Eleanor stepped into her sister’s room two days after her funeral. She uncorked the wine and poured a large glass at the table. She looked around, seeing the traces of their childhood amongst the adult life; a poster of their favourite film growing up amongst the stacks of bills and paperwork. A photo of the two of them as kids perched on either side of a dodgem car. Ticket stubs from concerts they went to together over the years.
    She walked over to the stereo on the far side of the room. Over ten years old and never upgraded for one specific reason; so they could send each other mix tapes. After she moved out, Eleanor swore she would send her sister a mix tape every two months and she did. Her sister responded in kind and even after they finished college and went on to work and real life, their was still a part of them that wanted to keep being young enough that meant waiting for a tape was the most important thing in your life. So the tapes continued sporadically, sometimes with gaps lasting almost a year, but they always came. And always in person on birthdays and Christmas day.
    She put the tape in the machine and unzipped her bag. She emptied out the hundreds of CD’s onto the sofa. She poured another glass and put in the first CD. She pressed play and record and let the tape run a little so the beginning of the song wouldn’t be missed. Then she went turned and faced the wall. As the tape went on, the careful skill of pausing and then releasing without leaving too much of a gap, Eleanor stripped the room bare. She brought down posters, prints, began to box up electrical items. She poured more wine and jumped when the tape spooled to the end and slammed to a stop. She walked over and flipped the cassette and began again. Everything in order as her family wanted; all except the small brown suitcase.
    In the suitcase went her favourite clothes, keepsakes that were worth nothing, stubs and stories torn out of the paper. At first there barely seemed to be enough to fill an envelope let alone a suitcase but steadily Eleanor filled it. By the time the tape and the bottles were empty, she had to lean down and sit on the case to snap the locks shut.
    Eleanor sat down. It was evening in the summer now, so it was both dusky and low but still didn’t need to turn on a light. The room was bare except for boxes. The walls were empty. She turned round to the machine and snapped the eject button. Then she rested the tape on her knee and carefully laid the thin white strip of paper across front of it. She wrote the title along it. She pulled the inlay card out of the cassette box and began to write down the track listing. She was squinting as she wrote it but she didn’t know if that was from the darkness of the night or the tears in her eyes. And then she was done. Eleanor drove for a solid hour the next day. The roads were clear and it didn’t take her long to reach the cliff. She parked up and lugged the suitcase to the edge, set it down and then walked back to the car. She pulled the stereo out, an old boom box she brought at a car boot the week before and set it on the roof, wondering what weighed more; the machine or the half dozen big batteries it took to get it going. She slipped the tape in and pressed play and started to walk back to the edge.
    As the first song kicked in, Eleanor flipped the locks on the suitcase. She opened it up and began to throw the clothes, the keepsakes, everything, over the ledge and onto the wind. Some things fell and snagged on the rocks, some slipped down into the sand. The music kept playing on and on, sounding better in the open and mixing with the sea. She kept throwing things until the case was empty and the last item, an old red dress she wore and was old and tired caught in the breeze and lifted high into the sky. It became a dress, a kite and her favourite shade of lipstick, until that too, was gone.