It is bare now, white. I push my nail beneath a flake of white paint on the wall to reveal the pink beneath.

Your room is a guest bedroom now.

I walk into the centre, the sound of my heels deadened by the beige-coloured carpet. I remember it when it was yours, before we took it from you, even long after you had gone.

These two walls were black, these two a bright, electric pink. Here was a poster for My Chemical Romance, here was a poster for lostprophets. They're the only two I can ever remember.

This corner was where your chair stood, with all your clothes draped over it. Here is the wardrobe that only ever contained your uniform, with all the ticket stubs of the concerts you had been to blu-tacked to the front. It's empty now, and the doors have been scoured and re-painted.

Here is where you dumped all your stuff when you got in from school. Here's the dent in your floorboards where you kept your CD player. If I close my eyes and strain my ears, I can just hear the last chords of your favourite song echoing across some infinate gulf.

And here is your bed. Covered with an electric blue quilt, pieces of paper, splotches of nail varnish and twenty books when it was yours, now swamped in a pristine duvet that doesn't suit the room at all.

Then I close my eyes, and I see you.

I can hear you yelling at me from your room that you were busy when I asked you to lay the table. I can smell that faint, dusky smell you had, that was part bubblegum and part perfume. I can feel the warmth you used to radiate.

But most of all, I can see you here in the middle of the night, your make-up washed from your eyes and your hair let loose, to fall, tangled, all across your pillow and all over you. I can see you laughing with your friends as I bring you drinks. I can see you sitting here, tiny and scared-looking, newly out of school and standing on the brink of a wide, unimaginable future.

I remember you. My own little girl.

Four years now you've been gone. And I still come in here every day, even now, when all traces of you have long been scrubbed away, because this is the only place you were ever truly yourself.

This is the only place you still exist for me, even after your smell has faded and your walls are bare.

This is the only place I am allowed to grieve.

So long anf goodnight.