Mum says it is bad luck to cry on a day like today.

So when my lip trembles while slicing strawberries, she brushes my shoulder gently with her fingertips.

“Not today, darling. We need to smile for her. Just for today” she stated.

She turns away too quickly. Her voice is even but her eyes are red, the type of red that tells you someone was up before dawn, quiet-crying into a pillow. I don’t push her. We have all got our own way of getting through this.

The kitchen smells like lemon zest and toast. It is still early, the kind of golden morning where the sun comes through the window like it has been invited in. My little brother, Sam, is outside already dragging folding chairs across the lawn. His pyjamas blow against his skinny legs and the blue plastic chair legs make track marks in the damp uncut grass.

“Do you think she’ll like daffodils?” He asks, shouting through the window.

Mum does not look up from the mixing bowl. “Of course she will, love. She planted them herself.”

He nods, satisfied with a grin and goes back to wrestling with the garden furniture.

It is the tenth of May, her birthday, and every year we do the same thing. We dress the house in yellow, cook the things she used to love and pull out her mismatched photo albums and let the day wrap around us like a cardigan still carrying her smell. I think we all half expect her to walk in barefoot, balancing tea and toast asking, “Have you seen where I left my glasses?”

But of course she won’t. It has been three years.

Dad arrives from the garage smelling of engine oil and cheap aftershave. He is wearing the sunflower tie she gave him when Sam was born, the one with a ketchup stain near the hem.

“It’s warm enough to set the table outside” he muttered, kissing the top of my head and patting Mum’s shoulder. “I cleaned the bench”

“You cleaned it?” Mum teases. “That bench has been mouldy since 2004!”

He shrugs, “Miracles happen. It’s her day after all.”

There’s something about Dad’s voice, the way it lifts too brightly at the end of his sentences, that makes my chest ache. We all carry her differently. Mum stays busy, almost frantic. I become silent and strange as if a part of me goes missing every May. Dad just pretends she’s still somewhere nearby. He tells stories in that present tense, “She always burns the toast.”

Somehow, pretending keeps her alive.

By eleven the garden is a patchwork of old sheets and daffodils. Sam decorated the tree branches with paper lanterns from the attic. They sway in the breeze, faintly sun-bleached and lopsided. Mum set the table with her wedding china that she only brings out once a year. I lay the final touch: a framed photo of her, barefoot on the beach. One hand gripping her sun hat, the other waving like a lunatic at whoever was holding the camera.

I was nine when that photo was taken. I remember because she bought us all ice cream, then tripped over a beach bag and landed face-first in the sand, laughing so hard she cried. It’s my favourite picture of her. There is nothing posed about it, just raw joy. That was her… loud, barefoot, warm. The kind of sister who danced in the kitchen and sang with the hoover.

The food is ready just after noon, buttery scones, little sandwiches with ham and cheese, and Mum’s lemon drizzle cake that always comes out with a slight lean. Dad carries the tea out on a tray, balancing it like a waiter. For once he doesn’t spill anything. Sam insists we each say one thing we rememember about her.

“Something happy,” he requests, clearing his throat. “Not the… hospital stuff.”

We nod.

“I’ll go first,” he ordered. “She used to call me ‘Samwich.’ Like a sandwich. Remember that?”

We all laugh. I nod. She used to do that with everyone… turn names into food. I was “Bee-sketti” because I loved spaghetti. Dad was “Toast.” Just Toast. He never questioned it.

Mum’s turn. She smiles, her fingers curled around the mug.

“She used to make up songs about the neighbours, nothing mean.” She smirked. “But oh, they were funny. Remember the one about Mrs. Trenton and her garden gnomes?”

Dad begins humming a tune and we all join in.

“Old Mrs. T, with her gnome family…”

We are laughing harder than we should. It feels good. It feels awful. My stomach twists from the sugar and the memories. Dad looks at me.

“Your turn, Bee.”

I clear my throat trying to get rid of the lump. “Okay. Um. Once she caught me trying to bleach my hair in the bathroom. I was twelve and I used kitchen gloves and a toothbrush”

Mum groans, remembering.

“She didn’t yell,” I continue. “She just said, ‘Right. Sit down.’ And then she did the rest of it for me, properly, in the kitchen sink. I went to school the next day looking like a baby chick.”

Everyone laughs again. Sam nearly chokes on his tea.

And then it is quiet for a while. A long, soft silence. The silence that falls not because there is nothing left to say but because saying more might break something fragile.

We are sat in the garden when Auntie Jess arrives. She brings a tray of fairy cakes and hugs everyone. She always smells of divine vanilla and always comes late,

“So… you’ve had your cry and your cake?” She jokes.

But today, her hug lingers longer than usual and I wonder if she had cried before she left her house.

We pass the rest of the day gently. The sun hangs low and buttery in the sky. Sam disappears into the shed and comes back with balloons. Mum lets him tie them to the garden fence. We are not usually a balloon kind of family, she did not like them… said they were wasteful but today no one stops him. He releases one into the sky when he thought we were not looking. A single yellow balloon floating like a quiet hope.

As the evening cools, Dad builds a fire in the pit. We wrap ourselves in blankets and sit around the glow. Sam roasts marshmallows, his face sticky and pink. Auntie Jess tells a story about the time Ella got locked out her house in pyjamas and slippers, then ended up leading a neighbourhood watch meeting from the driveway.

“She always took chaos and made it charming,” Jess stated. It is true. Ella was good at finding light in messes.

I feel her more than I see her. In the daffodils, the songbirds, the lemon cake and the over-decorated garden. I imagine she would be sitting on the edge of the bench, barefoot as always, asking if anyone remembered to make extra tea. She would have a cardigan draped over her shoulders, even if it was warm and she would be smiling.

When it is dark and the fire’s dying down, Mum brings out the last surprise. She disappears into the house and returns with something wrapped in tissue paper. We all gather close.

“I almost forgot,” voice low, she continues “I found this in the attic last week. Thought we could open it today.”

Inside is a stack of old letters, ones we had written her years ago when she went on that yoga retreat and missed Sam’s first school play. She kept them, every one, folded neatly. We pass them around, reading bits aloud. Laughing at the spelling. Mum wipes her eyes and does not pretend this time.

“Maybe we should write her new ones,” Sam suggests suddenly. “Every year.”

We all pause, the fire crackles softly as it continues to die down.

“Yes!” Mum replied with a great big smile. “I think she would like that.”

Later as we clean the garden in the dark, I catch a glimpse of the photo again on the table and for a second I swear she was right there by the trees. Not watching us with sadness or longing but with that same grin she always had, the one she got from Mum, like she knows we remembered her just right.

Like she never really left.