Kiss My Name by Calvin Wade Page A

in a small end terraced property allowed me to phone the police from theirs. The police were back at the narrow boat within twenty minutes and that afternoon, the poor mother and father of the boy identified his body. His name was Colin Strong, a ten year old local boy, who had been missing since the previous afternoon. How he came to be in the water is a mystery that twenty five years on, has never been solved.
    I never knew Colin. I never kicked a football with him, I never had a chat with him about school or ice cream or sweets, but I still think of him nearly every day. After our statements to the police, we headed straight back towards Silsden. Children are pretty resilient to a tragedy like that, so Sarah and Joanne still found time to laugh and smile, but it did affect them, not just on the rest of the holiday, but it made an imprint on the rest of their lives.
    Deidre a nd I did not attend the funeral. We did not feel it was our place to. I could dramatise it and say that it changed our lives but although you do keep a slightly closer eye on your children, kiss them and hug them a little more, thank God for small mercies more often, the emotional wound heals just to leave a tiny scar. He was not our child. For the Strong family, I am sure it was very different. They had two children until that day, now they only had one. Their grief must have been unbearable, must still be unbearable and I am sure the mystery surrounding his death makes it even harder to accept.

NICKY – August 1986
                  These days as an adult, I am the type of person who likes to find an answer to every question. If I am watching a film on DVD and there is a half familiar actor in it, I need to pause the film, Google the actor’s name then check out where I know them from. To me, every question should have an answer. The fact that some questions have answers that are beyond my comprehension drives me mad. Since my Mum died, when I was only a little girl, I have always been searching for answers to the big question about death.
    Where had my lovely Mum gone? Was she in some perfect heavenly place? Was she a ghost or had her existence ceased the moment she took her last breath on earth?
                  Simon thinks once you die, you die. You just revert to what you were for the billions of years before you were born, nothing. To me though, that is still not enough of an answer. What does nothing look like? What colour is it? How is it possible to not feel, to not see, to not love, to not think? It is beyond my comprehension. It is impossible for me to think the same way as Simon. That once I die in this world, my soul and my spirit will disappear too. I don’t see that happening. Nor do I see Simon disappearing from my existence after death. Simon might not agree, but I am sure he is my soul mate and will be with me through eternity.
                  As a child in the 1980s, the bond that Simon and I had was important to me, but I would not have suspected that I would now be describing him as my soul mate. There is a Gary Larson cartoon, or two cartoons, which depicts a boy in bed thinking over and over about whether a girl loves him and there is also a cartoon of a girl in bed, thinking about whether or not she likes ice cream. That cartoon perfectly sums up my romantic relationship with Simon back then. As children, he was desperate for our relationship to happen. I, on the other hand, was totally oblivious to him romantically. I loved him dearly but not in a romantic way.
                  My Mum’s death happened at an early stage in my life, but in many ways, Simon’s brother, Colin’s death, hit me harder. The reason for this was guilt. I felt no guilt about my mother’s death, she was a sick lady and even at my tender age I understood that there was nothing that I could have done to make her better. Colin’s death was different. I knew my actions, encouraging Joey and Simon to come