Coconut.

Eli first saw her again at a house party in Heaton, five years after their last conversation.

The room pulsed with bass and cigarette smoke. Laughter spilled out in pockets. And there she was—Amina Diallo. By the window. Wrapped in string lights and memory. She hadn’t changed much. Braids down her back. That sharp, unreadable gaze. A half-smile that seemed to slice right through him.

“Didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he said.

She didn’t flinch. Just sipped her drink, eyes steady. “Of course you did. I’m unforgettable.” They smiled at each other. It was their favourite way to talk to themselves.

They talked for hours—awkward at first, then circling old jokes, trading unfinished memories. It felt like stepping into a room he’d boarded up long ago.

By the end of the night, he cancelled his return to Liverpool.

By the end of the week, he’d submitted a transfer application to Newcastle.

They moved into a small flat in Jesmond. She painted again—murals blooming across their kitchen walls, colours wild and joyful. He wrote more than he had in years. They built something tender, something ordinary. She played jazz in the mornings. He read her poems she claimed not to remember writing.

One night, he told her, “I think I loved you even then.”

She looked at him, eyes shadowed. “You never really knew me.”

They never spoke about the fight. The one behind the school. The broken words. The hours that vanished after. Her sudden silence. Her complete disappearance.

His mother turned cold when he mentioned her.

“Amina? That girl?” she said, carefully. “You’re sure she’s... around?”

“She’s different now,” he replied. “We both are.”

But strange details crept in. No one had met her. She skipped every event. When his flatmate asked, “Why do you talk like she’s not real?” Eli only smiled. “You’d understand if you met her.”

At night, he started waking with a jolt—mud on his fingers in dreams, the sound of her voice crying out, leaves rustling, then nothing.

She’d be beside him in the morning, calm, humming, tea steaming in her hand.

Until one day, she wasn’t.

No note. No goodbye. Just her mug still warm. Her red brush still dripping on the counter.

And then, the knock.

Two officers. Rain slicked on their jackets. Formal.

“Mr. Stafford?”

He nodded.

“We’re reopening a case. Amina Diallo. Missing five years. You were close.”

Eli’s heart thudded. “She’s here. She was just here.”

One officer exchanged a glance with the other. “A witness came forward. Said they saw you with her. Jesmond Dene. Final week of sixth form.”

He turned back into the flat.

One toothbrush. One pillow dented. Her paint vanished. The silence was suffocating.

“She came back,” he whispered. “She forgave me.”

They waited.

On the windowsill sat her favourite mug.

Inside it: half a coconut shell.

He picked it up with trembling fingers.

Smooth. Hollow. Split perfectly in two.

Two sides to a story.

And one of them… no longer there.

SYNOPSIS – Coconut

Eli Stafford thought he’d buried the past. But when he sees Amina Diallo at a house party in Heaton—five years after she vanished without explanation—it’s as if time folds in on itself. They fall back into an easy rhythm: late-night conversations, old jokes, the rush of love rekindled. He changes his plans, moves cities, and begins again with her. Or so he thinks.



Amina is quieter now. Elusive. Joyful one moment, distant the next. No one else sees her. She avoids every gathering. Her presence is soft but consuming, like a dream Eli doesn’t want to wake from. Until she’s gone again. No note. No goodbye. Just her mug—still warm—and the half coconut shell she always kept by the windowsill.


Then comes the knock on the door.

Two officers. A reopened case. A girl who’s been missing since their final week of sixth form. A witness who swears they saw Eli with her that week. And a life that begins to unravel as Eli tries to prove that Amina came back… or maybe never left.