The friend is sitting in a bright café in Hamburg by the harbor, she has kept her jacket on and has her hands between her knees. There was a time, she says, when she saw Lilly almost every day, back in Kiel. They listened to music together and danced in discos, drank coffee and played darts. They made each other laugh when they made faces, but Lilly laughed a lot anyway. A hearty laugh that seemed to dispel worries. If you laugh, you don’t cry.

Lilly was a bit crazy and quite scatterbrained. How many times did they have to go back somewhere because they left their wallet, their cell phone, their keys? The friend smiles quietly. Lilly often talked about her little niece from Bulgaria, of whom she posted photos on Facebook, and she always had Nino with her, a Chihuahua mix who could do anything.

The friend says that Lilly would have liked to have led a different life, a serious one, and yet she still loved life. You could talk to her about anything, but you couldn’t really get to her. There was something she kept to herself.

She was trusted, says the friend, and Lilly was also trusted: often too quickly, often in the wrong people. She hated lying, but forgave liars and was often lied to. Her anger never lasted long. Lilly saw the good, says the friend. Always only: the good. That was the problem.

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