Aurora's POV
His mum died the morning of our last A Level exam.
It was maths, and we had our exam together because we were in the same class. I waited for him afterwards but he almost walked past without seeing me.
'Sam!' I called after him, I wanted to ask him how it went, and since we had finished our last exam we were allowed to leave for the summer. I was going almost straight away and I wanted to say goodbye before I left.
'Yes?' he replied, too quickly. He turned around and gave me a forced smile. I could see something was wrong by his eyes.
'What's wrong? Did the exam not go well?' I knew him too well to think that this was just because of a bad exam, but I didn't want to pry and plus this was in public so he wouldn't want to say there anyway.
'It was fine, don't worry.'
I wrapped my hand around his waist to comfort him; I could feel his muscles tensing as he tried to flinch away from my touch but he settled and we walked together in silence up to the point where we both had to go the opposite way. He took my hand and walked a bit up the street, out of the way of anyone else.
'I.. Um-' he faltered, looking for the words to express what he needed to tell me. 'My mum.. This morning she..-'
His voice started to crack and I nodded, he didn't need to say it.
'I'm so sorry,' I whispered as I hugged him. I didn't know what to say, I was never any good at comforting people.
We stayed in silence for a while, it might have been a minute, I don't know, but I didn't know how best to break the silence, and he obviously was not in a state to talk.
Eventually I looked him in the eye and I saw so much pain. His mum had been ill for a few years, a brain tumour. They thought that the doctors had got rid of it but a few months ago it came back even worse than before. She was lovely, and truth be told I was pretty upset myself because she was a really genuine person, and always positive. But I forgot about how I felt because this wasn't about me.
'Sam.. I'm sorry', I repeated and I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back but didn't say anything, I didn't expect him to. 'It won't always feel this bad, everything will get better.'
My pathetic attempt at consoling him seemed to help a bit but I was lost for kind things to say and I felt bad, I wished that sympathising had been my forte after all, he really needed it.
I felt even worse for him because his family had always been so close, they got along so well and they were always laughing together. Whenever I went to stay I was always made to feel really welcome and Carol, his mum, never stopped trying to help, trying to make me more comfortable, fussing over everything and much as Sam found it a bit tiring at times, I thought she was such a lovely person for spending so much energy worrying about other people.
She had had an amazing life, she worked as a volunteer for a charity in Africa and she was the one who had managed to get me the opportunity to do volunteer work in South Africa for my gap year, starting in October.
I mean, she was the personification of a role model if there ever was one. And in the three or so years I'd known her, I guess I'd got another parent. Whenever I fought with my parents, I would go and stay at Sam's since they lived so close, and she would always be there to comfort me and offer advice. Sam, on the other hand, wasn't so good with the advice because he'd obviously never fought with his parents so he didn't have any experience to share about it, which sometimes made me laugh because he tried to be understanding about it but he couldn't.
