Carrie Callingham describes her daughter Melodie Rose Pinckney as an artistic, pretty and intense child with a dark sense of humour. Like most 14-year-olds, she enjoyed spending time with friends, could be moody and sometimes bickered with her siblings. She loved cosplaying and My Chemical Romance.

On the night of January 3, 2020, she had pizza with her family. The following morning she was found dead in her bedroom, having taken her own life. “She was a very clever girl,” her mum, now 48, says. “She had the ability, she was going to do something, you know, great.. but this all happened.”

A coroner ruled Melodie had intended to die by suicide - a finding her mother still struggles to accept. “It makes no difference, it doesn’t make me feel better, but I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think she meant to do it,” she says. “There were no indications – we never thought she would do something like that. She was a happy child at home.”

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Carrie says discovering her daughter had killed herself was horribly traumatic. Her memory of that morning is blurry – she remembers screaming, not bearing to look at her. She has since wrestled with many difficult questions. Why did Melodie do what she did? Why did her school not inform her parents she had been self-harming?

Over the past six years, Carrie’s grief has evolved and changed her as a person. She kept a journal to record what she was feeling, her memories of Melodie, and the answers she was searching for. The period immediately after the tragedy was one of shock and numbness.

“It was just the saddest, saddest thing ever,” Carrie says. “The next few weeks were just, you know, just completely…,” she mimes an explosion. I was in and out of sleep, that's all I wanted to do. I just didn't want to be awake to feel it.”

After that, Carrie tried to stay as busy as possible to keep herself distracted, doing arts and crafts, making teddy bears from Melodie’s clothes, building a shed and doing a lot of gardening. In this phase, she says she was well supported by the people closest to her. She stayed with her mother, or at her best friend Frank Chivers’ house – her own home in Folkestone, Kent, was too triggering.

Thankfully, the funeral took place before the Covid-19 pandemic really hit. Carrie says the hall at Hawkinge Crematorium was packed with family and Melodie’s school friends, who came dressed in cosplay. As social distancing rules came into force in March, bereavement support groups were cancelled and it was sometimes hard for Carrie to see loved ones.

But in other ways, she says the restrictions were fitting. It was almost like the world acknowledged that she passed because we had a lockdown, and the whole world paused. I was in such deep grief, I would have been isolating, even if there wasn't a global pandemic. And because of furlough, I had all that time off work, and I really needed it.”

Melodie had two older siblings Elliot and Francesca and a younger sister, Cherry. In the early days Carrie felt as if they were supporting her. “I think at first it was more about them coaching me through it, just by being themselves and being true to who Mel was,” she says.

“Fran, she had a baby and her own place, she was raising her own family. But we were all welcome there, we were always coming up to Fran. I’d go as far as to say she saved my life. With Cherry, I worried about her at first because she was a soft and fluffy little kid, and then this hit, and it just kind of hardened her.”

As months went by, the arts and crafts stopped and Carrie hit a slump and stayed that way for years. She returned to work – bartending at The Lord Morris pub in Folkestone – but says it was as though life ticked over, but nothing happened.

“It was like living in a hole with a blanket over my head,” she adds. People in her life, whether out of awkwardness or not knowing what to say, started avoiding the topic of Melodie, or avoiding Carrie altogether. It’s the worst – I wanted people to just be honest. I actually wish people had asked what happened that day

“It felt like by people not asking me about her, they were dismissing a massive part of me. People don't remember special dates - like her death date, or her birthday. I’d be like – it’s her birthday today, why has no one said anything to me? I think people think that when you lose someone, the rest of the world is understanding, but people just get on with their own lives, and that happens early on.”

In the months after their daughter’s death, she and Melodie’s father struggled to understand what had happened. The family asked Snapchat and Instagram to provide all of Melodie’s data. Years of messages and posts were sent in the form of a lengthy text document, garbled among lines of code. Melodie’s father spent a year going through everything, but found no answers.

Parallel to the grief, Carrie was tormented by guilt. The inquest in October 2020 sought to decide if Melodie’s death was intentional suicide, or a ‘misadventure’ – an accident. “When the inquest said it was suicide, that broke my heart. Because that was like cementing that she wanted to do it,” Carrie recalls.

“We will never know for sure. There are no answers, so I’ve had to learn to live with two truths: one that she meant to do it, and the one that she didn't. The guilt you feel as a parent is so overwhelming, you’ve got to separate it from your grief. “Your guilt is: My child wanted to die and I didn't know. That is a horrendous thing as a parent to live with.”

It emerged at the inquest that staff at Melodie’s school, Brockhill Park Performing Arts College in Folkestone, had known she had been self-harming. The school has been contacted for comment but did not respond. It was hard because we only found out at the inquest that the school had known she was self-harming and they hadn't told us. Her dad was proper fuming about that,” Carrie says.

The coroner also noted Melodie had been referred to counselling at the school because of gender identity issues. “I know she had gender issues,” Carrie says. “But, I mean, a lot of the kids do have that, don't they? I don't know if that has something to do with it, but we always supported her for whoever she wanted to be.”

In July 2021, Cherry’s father, John Colam – with whom Carrie raised Melodie – died suddenly in his home. Then in December that year, during a charity bike ride to raise money for suicide awareness following Melodie’s death, Carrie’s uncle, Christopher Boxer, was the victim of a hit-and-run and suffered serious injuries.

Her close friend, Frank, also died in July 2024. Carrie says the compounding grief has weighed heavily on her, but that with time, she has learned “tools” to help her manage. “I’ve become much better at confronting my own thoughts, rather than trying to run away from them. Now I just let them come, sit with it, and let them pass. Nothing comes from guilt, nothing. All you can do is try to turn it into something positive.”

Using journal entries from the past six years, Carrie has written a book to help others who have lost someone they loved. She tells her story, but also invites readers to tell theirs. The First of Everything Without You is a guided grief diary with prompts to help people heal, cope with loss and remember loved ones.

“Some people don't know the questions to ask a person who’s grieving or won’t feel comfortable asking,” Carrie says. But those questions are all in this book. The reader can get those feelings out and be as honest and raw as they want. For me, writing things down is such a good outlet, I wrote the book to give other people that same outlet.”

Carrie plans to open a cafe and community space, named Melodie’s Lighthouse, with proceeds from the book. She says it will be a positive alternative to pubs and social media - a safe space where people dealing with hard times can support each other, with free tea and coffee funded by an adjoining charity shop.

“I want to build a community where people can find things that inspire them, learn from other people's wisdom, have face-to-face interactions and ignite some joy,” Carrie says. But even as she looks to the future, she says the absence of her daughter remains constant.

“When you have a baby, you realise you didn’t know you could love anyone so much. And then it's the same when they die – it opens up this other level of emotions,” she says. “I remember about two years ago, I thought, would I rather be back in the first year of grief, when it was really emotionally intense, but she felt close, and I felt like I still knew her.

“Now, even though the pain isn’t as strong, it feels like she's become part of the past.”

The First Of Everything Without You is available on Amazon

Donations to Melodie’s Lighthouse can be made here