Shelley
I can’t stop my hands from shaking so I put my phone on the kitchen table with the photo of Rosie as a young toddler staring back at me. I asked her to send it to me, trying my best not to relay my shock and my sense of wonder but I know the poor child was traumatised at my reaction.
‘You should go home,’ I told her. ‘You need to go back to the cottage to your mum, I mean, and I’m going to go home too. I don’t feel like walking right now, sorry Rosie. I don’t feel very well right now.’
The look on her face was like I had punched her in the heart. Like I was a boyfriend telling her it was over without giving her the full story. Like I was dumping her and telling her to just go away so I didn’t have to look at her.
I didn’t mean to shove her away but I needed to be alone to absorb this, so I wrote her a text message to try and explain without letting her know of my real suspicion.
‘Rosie, I am so sorry, I was just a bit freaked at the resemblance to Lily, I write. It’s happened before many times, even in people that bear no resemblance at all. I didn’t mean to chase you away and I am sorry. I’ll call to see you all later this evening. Please don’t be scared. I’m always here for you xx’
I press send and bring the photo of a young Rosie back onto my screen and I take the photo of Lily from the table in the hallway, then I sit them side by side. The hair is identical, there is no denying that, soft dark brown corkscrew curls. The eyes are so similar, their almond shape, their shade of green. The smile is so alike, the baby teeth, the cheeks, the dimples, but the eyes … oh my God, the eyes. I can’t breathe.
I lift my phone and call my mother-in-law, not knowing what it is exactly that I want to say but I need to show her this to see if I am finally losing my mind.
‘Eliza? Eliza can you please come here?’ I stammer. ‘I need to show you something quickly.’
‘Shelley, are you okay?’ my mother in law asks in a panic. ‘What on earth has happened, darling? Is it Matt? Are you okay?’
I never ring Eliza these days. I never ring anyone come to think of it but I need her to come and tell me that this is just another figment of my grieving imagination.
I feel sick. I can’t leave the house, no way. I need to stay here until someone tells me I am imagining things. I want to send the photo to Matt and for him to tell me no way, there is no big resemblance and not to be so silly but I can’t let him see that I’m behaving like this again when he thinks I’m getting better. He’ll be so disappointed and will definitely think I’m going insane if I’m off the mark on this.
‘I’m out for lunch with Betty right now,’ Eliza tells me. ‘We’re just in the village though so I can be with you in a few minutes. Sit tight, Shelley. I’ll be right there.’
She hangs up and I realize that Betty was meant to be sick today, wasn’t she? Why couldn’t she come to work when she could clearly go out for lunch with Eliza? What the hell is going on?
My phone rings and the sing song ringtone makes me want to throw it outside over the balcony of our home, as far away from me as it can be. Matt’s name is on the screen now but I can’t talk to him when I am in this state. He will be gutted to see me acting like this again. They’ll call the doctor for me again. I shouldn’t have called Eliza. She will call the doctor and they will bring me in to hospital again and fill me full of medication so that I am even more numb than I been for three years.
He rings again. I still don’t answer.
‘Shelley? Shelley it’s me, love?’
Eliza’s high heels click across my tiled hallway as she lets herself in and when she comes into the kitchen, I know by her face that she already knows.
‘You know, don’t you?’ I say to her. ‘That’s why you were out for lunch with Betty. She isn’t sick at all. She couldn’t face me again because she thought she might spill the beans. She practically wrote it down for me to find when she was working in my shop!’
‘Shelley, Shelley, hush darling,’ says Eliza. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about. You need to sit down. Can I get you anything? Tea? A brandy?’
‘I do not want a fucking brandy!’ I scream at her. ‘Look at this! Look!’
I push the phone under her nose and she takes a step back.
‘Tell me I’m insane, tell me I need to stop this,’ I say, barely able to string my words together. ‘Who is that?’ I ask her. ‘Do you know who that child is?’
‘Shelley, you’re frightening me,’ she says to me. ‘Why are you asking me this? It’s my granddaughter for goodness sake. I’d know those eyes anywhere.’
Her granddaughter! Oh my God. My blood runs cold.
I fall onto the nearest chair and I stare at the floor. I breathe in and out, in and out, in and out. I find my wedding ring. Something familiar. I touch it. I twist it. Can this be true? Is Eliza really seeing what I am seeing at last?
Eliza pulls a chair across beside me and puts her hand on my lap. She hands me back my phone.
‘This isn’t our Lily, is it?’ she says, her face etched with worry.
I shake my head in response. ‘No, no it isn’t,’ I mumble.
‘It’s that English girl, isn’t it?’ she whispers to me. ‘The one you’ve been spending so much time with. The one whose mother is dying. What’s her name again?’
‘Rosie,’ I say to her. ‘Her name is Rosie, the same as my mother’s name. How could you forget that? I told you that.’
‘Rosie, of course,’ says Eliza.
‘It’s Rosie in the picture,’ I say to her. ‘Not our Lily, and I think that Matt might be her biological father.’
We sit in silence for a few seconds. Eliza tries to speak, then stops. Then she tries again.
‘Do you know this for sure?’
Again I shrug and shake my head. ‘I don’t know for sure at all,’ I reply. ‘I just needed to see if you could see the resemblance too but it doesn’t add up. How can he be? It just doesn’t add up. She said the man’s name was Skipper.’
Eliza tilts her head and takes a deep breath.
‘And have you spoken to Matt about this yet?’ Eliza asks. ‘Have you shown him this photo? You need to confirm this with him, before we all jump to conclusions that may not be true.’
I sniffle and wipe my tears and nose on the back of my sleeve. I am a mess. I must look an awful mess.
‘I know I have to do that but I can’t tell him on the phone when he’s so far away,’ I say to her. ‘Juliette said his name was Skipper. He was a boatman. Matt knows nothing about boats. He didn’t even live here that summer, so how could he be Rosie’s biological father?’
‘He—’
‘He was in Dublin back then with his ex, Alicia, I know every part of his life story, Eliza. They were practically engaged, he told me, but then things started to go badly and they were arguing a lot and she called it all off and put him out and he never saw her again. He came back home to Killara and then the following summer, that’s when he met me, isn’t that right? Isn’t that what happened?’
Eliza is fidgeting. Eliza never fidgets.
‘I first got to know Betty through Alicia,’ says Eliza.
‘Betty?’ I say to my mother-in-law. ‘What the hell has Betty got to do with this or Alicia? I don’t give a shit about Alicia or Betty. I’m talking about my husband …’
Eliza puts her hand on my knee and hushes me. It works.
‘Betty came here from Limerick to visit us once with Alicia and she loved it so much she came back and stayed,’ says Eliza. ‘There must be something in the water that brings people here to heal and live a happier life and just stay. It happened with Betty. Alicia, Matt’s ex, is Betty’s niece.’
I look up at Eliza, puzzled.
‘What? Her niece? But why didn’t anyone mention that to me before?’
Eliza shrugs.
‘Well, I didn’t really ever find the opportunity to tell you that and to be honest it has never really seemed very important,’ she says. ‘Betty is just Betty to me now and has been for many years. She’s a really good friend and when you needed someone to help out at the shop after Lily, I knew she would be the right person for the job. It was never important that she was related to Alicia, not until now of course.’
‘Until now? Why? Because of this?’ I ask, afraid of the answer coming my way.
‘Because back in the day, Alicia confided in Betty as to why she asked Matt to leave and why their relationship ended,’ Eliza explains to me. ‘And there are two sides to every story as we all know. Matt’s, as it turns out, was a bit leaner than Alicia’s version of events, let’s say.’
My stomach is sick. I don’t know if I want to hear any more but I have to.
‘I didn’t know this until today and Betty only told me to get it off her chest,’ she continues. ‘But Alicia ended things with Matt because he came home here to Killara for a weekend after a row they’d had. He’d got drunk and confessed to her afterwards that he’d had a very regretful one-night stand with an English girl who was passing through. Her name, Alicia thought, was Julie. But now it looks like it was your friend Juliette.’
My blood runs cold. So it is true then. It has to be true. I drop my phone onto my lap. I feel like I am looking at my life through a blurry lens. It looks like Matt has a daughter. He has a daughter that isn’t Lily and who isn’t mine.
‘And Skipper?’ I ask, my throat drying up with every breath.
‘The name Skipper must have been a safe decoy for him, I guess,’ says Eliza. ‘I’m thinking that he deliberately gave her the wrong name in case anyone would hear of it and in case Alicia would find out. They were a very well-known couple around here at the time so I’m not surprised he was trying to be incognito.’
My eyes dart around the kitchen, then to Eliza, then to the floor and then to the photo on my phone on my lap. I lift it and look at it closely again.
‘Oh my God,’ I whisper, my face crumpling as it all clicks into place.
‘Darling, I am sure there are so many things going through your head right now,’ Eliza says to me, ‘but you have to remember that this happened before Matt even knew you so it doesn’t bear on how he feels about you at all. This will be as big a shock to him as it is to you. Please don’t act too irrationally over it. You have been doing so well and you can’t let this take over your own wellbeing. It might not be a bad thing when it all sinks in. You’re in shock. I’m in shock too.’
I want to punch someone. I want to scream and shout and kick and pull my hair out and make this all go away. I want my Lily back. I want to snuggle her in and hold her close and smell her innocent baby smell and wave at Matt from our front door as he arrives home from his trip and spend the evening in sheer bliss watching her toddle around our home as he catches my eye every time she does something cute or new. We’ll smile at each other and for that split-second it’ll be like the world stops because she is ours and we made her and no one will ever marvel at the things she does like we do. She is a part of me and Matt. I want her back. I need her back. I want my mum. Oh God, I want my mum.
Eliza goes to the kitchen and gets me a brandy and I down in it in one. The irony; the sheer cruelty of it all. Four times our babies died, then we had Lily and we only had her for three years until she was taken too. And now I find out that Matt already has what I have been trying to give him for all our married life and he doesn’t even know she exists. And the most painful thing of all, yet maybe the most beautiful thing of all, is that I love her already. Despite my shock, I know that I love his little girl already.
Over an hour later when we have gone over it all until we have nothing more to analyse and share, Eliza agrees to leave me after much convincing that I am slowly letting the bombshell that Rosie is my husband’s daughter sink in and a flurry of emotions go through my mind as I walk her to the door.
‘I’m sorry if I startled you earlier when I called,’ I say to her when she reaches her car. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I had to tell someone and I was sure you would tell me I was imagining things, just like I was before when I thought I saw glimmers of Lily in other young girls.’
Eliza walks towards me.
‘Shelley, I promised Matt that I would look out for you every step of the way while he is gone and even if I hadn’t made that pact with him, you know that you are my family and I would come to your aid at any time of day or night, you know I would.’
I do know this. Eliza has been a wonderful friend to me as well as being my mother-in-law and I know that a lot of people don’t find that bond with the so called other woman in their husband’s life.
‘So Betty knew the moment she saw Rosie that she had to be related to Lily?’ I say to her. ‘That’s mad. I didn’t even see that myself. Well, I thought I did for a fleeting moment but—’
‘Yes, Betty did the sums,’ says Eliza. ‘She did question the poor girl at first on why she was here, what age she was, who she was with, etc and then it clicked into place. She didn’t mean any harm, love. This could eventually be something very positive for you and Matt, although it might not seem as such now. You must see some hope in all of this?’
‘I don’t know, maybe I will do one day,’ I say to Eliza. ‘Maybe when I get over this shock and when Matt does too, this might be the best thing that ever happened to us. And Rosie. Oh my God I haven’t even thought about how she is going to feel about all this. Or Juliette. I haven’t even gone to see Juliette yet today. I need to go to see her.’
I can’t imagine how I am going to find the words to tell Juliette what I now know. Will she be happy? Relieved? Angry that Matt told her a lie all those years ago? And Rosie? Well, it means that she will be forever a part of our lives now which of course will always be a blessing, but how will she feel about my husband being her real father?
‘Do you think I should tell her, Eliza? Juliette is dying and I don’t want to shock or stress her. Oh, I wish I knew what to do.’
Eliza thinks for a moment.
‘You know better than I do on that one,’ says Eliza. ‘But you did say one of her hopes was to find her daughter’s father when she was here?’
I nod.
‘She’s afraid to leave Rosie all alone,’ I tell Eliza. ‘We made a pact that I would look out for her and that she would look out for Lily in heaven in return. Jesus, Eliza, Rosie is Lily’s sister? She is your granddaughter too. How does that even make you feel? There is just so much to take in with it all.’
Eliza puts her hands to her face.
‘You know I haven’t even thought of that,’ says Eliza. ‘I was so caught up in how you were feeling about it all but wow, I have another granddaughter. Oh Shelley, I miss Lily so much! I miss her every single day of life, I really do!’
And for the first time in a very long time, the woman who has been my absolute rock, who has propped me up when I was falling and who mopped up my tears when I screamed and cried for mercy, is crying now on my shoulder for the loss we have both suffered and for this very strange second chance to live again.
I am going to talk to Juliette. I need to go right now and find out for sure if all our suspicions are true. My heart is thumping and my head is sore but I can’t stop to overthink this. I am shaking with nerves and I am terrified and maybe a bit in shock still, but it’s the least I can do. I must go and tell her right now before it’s too late.