Shelley
FRIDAY
Betty calls me at 8.30am to say she isn’t feeling so good and can’t work today and I feel like someone has punched me in the heart for the second time in the past twelve hours. Last night was horrendous and the memories come flooding back of how Juliette had to be taken home by her sister and her husband and it all feels like one big nightmare.
‘Have you heard anything?’ Sarah asks me as I walk around my house in a daze, brushing my teeth as I talk to my best friend on the phone with Merlin following my every move.
‘No, not a thing but I have to go and open the shop for the first time in ages and I don’t know how I am going to deal with customers today.’
‘What are you thinking?’ asks Sarah as I walk past a photo of Lily, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
‘I’m scared. I’m thinking a lot of things,’ I tell her. ‘I feel like I want to pack up and go to my dad and run away from it all.’
‘Well do that then,’ says Sarah. ‘Tell Matt to meet you in Belfast tomorrow instead of him flying into Dublin and take some time out from your life. You’re almost there, Shell. Maybe a bit of your dad’s company would do you the world of good right now. You’ve looked after Juliette and Rosie so well for what probably feels like forever but you still need to think of you, no matter what happens to them.’ I sit down on the edge of my sofa and I look out the window of the glass doors that lead onto my balcony and further onto the sea. Merlin curls up in behind me.
‘I did think of that,’ I say to her, ‘but then I’m afraid to go too far in case something bad happens to Juliette. I can’t just abandon them. I think Rosie is going to need me now more than ever.’
I lean back on the sofa and Merlin awkwardly makes his way onto my lap.
‘I hate to think of what is going to become of that poor child,’ says Sarah. ‘Juliette is very sick, Shelley. You can’t help that. You have to look after you now.’
‘You sound like Matt,’ I say to Sarah and I close my eyes, just wanting to get back into bed and forget about everything that happened so quickly last night.
Rosie had called me to the bar to tell me that she had a grand surprise for her mum and she was relishing in how well Juliette looked with her head scarf and her make-up and her lovely blue dress but when Helen and Dan arrived, it turned into a living nightmare for us all.
‘Mum, are you okay?’ Rosie called when she saw how pale Juliette looked, and before we had time to introduce each other, Helen swept in and took over and demanded that Juliette be taken back to the cottage where she was going to call her doctor immediately and I have never felt so useless in all my life.
‘The woman is terminally ill,’ Sarah reminds me and I nod in acknowledgement. I should never have become so close to them in the first place. How naïve can one person be? Of course it was going to end badly. What did I expect? Annual holidays and social networking in between? Juliette is dying and I feel like I am dying now too. I need to go to work but I don’t know if I can. I need to talk to Matt. I need him here with me because there is no way I can go and interrupt Juliette’s family time now that she seems to have taken ten steps backwards.
‘I need to get to work,’ I say to Sarah, and Merlin shifts on my knee as if to say it’s about time. ‘Maybe if you’re around you could pop in during the day? I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I feel so useless.’
‘I feel so guilty,’ says Sarah. ‘At least you have work to distract you for a few hours. I just wish I had never brought that photo with me. But how was I to know it was the wrong person? I haven’t slept wondering if the shock of that all was what triggered her to feel so faint and sick in the first place.’
‘It wasn’t the photo,’ I say to Sarah. ‘How could it have been? Juliette wasn’t well yesterday either or when we took her out on the boat. Maybe that’s what set it off. Maybe we’re thinking of too many maybes.’
‘Maybe she’s just misremembering the way he looked,’ says Sarah. ‘Like, how can she have thought that was his name and been so wrong all this time?’
‘Maybe he gave her the wrong name,’ I suggest and my stomach flips at the thought. ‘Have you ever thought of that?’
‘No,’ says Sarah. ‘I haven’t. What kind of man would do that?’
‘Someone who was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing? Look, I need to go and open the shop,’ I tell her. ‘Call me later. It’s good to be back in touch again, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ says Sarah. ‘Now, I’m wondering who the hell this man of Juliette’s was. Are you sure you are okay?’
‘I am okay,’ I tell her, and I stand up but my legs are like jelly. ‘I’m glad I have you, Sarah. I think I am going to really need you soon if that isn’t too much bother.’
‘You will always have me,’ she tells me and I hang up knowing it’s true. I am going to need her very soon and I know it.
Juliette
Dan sits on the side of my bed, his face grey with worry and enforced sobriety.
‘I scared you all last night, didn’t I?’ I say to him but he doesn’t reply. He just holds my hand. I can hear Helen and Rosie argue in the kitchen as to who left the lights on all night and I long to yell at them that it doesn’t really bloody matter in the wider scale of things.
‘I have so many things I need to say to you but where do I start?’ asks Dan and I manage a smile and to shake my head ever so slightly. ‘I have so much I want to say right now, Juliette.’
‘You want to say that right now I’m the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen?’ I suggest to him but he isn’t really in the mood for jokes. He squeezes my hand as tears fill his eyes.
‘Tell me about the night we met,’ I say and that seems to raise a reaction.
‘You’ve always loved that story,’ he says to me and it is true. I have.
It wasn’t a drunken night out, it wasn’t a blind date, it wasn’t an online dating agency or any such thing, it was by pure chance that we met and we have both always told our meeting story with great pride to anyone who would listen.
Dan takes a big breath and squeezes my hand again. His eyes are darker now, spilling over with despair and worry but his voice soothes me just like it has for the ten years that I have known and loved him.
‘It was an evening in August and I was on a plane on my way back from Paris, feeling sorry for myself because I hated flying so much and I really hated flying alone,’ he begins, and I almost mouth the words along with him, so familiar is this tale. ‘I was terrified, in a middle seat and was cramped and uncomfortable with a wailing baby on one side and a snoring old man on the other side of me.’
I nod and close my eyes, smiling at the sound of his voice and the most beautiful story I have ever been told.
‘Go on,’ I say to him. ‘And then you looked—’
‘And then I looked in between the seats in front of me and I saw the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen in my whole life and she was talking to someone about not being afraid of flying,’ he continues. ‘I saw that it was just a little girl she was speaking to and in about three seconds. I realised I was being a big baby as the little girl was much braver than I was.’
I laugh at this bit, I always do.
‘The little girl said to her, ‘Mummy I’m not afraid. I’ll always be okay when I’m flying next to you’ and I said to myself ‘what the hell am I afraid of when this child is being so brave in front of me? Me - a grown man, when there was a child in front of me seeing the world in such a different way? She had someone she loved beside her and she wasn’t afraid and I realised, that’s what life is all about. That is what we are here for. To have someone we love beside us when we need to feel safe and secure.’
I pause. I haven’t heard this last bit before. I swallow. I wish I could speak out but I can’t right now.
‘Juliette, you have flown beside Rosie every day of her life, and not just since that first moment I met you both on that flight from Paris,’ he says to me. ‘I may have helped you with your bags from the overhead locker and we may have talked the whole way up the aisle as we shuffled along, and then again as we waited at the carousel and then when we swapped numbers and knew we would be meeting up within days, but she has always been your number one and you should be so proud of that. You have flown with her all this time and you always will.’
I inhale all of his familiarity as I lie here with my eyes closed, the sound of music from the kitchen drowning out my daughter and my sister’s conversation and when I open my eyes and look at him, he is all that I want to believe in right now. Me and Rosie, flying together always.
‘I know that I didn’t give Rosie the gift of life,’ he says to me, ‘but you and Rosie gave the gift of her life to me and I will always stand by her side in whatever way I can.’
His greying hair by his temples, his piercing blue eyes torn with grief and despair clutch at my heart and I know that he means what he says no matter what.
‘Just be there when she needs you,’ I whisper to him. ‘She will always need you, Dan.’
He smiles a little.
‘I can’t promise to fly with her like you can but I’ll always be her wingman if she ever needs me and I know she will in some way as she grows up to be just as amazing as her mum,’ he tells me. ‘I will always be by her side when she wants me to be.’
A tear rolls down his cheek and he leans over to me and kisses my own tears away.
‘You didn’t finish the story,’ I say to him, my voice weak and as faint as my body feels right now.
‘Well, that lady who talked to me all the way to the exit of the airport that night,’ he continues. ‘I told her before we left, that one day I would marry her and I did, and it was the best day of both of our lives, wasn’t it, Juliette? You said to me that day you were the happiest woman in the world. And you looked like you were.’
I was,’ I tell my husband. ‘It will always be my happiest memory in the world. Thank you, Dan, for everything. You’ve been my wingman, you know that? Despite everything I always felt stronger when you were near.’
‘I’ve let you down, Juliette,’ he says to me and he breaks down and sobs like a baby. ‘I’m so sorry about the past few weeks. I am so, so sorry.’
‘Dan, no, you don’t need to be,’ I whisper to him. ‘We needed some time away from each other. I know I’m not going to be here for much longer but you needed to see that the time we have left is so precious and I need you to be strong. I need you, Dan.’
His sobbing subsides and he holds my hand to his face.
‘You have given me ten wonderful years of memories that I will treasure forever,’ he says to me. ‘So many things, so many great times and so much love from your big, generous heart. That’s what will keep me and Rosie going, Juliette. The love you gave to us will never die. And our love for you will go on forever and ever. We will talk about you every single day and we will love you every single day so you’ll never be alone.’
I close my eyes again and I smile in the knowledge that my man is by my side. My best friend in the whole wide world; I am his wife and he is my very own wing man. I love him more than he will ever know.
Shelley
Rosie doesn’t talk much when she arrives in the shop around lunchtime but I know what she is after. Her eyes are red and puffy and her hair is scrunched back off her face and she is without her signature make up. Instead she is pale and blotchy and looks like she needs a good chat.
‘You want to go for a walk?’ I say to her as she pretends to look through rails of clothes she isn’t interested in. ‘We can go and grab Merlin and take twenty minutes on the beach?’
‘But it’s your lunch break and you need to eat,’ she tells me, not looking my way. ‘You don’t have to come too if you don’t want to. I just needed to get out of the cottage and I didn’t know where else to go. Aunty Helen is getting on my nerves already, Shelley. She is just freaking out and I can’t cope with it right now.’
I know that feeling all too well.
‘Come on,’ I say to her. ‘It’s almost one o’clock and I’ve been here since nine which I’m not used to, so I’d love a bit of fresh air to blow off the cobwebs.’
‘I can get the dog if you like?’ she says to me. ‘If you need to stay until one?’
‘You’re an angel,’ I say to her and I give her the keys to the house. God, I am so going to miss her when she leaves tomorrow. ‘You know the alarm code, yes?’
‘Just as well I’m not a robber in disguise,’ she jokes and off she goes to get her good old buddy while I close up the till.
Ten minutes later Rosie is back with the dog and we walk down to the beach together in silence. She sniffles a bit as she walks which helps me start up a conversation because I really do not know what to say now. There’s no point telling her that everything is going to be okay because we both know that it really is not. There’s no point in saying clichéd statements about time healing everything, because I am the one person who knows that it certainly does not.
‘Are you getting a cold?’ I ask her and she shakes her head.
‘Allergies,’ she tells me. ‘I always sniffle and sneeze at this time of year but Mum normally gets me antihistamines. She forgot to pack them this time.’
‘I can get you some on the way back,’ I say to her and she doesn’t reply. ‘I used to suffer terribly with hayfever in summer. It sucks big time.’
‘So does cancer,’ says Rosie and we both stop in our tracks. She throws her arms around me and leans into me as she sobs and I just let her do so without any questions, without any words, because there is really no way to deal with this other than to let her lean on me and cry.
I look out onto the lighthouse as I rub her weary head and I ask my mum to give me the strength to get through this for Rosie. The thought of losing Juliette after knowing her only a week is almost killing me inside but this is not about me. It’s about this darling teenage girl who seems to have taken a shine to me and is leaning on me for comfort so I can’t get sad for me. I have to stay strong for her.
We slowly start to walk again along the sand and Merlin provides a nice distraction when he tugs at his lead and when Rosie lets him go we watch and laugh as he bounds straight for the water until we can only see his head as he paddles along.
‘I hated this place when I first got here,’ Rosie says to me. ‘I don’t know why but I didn’t want to like it. I think I was jealous of my mum’s enthusiasm for it. Like, I wanted her to focus all her attention on me and not be so consumed with happy memories of a place that existed in her life before I did.’
We sit on the sand dunes and look out at the sea.
‘That’s totally understandable,’ I say to her. ‘I can’t say I was a big fan either when I first got here because for me it represented a change that I didn’t want to face up to. I didn’t want to come here and stay with my aunt. I wanted to be at home with my mum and dad and for things to be just like they used to be, but that was never going to happen. It is going to be very difficult for you, Rosie but all I can say is that if you ever need me, you only have to call no matter what time of day or night. I know I’m not your mother and no one will ever mean the same to you but I will always be your friend. And you have Dan as well. You really do seem close to him. You seemed happy to see him last night?’
She smiles when I mention Dan.
‘Maybe Dan will go back to being the old Dan that I loved so much and not the Dan who has been totally unrecognizable lately,’ she says. ‘We used to fight like cat and dog for Mum’s attention but as I got a little bit older I realised how much Mum loved him and needed him and I accepted that he is really a very cool person after all.’
‘That’s very mature of you,’ I say to Rosie. ‘It can’t have been easy for you when you were used to having your mum all to yourself for so long.’
‘I hate being an only child,’ she says, looking at the sand now as she makes circles with her fingers. ‘Like you said, if I had a sister or brother maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone?’
She looks up at me with huge tear-filled eyes and I put my arm around her and hold her close.
‘I always wanted a big sister too,’ I say to her. ‘I watched my cousins grow up together and saw how they stuck together when times were tough like they were knitted from the same pattern. And then when I had my own daughter I realised the bond you have with blood relations really is like that. You are knitted together. It’s totally unconditional. It’s the best feeling in the world.’
I can feel myself spiralling backwards to that dark hole again when I think about the bond I had with Lily and how I will never get that back again, with anyone, and I don’t want to let it happen right now. I need to stay positive. I need to help Rosie. I can’t slip. I just can’t.
‘Do you ever think of your father?’ I ask her, feeling that I can bring this up now that we know that Skipper wasn’t Juliette’s one-night stand after all.
Rosie looks up at me with wide eyes like I have asked her the million-dollar question she always wanted to answer.
‘All the time,’ she says. ‘I don’t bring it up to Mum or Dan but I always thought that someday we would find my real dad and I’d have a ready-made family who would fill in all these gaps I feel inside. Someone who wasn’t just an aunt or a step-dad or a friend – someone who is connected to me for real, you know?’
I think of my own father and how despite his struggle in the earlier years after Mum died, and despite the miles between us I don’t know how I would have coped this far without him.
‘Your dad is out there somewhere,’ I say to her. ‘And I am going to help you find him, Rosie.’
‘How? Where on earth would you start?’
‘I have no idea, but I will do everything I can to help you find him and when he does find out about you, I really hope that he is going to love you so much,’ I tell her. ‘You are the most loveable young girl and you have given me so much in just a few days. Imagine what you could give him for the rest of his lifetime. You’re an absolute joy and you deserve all the love in the world. You really do.’
‘I write to him sometimes,’ she says, letting the sand fall now between her fingers. ‘Nothing important, just stuff I’m doing in case he ever does want to get to know me better. Everyday things like what I had for dinner and what I did at school and what songs I like. Just stuff.’
I gulp as I feel my heart tear in two.
‘Do you think you will ever have any more children?’ Rosie asks me and I take a deep breath. My womb aches at the thought.
‘I don’t think I can ever suffer any more losses, Rosie,’ I say to her and it is true. ‘I had four miscarriages before Lily came along. Four babies that I had pictured in my head and dreamed of filling our home with. Lily was my miracle baby but my heart cannot be broken again and neither can Matt’s. I wanted so much to give him a baby but my heart is in pieces.’
‘Four, wow,’ she says to me. ‘How can life be so cruel? That’s just so unfair, Shelley. That makes me very sad.’
‘Me too, and yes, it is unfair,’ I reply. ‘But I am working so hard at focusing on what I have rather than what I don’t have and I think if you look for it, there is a lot of goodness and kindness in the world. I am trying to mend my broken heart by deliberately looking for love in the world and I’ve witnessed so much kindness and goodness with you and your mum which has made me realize that I need to focus my energies on just that. What I have in my life, not what I don’t have. I have love and I have kindness that I can give out and that is what I will continue to do from now on.’
Rosie picks up her phone and looks at it, scrolling through photos as she talks to me.
‘I saw a picture of Lily when I was in your house getting Merlin,’ she says to me. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but your home looks so much prettier now that she’s there with her little smiling face and all your happy memories on the walls. I love the elephant in the hallway too. It reminds me of Africa. Did you get that in Africa?’
I feel my palms go sweaty even though it is quite cold here on the beach. I can’t find my voice at the thought of Lily’s little smiling face. Rosie keeps scrolling through her phone and then she stops at a photo of … oh my God has she taken a photo of my Lily on her phone? No, Rosie -
‘Lily has exactly the same hair as I did when I was her age,’ continues Rosie. ‘Same colour and everything. I know this is stupid but I thought at first glance that it was me. Do you think we look alike?’
She puts her phone screen towards me and my heart is racing now so fast and I feel dizzy and sick inside.
Betty’s scribbles on that piece of paper come back to me. Just three words that had sent me into a spin but I had dismissed it as it just can’t physically be the case. Rosie? Lily? Matt? She had written their three names together and scored through them with her pen but it was still eligible enough for me to read.
‘Why is Lily on your phone?’ I ask Rosie. I want to get mad at her for taking pictures of my daughter when she was in my home. Anger fizzles through my veins down to my fingertips at the thought of such intrusion. ‘Rosie, you shouldn’t have taken pictures of Lily when you—’
‘No,’ she laughs. ‘I didn’t take pictures of Lily, Shelley. That’s what I’m saying. That’s not Lily. That’s me in the picture when I was three years old. It looks exactly like Lily, but it’s not her. It’s me.’
Juliette
‘Rosie? Rosie is that you?’
Dan calls out when we hear the front door shut and I wait for Rosie to burst into the room with tales of Merlin and Shelley and all the wonderful things she may have got up to for the past hour or so – but she doesn’t come in and she doesn’t answer, and I am too weak and sore to even call for her.
‘The doctor will be here again soon, love,’ says Dan, patting my forehead with a damp cloth. ‘She’ll know for sure if you are able to travel and soon we’ll have you home in your own bed and that should make you feel a little better, shouldn’t it? I’ll go and see how Rosie is.’
I love the thought of my own bed, or my own room where Dan and I shared so many memories, yet part of me doesn’t want to move from this place as I feel so at peace listening to the water on the pier outside and the gulls overhead as I lie here becoming weaker and weaker and weaker. I’d happily just stay here in this room with its lemon walls and sash windows with the gentle breeze coming through the window moving the floral curtains so that they look like they are dancing. It’s like a burst of sunshine, this little room and I feel quite dreamy lying here which is probably something to do with the medication the doctor pumped me with earlier this morning.
‘She says she’s fine,’ says Dan when he comes back in to the room, ‘but she told me that through her bedroom door so I don’t know if she is fine or if she’s climbing out the window to meet someone she shouldn’t be, or drinking cider, or rolling a joint. Shall I tell her you want her to come in here?’
I lightly shake my head. My eyes are like half-moons and Dan seems to have grown a stubble since he left the room and came back in here again. I know that isn’t possible but time is really slowing down and I think I could actually notice the grass growing right now if I watched it closely. That’s the thing about being terminally ill. Your observations are so much sharper, like you don’t want to miss a thing so nothing goes unnoticed. Things I used to fly past without a care in the world now mean the world to me. I will stop to watch a tiny spider crawl up the wall in this cottage and marvel at his tiny legs and how he can defy gravity when we humans can’t. I will notice the brightness of a yellow dandelion and smile at the childhood memories that such a humble weed brings back, of days running through fields with my friends when all we ever seemed to do was be outdoors and life was just one big wonderland. I will stop to listen to a toddler chit-chatting to his mum or dad and be in awe at how in just two years a little person can pick up languages and understand conversations, yet still look at the world through such innocent eyes, untarnished, clean and pure.
Everything is magnified, everything is wonderful, everything feels almost new. I will watch my sister’s face as she rubs tea tree oil into my feet at the end of the bed, her mind racing with a million things. I think of how she has left her husband and three boys at home to come here to be with me and how she is putting her fears to one side just to try and make me feel a little bit better. She tells me I am the strongest person I know even though I sometimes feel the opposite. That is love.
I am bald, bloated and my body is not much more than a shell, yet Dan looks at me like I am a princess and even though I pushed him away and told him never to come back as he hit the bottle to numb his pain, he has come back to me and he has sobered up enough to prop me up in these final stages. He is my soulmate. He was there with me when I was first diagnosed, when I screamed at the horror of it all and when I woke in the night in clammy sweats and terrors and he held me and rocked me as I wailed and cried, back to sleep. That is love.
Cancer has brought me to the depths of my being and made me realize exactly what is important in this polluted, toxic world we live in. All I believe in now, is love. When I was diagnosed, all the nonsense we worried about before felt like materialistic bullshit and the rushing from pillar to post like a busy fool just stopped. Priorities fell into place. What mattered most really did begin to matter most and it took cancer to make us all realize that there is really nothing in this world that should take first place in your life over the people you care most about. Yes, we need to work to pay bills and sometimes life throws us stresses and strains like the car breaking down or being late for an appointment or missing out on something you really wanted to do or see but seriously? Cut the bullshit, I have learned. Life is too short for shit. Live it, feel it, love it and do it now. Don’t wait for your day in the sun. Make today that day. Make the most of every change that comes your way and mean it. Most of us go around on autopilot not really living, just merely existing. We count the hours on the clock to see one day through and then get up to do exactly the same thing again the next day without even questioning it. I want to leave this world a better place than when I found it, even if it is just for one person. I don’t want to die in vain. I have no idea what I can do to achieve that, but I think that should be everyone’s aim in life, to leave it just a little bit better because you were there.
‘Juliette? Juliette, the doctor is here, honey.’
My sister’s voice disrupts my train of thought and I realize that I have been dozing. I open my eyes slowly.
I don’t think I am going to make it home.