"Yeah…um… just needed some time. Um…I'll be down in a minute."

He caresses my cheek and then walks away. I don't want a minute with Susie; I want a whole twenty years with her. I close the door and turn round to an empty room.

"Susie?" I call. Silence

I look under the bed and in the cupboards, as though we're seven again and playing hide and seek. But I know that she's gone. Gone to her heaven, where as she said, belongs.

I sob and sob on the floor where I give up looking for her. Gone again, like she did twenty years ago. Maybe she was never here. Maybe it was wishful thinking.

It's time to be me again. To be a mother and a wife. I stand up and take a deep breath and sigh. I think about my child and husband putting on a meal for us, being a family and I smile. Time to think of the now and not the past.

But as I look at my room one more time, I see that the glass has misted over and some writing is on there. It reads: I will always be in your heart, my dear sister Lindsey.

"I love you, Susie." I whisper, touching the cool glass gently.

After the meal and the joking and the game of monopoly that I play with my family, after I kiss my daughter to sleep and tuck her into bed, wash my hair and brush my teeth, after me and Sam kiss each other good night and turn the lamp off, I think of that message. When I hear Sam's heavy breathing, I slowly walk to the window and pull the curtains away to have a look at the message Susie left me. But nothing is left. Gone. Just like Susie.

"What's wrong?" I hear Sam's sleepy murmur.

"Nothing. I just wanted to have a look out of the window."

I lie next to Sam, and as I close my eyes, I feel safe knowing that my big sister Susie is looking down on me.