Pink mist.

Pink mist.

Pink mist.

The two words rattled around my brain, cluttering around my already overwhelmingly saturated thoughts, before settling themselves behind my eyes, where they sat, taunting me.

The first time I had heard those two words had been a month following the now infamous terrorism attacks on London in which my parents had been two of the victims. I had been sat in the Ministry of Defence building in Westminster opposite a man called Sir Stuart Peach. He had been unable to look me in the eye and had twisted his thick gold wedding band around his sausage finger with such a relentless energy that I had been surprised it hadn't fallen off.

"Pink mist?" I had repeated.

He nodded and straightened his tie up.

"Pardon my untrained civilian knowledge but -"

"Miss Jacobs..."

"Lola." I strained. "Please just call me Lola."

His face had turned a strange beetroot colour. I had stressed that he was not to call me Miss Jacobs. It was something that I had learnt in Medical School. You addressed the relatives of the deceased by their surname, not their forename. You had to address them with enough warmth and kindness as possible whilst remaining completely detached from the situation. I knew how it was. I was just another grieving relative to him. I didn't matter.

"Miss Jacobs..." He sighed deeply and knit his fingers and placed them under his chin.

I sighed and blinked at the furious tears appearing in my eyes. The colour of the blush on face quickly spread up to the tips of his ears.

"Your parents, Mr and Mrs Jacobs -"

"Tom and Hazel." I interrupted. "My parents Tom and Hazel."

He finally met my eye. I set my jaw and stared back at him. He had to acknowledge them. Had to acknowledge me. I wouldn't let myself, or better yet my parents, become nameless statistics of this horrible crime. The furious twisting of the wedding band continued.

"We know that your parents were on the bus. Tom and Hazel got on the bus. Eye witness accounts place them in front of the bomber. There was nothing left."

I finally understood pink mist.

I thought back to my wonderful, amazing parents. My dad, twirling my mum around the kitchen while she tried to wash up, swooping down to kiss her while she giggled. A regular occurrence. My older brothers, the triplets, George, William and Archie had gagged and protested at the affection my parents had bestowed upon one another, but I had sat wide eyed, smiling. They had been so in love.

"Lola?"

When I was younger, I had never given much thought to the idea of there being five stages of grief but you learn about it in medical school and you learn that it has a very official sounding title, The Kubler-Ross Model. I was sure I had already experienced the first three stages. Denial, anger and bargaining. I had spent the first week following their deaths believing that my parents were still alive, and had spent an hour typing an email to my dad detailing the exact places that we would visit during their next visit to London. I had sent the email and Steve had found me seven hours later, passed out in the bath, an empty bottle of vodka at my side and a tattoo scrawled onto the flesh that ran parallel to my right collarbone. A simple phrase that belonged to my mum and dad's wedding song. "How strange it is to be anything at all." I had stared at the tattoo in the mirror for half an hour before I had launched, rather loudly, into the second stage of the Kubler-Ross Model. Anger. I had smashed most of the valuables in my room by the time Steve and Charlotte had managed to restrain me. I am not ashamed to admit that I had spent much of this phase blind drunk and crying. Stage three, bargaining, had happened all of a sudden, when I had, in a rare moment of sobriety, overheard a news report that had stated that the bombings may have been avoided had MI5 responded to a tip off they had received. This had led me to Sir Stuart Peach. And after several calls and emails in which I had begged him to tell me of any intelligence that could have prevented the death of my parents, he had called me into his office. He had sworn on the life of his children and his wife that the attacks had come as a surprise. I believed him. I could no longer bargain with myself that this could have been avoided.

"They shouldn't have been there." I whimpered, blinking furiously at the tears lining my lower eyelids.

Sir Stuart Peach looked awkward.

"I had asked them to come up to meet my now ex-boyfriend but he decided that he would rather go shooting..." I was mumbling to myself. "I had told them I would come to them instead but they couldn't get a refund on their hotel."

"Lola..."

"My parents are dead. And it's my fault for listening to Tristan." I gulped as a sob rose from my chest. "He had made out that he was so excited to meet them."

Sir Stuart Peach finally stood up and turned to face the large window that was situated behind his desk. Ahead of him, the Thames was sparkling with early morning sun and tourists were milling about, cameras poised expectantly in their hands.

"Oh.." I gasped as the tears finally fell down my cheeks.

In two short strides, Sir Stuart Peach was stood in front of me, he knelt down to my eye level and placed his large hands on my shoulders.

"This is not your fault." his voice was gruff and firm. "None of this is your fault."

"I miss them." I sobbed. "They were my people."

The idea that of having "people" had come from a conversation I'd had with Steve after a night out. He had looked me in the eyes and held my hand and explained that he thought that Charlotte and I were his "people". I had asked him what he had meant and he had explained that your people were those that you knew would fight your corner for you no matter what. The people that you loved unconditionally. I had decided that besides Steve and Charlotte, with whom I shared an unshakeable bond with, my parents were my people. The four of them were all I needed. Their passing had left a hole that I was sure would never be filled.

Charlotte, Steve and I had organised a small wake for my parents at the local pub in Beaconsfield where our family home was situated. My parents had been popular in the village. My dad, a police officer was a well known presence and my mum was the headteacher at the local grammar school for girls. Over 900 people had turned up to pay their respects. My brothers had been noticeably absent, due to their various locations across the world. The last I knew, William was now based in Singapore working as an investment banker, Archie was living in Dubai and George, the oldest and my least favourite, was in LA. He had recently married after a whirlwind romance with an 18 year old blonde with enormous fake boobs. The triplets had been distant since my parents had died, and the only time I had heard from them was to confirm that we were to meet with the family lawyer within the next three weeks for the reading of my parents will. George wanted to claim his pound of flesh as quickly as he could and then depart back to his flash LA life that involved his new, younger glamourous wife, Shay, and his job as an entertainments lawyer.

I hadn't been close to my brothers for the longest time. They were two years older than me and had acted, to a certain point, as my protectors whilst we grew up but when I had turned thirteen and been on the receiving end of my first period, our relationship had changed irreversibly. We had all inherited the best of our parents, the three were practically dopplegangers for the love child of James Dean and Marlon Brando and wouldn't look out of place in an Abercrombie and Fitch advert. I, on the other hand, had spent most of my pre-teens trapped within an awkward, gangly body topped with a mop of frizzy hair. Until I had been thrust into the arms of puberty and had emerged much better off than I had started. We grew up in a large, but very communal village, and I had attracted a lot of attention in my post puberty years. My brothers, George in particular, had grown tired of their friends commenting on my new found boobs and eventually just decided it was best to leave me to fight my own battles.

After the wake, Charlotte, Steve and I had gone to my family home, a gorgeous converted farm house, with 2.5 acres of land. I had cried as we had walked through the front door. The house had been untouched. My mum and dad had no siblings and both sets of grandparents had passed away. For as long as I could remember it had been the six of us. I had cried until my throat hurt and slept in my old bed with Steve and Charlotte wrapped around me.

Sir Stuart Peach was still looking at me. I gulped as deep sobs emerged from my chest. Without warning, his hands had moved, wrapping themselves around my shoulders. He was hugging me. A real hug. I thought of all the hugs that I had received since my parents had gone. My dad gave them best hugs. He was strong and he would all but squeeze the life from within you. Sir Stuart Peach had a very similar hug to my dad. I collapsed into him, sobs coming thick and fast, tears staining the olive green uniform he was wearing.

I was officially in the fourth stage.

Depression.