Three days after my mother died, I started clearing out her bedroom. I needed to sleep in there; the sofa was making my sciatica flare up.

Under the bed I found various expensive candles I’d bought her, in a box marked: FOR BEST.

I burned them all at her funeral.

Laura Besley writes short fiction and squeezes her writing into the bookends of her day. She has lived in Holland, Germany, and Hong Kong, but now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. Her flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers, was published in March 2020. She tweets at @laurabesley.