The sunlight tickled her face as it fell in swathes through the kitchen window. The morning light lay languidly over the table, coating papers and paints with a golden lustre…

She didn’t want to open it. She didn’t want to allow herself to feel the things that she’d kept inside for so long, and she knew, that by opening the box, she would bring to the surface everything she had forced down for the last four years. She understood she had to; if anything, curiosity alone would get the better of her eventually. The knowledge of its existence was enough to occupy her thoughts, let alone its contents.