"Connie?" Her head snapped around as she heard another woman's voice say her name. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you jump..."
"Oh, no it's okay. I just..." She trailed off, at a loss for words. She glanced over to where Jacob was, talking with a group of men a few metres away, and then turned back to his mother. "I didn't... I didn't know." She gestured to the book, and lowered her head before once more glancing over to him.
"He's a surprisingly private person." His mother spoke softly, and Connie gave a nod in response. "Connie... I just, I just wanted to say... Elle said you can work magic on him. Thank you."
"He needed to be here. I think he knew that, really." His mother smiled sadly in reply, before moving to stand with another group of people, leaving Connie and Elle standing together.
"You know..." Elle looked over to Jacob and back to Connie, who too seemed unable to distract her gaze from him for seconds at a time. "You mean a lot to him. He's not... He isn't someone who takes kindly to letting people help him."
"He's struggling." Connie could barely hear herself over the talk of other people, and Elle moved closer, touching her hand to Connie's arm; to her surprise, it was not instantly dismissed.
"I'm glad you came with him."
"Elle, I..." Connie began, suddenly on the verge of telling her everything. About Grace, about Jacob, about how she felt, but before she could Elle too was drawn into the crowd. She seemed to fit in so well and everyone seemed to know her, and it made Connie feel even more uncomfortable. As her eyes scanned for Jacob, a girl struggling on crutches caught her eye. She too was stood apart from the crowd, watching them with disdain. Connie felt herself levitating towards the girl, slightly younger yet so similar to Grace.
The girl glanced at Connie when she stopped beside her before looking back at the crowd. "How can they all look so happy? Don't they know what today is? We're saying goodbye, and goodbye is always sad."
"I think everyone here is sad, but for today, they want to celebrate Joseph's life and everything he did." Connie replied hesitantly.
The girl turned to glance at her again. "Who are you, anyway?"
"I'm...I..." Connie didn't know who she was. Here, she wasn't head of an emergency department, she wasn't a doctor, she wasn't Grace's mother.
So who was she?
"I'm..."
"Have you got amnesia?" The girl asked curiously.
Connie smiled at this. "I'm a friend of Jacob's."
"Are you Connie?" The girl asked curiously. "I'm Mia. Jacob said you helped him pick out a necklace for my birthday." She pulled the necklace out to show her. "It's my favourite. He normally gets me something pink, or a toy. He still thinks I'm about three!" Mia was glad to have something else to talk about, for she hated thinking about her father and the fact she would never see him again.