To celebrate it coming up to two years since Maddie's first appearance, I wrote this. I miss her so much. Her backstory was wasted and writers didn't do enough to explain her childhood and really dig deep into it.
It took Sophie a while before she could look at the street art dedicated to her girlfriend. He never told her his plans, so when she heard what Craig had done, she was touched and knew Maddie would have been honoured to know she was loved by the residents enough for one of them to make a wall in her memory.
Every day, when she was working, someone would come in the shop and tell her how beautiful the art work was—no one classed it as graffiti. Even now in the garage, regulars praise its beauty. Sophie put on a brave face and thanked them for their kind words repeatedly.
But still, it took her weeks before she could admire it herself. Having to sleep in the bed she once shared with her and planning, then attending, the funeral was enough so soon after Maddie's death, Sophie couldn't handle the emotions that would come with viewing Craig's piece.
Seeing it, she felt the tears in her eyes begin to form. It represented Madeline Ivy Heath perfectly.
She loved how Craig used a house roof as a part of his inspiration, it showed she had a home, somewhere she could call home at least. Maddie was always grateful for Sophie not giving up on her, determined to know the girl underneath the brick wall she had built up around herself.
The butterflies represented everything Maddie was—a symbol of transformation. In the five-hundred and twenty-days Sophie had spent with her, she watched Maddie blossom from a broken, vulnerable teenager to a elegant (although she'd argue this wasn't the case on many occasions), grown woman.
As much as the wall broke Sophie's heart—if the fire never happened, Maddie would still be here, knowing that will haunt Sophie forever—it also made her laugh. Craig wrote her name in pink. Maddie hated the colour. She hated how pastel pink stood for new life for a girl and how hot pink was the foundation and the backbone of every female on reality TV. They are all obsessed with the colour as though it represented what makes a woman. It was sexist and stereotypical. She hated it.
"Do you want me to tidy the kitchen because it's 'where a woman belongs', is that it?" she would say.
"No," Kevin slowly laughed. "It's your turn, is all. We all pull our weight in this house."
"You laughed!" she would point out and turn to Sophie. "He laughed. That's so sexist, Kev."
"Mads!" Sophie chuckled. "It's so not. Stop trying to get out of doing chores."
"It's sexism."
After sitting by the wall, just reminiscing over the good times, Sophie got up. She knew she couldn't sit there all day. She looked up at the sky and smiled. She liked to think Maddie was always looking down at her.
She never did get a chance to thank Craig for taking the time to design and create it. He was so busy studying for his GCSEs he never came into the shop and she never thought to go over to his house and say thank you, her own fault. So when he came to her at the auction with a canvas painting he had done especially for her fund raiser, she brought it off him there and then. She loved it. Again, it represented Maddie perfectly. It was the butterflies.
"I can't thank you enough, Craig," she hugged him. "Just for taking the time to make these for her. I know she would have loved them as much as I do."
"It's no problem," he smiled. "She was a cool girl. A good friend."
"Yeah, she was...," Sophie mused, looking back over her shoulder at the picture of her girlfriend.
Sophie had tried to keep her mind occupied in the build up to Christmas. Work definitely helped and her little brother, Jack, at his young age and super excited for the annual holiday, was enough to stop her thinking about the anniversary coming up.
Then it arrived. And Jack jumping on her bed before sunrise, wrapping her presents and Christmas dinner wasn't enough to fill the empty space in her bed she once shared with Maddie, the the gap she had left next to her for Maddie sit in on the couch while they gave each other their gifts or the empty chair at the dinner table. All the places Maddie had been only three-hundred and sixty-five days ago. It seemed like so long ago now but it had only been a year. One of many lonely Christmas. She still remembered every second of that day. From the sound of chickens clucking in the morning to the soft whispers of "I love you" throughout the night. It wasn't enough.
After dinner with her new-extended family, Sophie excused herself. She picked up flowers from her bedroom and went to the place dubbed Maddie's Wall. She couldn't face the cemetery, not on Christmas Day. She decided it was best to stay local and go to her headstone the next day.
She kissed the card she had addressed to her late girlfriend before putting it down next to the bouquet. Her eyes welded with tears as she stepped back, putting her hands in the back of her jean pockets.
The Gunnel was never their "spot" but it held so many great summer memories. It was out of view, in its own private spot. Just the way Maddie would have wanted it. She never liked the attention on her.
"I thought I might find you here!"
Sophie jumped at the sound of his voice, waking her from her thoughts. Craig was walking up behind her.
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you," he said."I never got an opportunity to congratulate you on how well the auction went."
"Thank you," Sophie whispered. It was a brilliant night. She raised lots of money, she wasn't sure what she was going to do with it all yet but she had a few ideas up her sleeve. It was just a shame Carla was there and got drunk, nearly ruining her evening. She didn't let it affect her too much. It wasn't her problem.
"You know, I'm really proud of this," Craig pointed at the wall. "It's a shame I couldn't use it as my final piece in Art."
"It's beautiful. I would give you an A," Sophie replied, admiring the butterflies that flew out of the chimney.
Craig chuckled. "Thanks."
"Can I ask why you choose to do butterflies?" she asked.
"She said butterflies were her favourite insect. I googled what they symbolised, it really summed her up," he shrugged, smiling before putting his hands in his coat pockets. "That, and she gained her winds. It seemed suitable."
Sophie wondered if the story was the same one Maddie had told her once.
Growing up, Maddie use to sit in the garden for hours on end, when she had no one but herself. Before Ben was born and social services and school were unaware of her wellbeing at "home". When her Mum was drunk and violent.
There was a patch up the back. She would sit in the dirt. There was an Ivy plant. She didn't know what they were but when she told her teachers about this one plant that grew in this patch, they researched it and gave her an answer. She didn't know what they represented or what purpose they served on the earth but just it being called an Ivy Plant she related to it. As much as she hated her middle name, it was Ivy and to her, and the connection made it her favourite thing. There was all kinds of creepy crawlies living up the back of the garden in a flower bed. When she old enough to learn what name of insect matched its sound, she would listen out for them everyday.
But it was that patch she was attached to. And only one insect ever came over. A little pink and black butterfly. She didn't even know if butterflies liked Ivy Plants or were suppose to be near them but this one was an exception.
From that day, they followed her. Whether she was having a good or bad day, Maddie would find a butterfly. They weren't always black and pink but still in the family. She always wondered if they were her lucky charm.
She named the one in the garden. Penny was its name. It came to her after she found a lose penny on the pavement in the playground and a girl had told her, her Mum had told her it was lucky to find one and taught her the riddle. And she had a support teacher who, when Maddie was in a world of her own, not interested in learning, would come sit next to her and say "penny for your thoughts?"
She talked to Penny about her day, told it stories like it was a human and her best friend. She found comfort in it. Even when Ben was born, she took him up there and they would be in their own world just for a while.
When Maddie and Ben were evicted from home because their Mum's behaviour had been caught and she and him were moved into care for her safety, she requested an Ivy Plant in her room.
She got one. On the eve of her fourteenth birthday, the final birthday she would ask to leave and be moved into somewhere better or she would sleep on the streets. Not the prettiest plant to look at but there was something about it's appearance and history that attracted her to one still.
She kept the plant on her windowsill. She maintained it like a true gardner so it never died on her.
One night in summer, Maddie had her window open. Which was unusual for her, the halfway house was always cold, there was never a need for more cold air.
As she lay in her bed, unable to sleep because she was worrying if her brother was safe or not, in flew a butterfly. A little pink and black one. It landed next to her plant and she had never seen anything like it. She managed to get close without it flying away.
And it happened every night that year. Call it fate, she would have, and after her fifteenth birthday she saw it as her final sign and ran for it.
It took her back to her childhood and she saw it as a sign. It was Penny and she knew it.
Out of the halfway house, away from social services and into the big, wide world, alone, she went. She didn't care. She didn't need anyone telling her what she could and couldn't do, she was her own person. She fought and fended for herself. No more bullying, abuse, false promises or being treated like a girl, she was off.
It was how she found the soup kitchen that cared and feed her for the next two years. They supported her. And even though they found her a halfway house, too, she still felt safer on the streets. It was that group of boys.
Then she met Sophie and everything made sense and she never looked back. Madeline Ivy Heath opened up and willingly let herself fall in love.
"That exact one," Craig said. He saw Sophie was upset and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
"I feel like an idiot for crying," Sophie forced a laugh, wiping the water away from under her eyes. "I told myself I wouldn't cry! It embarrasses her."
"It's okay," he whispered, rubbing her back. "She'd be real proud of you, you know."
"Yeah," Sophie smiled. "Do you think we've done the right thing? With the wall and the memorial?"
"Yeah," Craig nodded. "She never did see how many people cared for her here."