Prologue
That's it.
He's gone.
All that life and laughter and pure joy, wiped out. Viciously erased from the world in a matter of months. Weeks, really.
I look outside of the window and everything is exactly the same. The cars still speed down the stretch of road and people continue trotting in and out of the super market across the way. I hear an ambulance siren but it sounds vague and distant, as though I'm hearing it from under water.
It seems bizarre that ambulances are still a necessity. Why would anyone need an ambulance when the world has ended? Surely nobody is still alive? Surely there's no one left breathing and moving and living?
That's the only way I can make sense of this situation because I can't for a second truly believe that my dad, my amazing, funny, strong dad, has died from something as simple as cancer. Harold Evans lived too much of an extraordinary live to be defeated by something so…ordinary.
Paul's official title is "young person's emotional support worker." I don't know why he is given such a ridiculous title when it is so painfully obvious that he is a grief counsellor. Even the most obtuse person could suss that out in less than two minutes.
I've sat and listened to Paul, who's far too cheery and understanding to be genuine, for the last three weeks and at each dreary session I wonder why on Earth I agreed to this. We both know that I'm not getting anything from it and any suggestion he makes I dismiss and never follow through with.
But now he informs me that this is his last resort. His final attempt at making some difference in the life of Lily Evans that he knows so startlingly little about.
What is this dramatic final option, I hear you cry? Is it something drastic? Will it make me gasp in shock that those are the extents that a young person's emotional support worker would go to, merely to help one bereft seventeen year old girl?
Not quite.
You see, Pauls only remaining solution is for me to write a diary.
No you didn't misread anything; his final ember of hope is the rather remote possibility that I will commit to writing a diary.
This basically involves me writing down everything I do, feel or think and apparently, by some form of magic that I've not been made aware of, that will heal this gaping, dad shaped hole in my life.
At first I was determined to brush aside this idea in exactly the same way as I did the others and, if I'm honest, I'm still not entirely sure why I haven't. All I do know is that nothing I can do now will worsen this pain; I don't even think that's possible. And I suppose I do feel some sort of responsibility to attempt at least one of Paul's pathetic "resolutions." Though admittedly that's probably more out of sympathy than trust or expectation.
So here I am. Preparing to confide in an inanimate object as a half-hearted effort to come to terms with the death of my dad.
Who can say that that's weird?
A/N: I'll try and keep this short and sweet because it's no secret how I like to ramble on as part of these authors notes!
Recently I've not been very well, and I've had to leave college and have now realised that without studying my life consists of startlingly little! I've wanted to write a James/Lily story for years now and I have never had the time but now that I have do absolutely nothing all day, I've decided that I will go ahead and give it a go, what's stopping me?
I promise that it will get a lot cheerier than this! I just wanted to set up the story and make it clear the reasoning behind Lily's diary writing. I have this whole story planned out and I hope to update it at least once a week if not much more frequently. This is the most excited I've felt about a project in a long time and I'm determined to see it through!
If you have the time, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the form of a review!
Thanks for reading,
Faithless
