Juliette
‘Well, that was just to die for,’ I say as I scrape the last mouthful of buttered seabass and pesto mash off my plate. We are sitting outside the Beach House Café just as planned and to our delight and very much to our surprise, the sun has stayed out to greet us and it reflects off the bay as we talk and chat at ease.
‘I’ve never tasted crab claws before,’ says Rosie. ‘I can’t wait to tell everyone at home that I actually ate the claws of a crab! They were delicious. I think I may have a new taste for seafood, Mum.’
I smile at my daughter. We are making memories already and she doesn’t even realize it.
‘This is the girl who I once had to bribe when she was three to eat fish fingers,’ I remind her and Rosie rolls her eyes. ‘And now she has developed taste buds for seafood. Who knew!’
‘Mum, I don’t think Shelley really wants to hear my whole life history!’ says Rosie. ‘How boring to have to listen to what a teenager used to like and dislike when they were three, seriously!’
Oh, just when I thought I was getting away with daring to comment about her, the teenage Rosie with attitude is back in the room.
Shelley looks like her mind is in another world.
‘Are you okay, love?’ I ask her. ‘Did you enjoy your food? This must be one of your favourite places here, just to sit and feel the sun on your face, the cool crisp wine on your tongue and to look out onto the sea as the world goes by.’
But I may as well be talking Japanese. Shelley is elsewhere. Totally distracted.
‘My Lily always …’ she says.
Then she stops. She takes a deep breath.
‘Go on?’
‘My Lily … my Lily always loved fish fingers,’ says Shelley and I do a double take. ‘She would have eaten them for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I’d let her. Ketchup too, of course, lots of ketch—’
At that her voice breaks, as if it took all her energy just to tell that one simple anecdote.
‘Lily?’ I ask gently. ‘Is that … is that your daughter, Shelley?’
I dread to think what I am about to hear, but suddenly this poor woman’s nervous energy now is beginning to make sense.
‘That’s what you called me last night on the sand dunes, isn’t it?’ says Rosie in a whisper. ‘You thought I was Lily?’
Shelley nods in reply, already in a state of despair.
‘I’m sorry about that Rosie, but you’re not the first girl I’ve mistaken for Lily,’ she says. ‘I just can’t help but see her everywhere I go and it’s killing me inside.’
Her eyes fill up and they dart around, looking anywhere but at her present company. Oh God.
No one can speak. I honestly don’t know what to say. I put my hand out to reach hers but she pulls away and puts it up to cover her mouth.
‘I’d forgotten how much she loved some foods until you said it,’ she whispers, the tears now streaming down her face. ‘It’s funny the little things you forget until something triggers off a memory and then I have to realize all over again that she’s gone.’
‘Shelley, I am so, so sorry!’ I say to her. ‘You poor darling. All this time I’ve been talking about my own tales of woe and you’ve been going through your own hell. I am so sorry.’
‘I knew I shouldn’t be here,’ she says, standing up and gathering her belongings in a hurry. ‘I really should get home and stay on my own where I don’t cause a fuss. Thank you both, thank you for lunch. I knew this was a bad idea. I’m not ready. I knew it.’
‘You don’t have to go, Shelley,’ says Rosie. ‘We haven’t finished yet. If I’m being brave then maybe you can too?’
Her eyes continue to skirt around us and I follow them to notice the stares of other diners watching us from all corners of the patio and then to my horror they start to whisper at the commotion, looking directly at poor Shelley.
I overhear one saying that’s the lady whose daughter died so tragically when—
‘What the hell are you all staring at?’ Shelley yells at them, in a very uncharacteristic outburst. ‘Do you know how long you’ve been staring at me now for? Three years! Three long lonely years of being stared at! Yes, it’s me, the Jackson lady who left her daughter for seconds and it went terribly wrong! Yes, it’s me! Stare and stare and stare like you always do and whisper your own conclusions! Stare all you want but it won’t help me or my pain! Nothing will so you can all feck off because nothing is going to make this easier or harder on me. Nothing!’
She turns away from us all and marches off, Merlin catching up alongside her with his stray lead scraping along the ground.
‘Come on, Merlin,’ I hear her mutter. ‘Let’s go home now.’
‘Mum, go after her please,’ says Rosie. ‘You always know what to say. Please help her.’
I push back my shoulders. My daughter thinks I always know what to say and that fills me with the courage and strength to help Shelley. If Rosie thinks I can, then I can and I will.
‘Shelley, you don’t have to leave!’ I call out after her. ‘You were doing nothing wrong by being here! Please just stop! Listen to me!’
To my surprise she stops, but I realize it’s not because I asked her to. It is because she can’t physically walk any further and she collapses into my arms when I catch up with her, sobbing uncontrollably as she clings to me.
‘I only went to answer the phone,’ she says through her streaming tears. ‘I told her to be careful! I told her not to go near the water even though it was just a shallow pond but she fell and hit her head and within minutes she was gone. She drowned, Juliette! She drowned in a shallow pond at her own home and everyone blames me. They say I shouldn’t have left her and I know it was my fault. They’re right. It was my fault.’
I gulp and a lump forms in my throat, so big that I am not sure I can speak to her. I can’t imagine what she has been going through. She has lost her own child and she blames herself … I am about to lose mine and though we are on opposite sides of that loss right now, it chokes me up to believe that this has really happened to her. How cruel! How bloody cruel!
‘Shelley, Shelley,’ I say into her hair when I manage to find the strength to speak. ‘Look at me, please.’
She looks into my eyes and I shake my head.
‘You made a mistake,’ I tell her. ‘Surely you’ve been told that before? A mistake! It’s something we all do. We aren’t perfect, none of us are. You can’t go on like this. You have to learn to live again, do you hear me?’
‘I’m losing him now too,’ Shelley whispers to me, her voice breathy and desperate. ‘Matt hasn’t called me all morning and he normally does as soon as he wakes up. He’s had enough of me. Everyone has. I’m a wreck, Juliette. I don’t deserve to be here. It’s all my fault.’
I look over her head and up the street to where the shopfront of Lily Loves sits proudly and I shake my head in defiance.
‘You are not a wreck! Look, Shelley,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t want to talk to you about this here, out on the street with those nosey parkers almost dropping their teeth into their chowders as they watch, because their own boring lives aren’t enough to occupy their gossip hungry souls. I swear, their mouths are so far wide open you could park buses in there, and it’s not an attractive sight at all.’
She smiles at that, but just a little.
‘That’s better, now come on. Lift that chin up,’ I tell her.
She doesn’t, so I do it for her.
‘Up!’ I say.
‘I can’t go back over there,’ she whispers, wiping her eyes. ‘They all think I’m nuts. Matt thinks I’m nuts. I’m even more nuts than my mother-in-law and that’s saying something.’
I link her arm and turn her around towards the restaurant.
‘Oh yes, you bloody well can go back over there,’ I tell her. ‘We haven’t had dessert yet and I don’t do lunch in half measures, didn’t I tell you so? I don’t have too many lunches left do I? Now walk and talk and don’t look their way if you don’t want to. You did nothing wrong. We are all perfectly entitled to have a public meltdown as and when we feel it, especially when we’re going through what we both are. Let them stare. Life is too short for that shit, believe me. Chin up, Shelley. Up!’
We walk together back towards the restaurant’s vast patio which I notice Merlin has made his way to already, back into the comfort of Rosie’s grasp, who smiles at me with great pride when Shelley and I return to the table. She pets Merlin protectively and hushes him like a baby and I fill up in wonder at how the human spirit can stand together when in need. I could be wallowing in my own self-pity right now, I suppose, and I would have every God given right to, but I refuse to do so when I see someone else going through so much unnecessary pain.
My days here may be numbered, but Shelley’s aren’t and I want to make very sure that before I leave this place, she realises that her life is still worth living and that every single day we have here is a gift – we should always try to make a difference, however small. I may be the one who is dying, but she needs a reminder how to live and I’m going to make sure she does just that.
‘Excuse me,’ I say to the waiter on his way past our table, just loud enough for the earwigs beside us to hear. ‘We’ll have a bottle of your very finest, coldest champagne with three glasses and your dessert menu when you have a second, please.’
‘Of course, madam,’ he says in reply. ‘A day of celebration for you three beautiful ladies?’
He is a charmer and a handsome one at that so I give him my most flirtatious smile, much to the amusement of Shelley and the embarrassment of my daughter.
‘Yes indeed,’ I reply to him with a bat of my eyelids. ‘We are celebrating something very special.’
He waits for more, as does my company – not to mention the gossips at the next table.
‘We are celebrating this beautiful sunny day in this most magnificent place. We are celebrating being alive and all that life has to offer,’ I announce. ‘Nothing more, nothing less and I think that’s as good a reason to celebrate as any, don’t you?’
He tilts his head and nods. In fact, he actually bows. Ha!
‘I like your style,’ says the waiter and a few moments later, when he returns with our drinks, we are raising our glasses together.
‘To today and the joy of being alive to enjoy it,’ I say to my daughter and my new friend, Shelley. ‘Every day is a disco. Every day is an adventure girls, and don’t you ever forget it.’
We clink our glasses and wipe away tears as we toast.
‘You’re my hero, Mum,’ says Rosie, sipping her very first taste of real bubbly here in front of me. ‘When I grow up I want to be just like you.’
I close my eyes and try to picture my baby girl all grown up, something that I will never get to experience and my throat tightens again. When I open my eyes, Shelley gives me the biggest smile she can manage under the circumstances, and then she squeezes my leg under the table like she knows exactly what I’m thinking.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ she says and my heart fills up with a rush of love as I savour this precious moment. Rosie takes a photo as I raise my glass.
To her, I am a hero. Now, that is one memory I will want to take with me forever.
Shelley
‘I’m so sorry, love. You weren’t banking on this drama queen taking over your holiday, were you?’ I say to Rosie later when we are back at their cottage after lunch. We had dessert just as Juliette promised and it was truly magnificent. I had the finest strawberry cheesecake with my champagne, and even though the stares of the locals dropped off (they got bored when I stopped reacting, just as Juliette predicted) it took me a while to relax again, but I managed to do just that and it was a wonderful afternoon in the end.
For the first time in a long time, I realise, I actually tasted my food today. I savoured the flavours of a seafood linguine, marvelled at the different sensations that a good meal in good company can bring. Maybe it’s the bubbles, maybe it’s that I needed to get that outburst out of my system, but I feel like I have crossed a bridge of some sort. A small bridge, but certainly a step in the right direction. Matt will be thrilled to bits that I managed to find companionship through an act of kindness on my part, and that I was brave enough to go with it and that despite that one hiccup, it has done wonders for me from the inside out.
After lunch, Juliette insisted I come with them to their cottage for a coffee rather than go back to my house alone and I didn’t dare argue. The lightness I feel right now is a very welcome feeling indeed. Juliette is a force alright, but in the best possible way – I feel like someone is really trying to kick my ass in the right direction. Tough love from a stranger. Who’d have guessed?
‘I like it that you’re here with us,’ says Rosie. ‘And not just because of your dog, if that’s what you’re thinking. I think you’re really cool.’
I raise an eyebrow.
‘I don’t believe you for a second. It’s all about the dog,’ I say to her as her face protests. ‘And as for me being cool, ha! Is my face a mess? I should probably go and fix it up when the bathroom is free, shouldn’t I?’
Juliette had raced straight for the bathroom when we reached the cottage door, claiming she was dying to go and asking me to pardon her pun, so I can just imagine how my face must look after my crazy meltdown earlier. I don’t really wear much makeup these days, for no other reason than that I’ve totally lost interest in my appearance, but what I did have on must have worn off by now.
‘Can I please do your make up for you?’ Rosie asks me, her eyes like saucers at the thought. She already has her kit by my side before I have time to answer and I am in awe at the collection she has in front of her. ‘I love doing makeup for Mum sometimes and even though she goes on that I use too much, I think she secretly loves letting me practise.’
‘How many brushes exactly do you have?’ I ask her. ‘I think I might own three at the most but your collection is insane!’
‘Twenty-seven,’ she says, proudly. ‘I study YouTubers all the time for tips and products and for every birthday or occasion my family know exactly what to get me. Makeup and brushes. Or Shawn Mendes stuff but I think I’m up to date with him right now.’
She tilts my head back and puts some cool cleanser on my face with a cotton pad and oh boy, but it feels good – across my forehead, around my temples, onto my cheeks and nose and chin as my eyes drop with relief. I am exhausted, I realise. Mentally exhausted with the all-consuming obsession with all things Lily and what might have been. I am physically exhausted too, rooted in the past in a state of misery and it is draining the very life and soul out of me.
But as usual, no matter how much I try to fight it, my thoughts go back to her.
This could have been my own daughter someday, treating me to a makeover. Telling me about all her products and the things she has learned online. A tear falls from my eye but Rosie doesn’t mention it, if she notices. She just moves on to some moisturiser and something she calls primer and I find myself relaxing more and more under her touch.
‘You could do this for a living,’ I tell her from my dream-like state. ‘You definitely have a magic touch.’
‘Nah,’ she says. ‘There are far too many teenage makeup artist wannabes around for my liking. You only have to look on Instagram for them. I’ll wait until I’m properly qualified, if you don’t mind. I just enjoy it for now. I don’t even know if I want to do this for a living. I think I might want to be a vet or a zoo keeper or maybe a midwife. I might like to deliver babies, yes. I just can’t decide if it’s humans or animal babies I prefer. It’s all too much to think about sometimes.’
I do admire Rosie’s ambition, even if she is a little confused. At fifteen I didn’t know what I wanted for dinner, never mind what I wanted to do when I was older. At least she’s considering her options.
‘Tough job but a very rewarding one,’ I tell her.
‘Which? A zoo keeper or a midwife?’ she asks me and then she bursts out laughing. ‘I’m sorry but I’m just picturing me delivering a baby hippo for some reason. Sorry, I’m a bit of a weirdo. Just ignore me.’
I open my eyes and the joy in her face at her own joke does that thing again to my weary heart. A glow. I close my eyes again so she can continue.
‘Well, exactly. I’d imagine both are rewarding and tough at the same time,’ I tell her. ‘It’s so good to have some idea of where you want to go, and even if life takes you in the completely opposite direction, I do think it’s all meant to be. Could you deliver a baby hippo do you think?’
‘O-M-G! I would so panic and I’d probably call my mum!’ says Rosie and then she stops what she is doing, dead.
I open my eyes.
‘Keep going,’ I whisper.
‘I won’t be able to call my mum though, will I?’
‘Rosie, come on. Keep focused. Job in hand. I can’t wait to see what you can do with an old hag like me.’
I hear her take a deep breath. She is such a brave little girl.
‘I bet she’s laid down on the bed for a rest,’ she says. ‘I’d better just check that she has in case she’s been kidnapped or something.’
Rosie skirts down the hallway and back again within seconds satisfied that, yes indeed, her mum has taken a sneaky lie down.
‘She gets tired so easily,’ she says to me. ‘I think it’s probably her age as well as her sickness. She turned forty on Friday you know.’
At that I burst out laughing. She is winding me up and I know it.
‘What’s it like to be older?’ she asks with a smirk, moving on to her foundation application.
‘I beg your pardon?’
She giggles and so do I.
‘Not that you’re old or anything, like, but my mum is forty and that’s pretty old,’ she says. ‘You don’t look forty, though. I mean, neither does my mum but then it’s hard to judge without her own hair. She used to look totally different, before the ‘you know what’. But you definitely must be younger.’
‘I’m thirty-five,’ I tell her, with a smile. She really is making me laugh with how she is digging a hole for herself on this age conversation. ‘I’m a whopping twenty years older than you are, imagine? I can still remember when I was fifteen so very clearly and I can tell you, I didn’t have the makeup collection that you do. We didn’t know what fake eyelashes were and fake tan was a luxury and something we made a mess of. You are an expert in all of this, believe me!’
She takes another big breath again.
‘Do you think she’ll die soon?’ Rosie asks me in a whisper and I shut my eyes a little tighter, a little too tight for makeup application though she has stopped now, either in deep thought or planning her next move.
‘I think it’s good that none of us know when we are going to die exactly,’ is all I can think to say, with my eyes still closed. ‘Sometimes though, when you do get a warning through illness it means that you can perhaps do nice things for as long as you are fit to, before your time runs out. You know, make some lasting memories while you still can or carry out ambitions.’
I hope I’m saying the right thing.
‘You didn’t get a warning with Lily though, did you?’ she asks me, and this time I do open my eyes. She is looking in her makeup case, what for I do not know, and even though my fight or flight intuition is challenging me to the max right now, I am not going to run away from this question. I will not have another meltdown. I will answer the young girl. I will face up to my demons.
‘I didn’t get any warning, no,’ I tell her, matter of fact. ‘I shouldn’t have left her when I did, but I did. I never in a million years thought she would go near the pond but she did. It happened in seconds. Time waits for no one. When I got to her, it was too late. We never know when our time is up. That’s just the way it goes.’
I say it like it’s a script I have rehearsed in my head, a script from my bereavement counselling days, but these are words that I have never said aloud until now. Rosie looks back at me and I can see her face is so full of questions. Part of me wants her to keep going, to keep asking questions, to keep talking about Lily. She doesn’t though, so I do the talking anyway as she applies my eye make up with another one of her special brushes.
‘She was just three years old when she died,’ I tell her. ‘Yesterday would have been her sixth birthday and I would give anything in the whole world to have spent that day with her. I miss her every single second of my life. Do you remember when you were six, Rosie? I’m trying to imagine what she would have been like.’
‘I don’t remember much, sorry,’ says Rosie. ‘Oh wait, I do, yes.’
She laughs at the memory.
‘We went ice skating for my birthday but I couldn’t do it so I huffed and sat on the benches while my friends glided around like they were on Dancing On Ice or something and I was so jealous,’ she says, talking at the speed of light. ‘Plus I was mortified because David Clarke was there and he was the most popular boy in the class and I fell slap bang on my bum on the ice as he skated past me, and he was holding hands with Patti Smart. Not that I blame him. Who wants a girlfriend who can’t ice skate after all?’
I can’t help but snigger.
‘A girlfriend at six? Are you serious?’
‘Well, yes, of course I’m serious,’ she tells me. ‘Do you think I’d lie about such things? I don’t remember my seventh or my eighth birthdays so well, but my sixth birthday with David Clarke and when I fell on that ice, well … that will live with me forever. Damaged for life, I was. Mind you, he isn’t much to look at now so it was all a big blessing in disguise.’
Rosie expertly moves the brushes across my eyes and asks me to open and close them periodically which I do so obediently and I can’t honestly believe I am here, in this cottage, with a teenager chatting to me about her life on a Sunday evening, when I’d normally be cooped up alone in the house with only Merlin to stroke, Matt to argue with or Eliza to avoid. I feel, dare I say it, a tiny bit more alive for it.
‘My mother always threw the best birthday parties for me,’ I tell Rosie and she smiles as she listens. ‘My favourite one was the time we all went horse-riding and everyone wanted this one beautiful silver-grey mare called Sixpence but I got to ride her because I was the birthday girl. I think that was my best birthday ever. I had a blast.’
‘That sounds like a good one,’ says Rosie. ‘Do you still ride horses then?’
‘I used to,’ I tell her. ‘I haven’t done so since …’
‘Since Lily died?’ she says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to ask about.
‘Yes,’ I reply, but I can’t repeat what she said. Since Lily died. ‘Yes, you’re right, Rosie. Not since then.’
‘Would you come horse-riding with me tomorrow?’ Rosie asks me. ‘Look up, please.’
She applies mascara as I look up to the ceiling.
‘Who, me? Horse-riding? Tomorrow?’ I ask her. I get that same flutter inside that I got earlier when Juliette asked me to go to lunch.
‘Yes, you,’ she says. ‘Horse-riding tomorrow. I haven’t done it since I was about six or seven and I’d love to go riding on the beach if there’s such a thing round here.’
‘Well, yes, there’s a beach obviously,’ I tell her, finding it hard to think of tomorrow. ‘And there are pony trekking places obviously, but …’
She waits for my answer but I simply can’t give it. I can’t think that far ahead. I don’t do social activities these days, and I have to work my usual afternoon shift, don’t I? Yes, that’s it. I have to work. There is no way I can do this. Lunch almost tore me in two until Juliette gave me the strength to get through it and though I feel stronger for it, I don’t think that I could master horse-riding on the beach. Could I?
‘So, will you come?’ she asks me again, and I can feel my heart beat a little faster at the thought of committing to something, to making plans outside of my work and my big white empty shell of a house.
‘Do this.’ She makes a shape on her mouth for me to imitate so that she can apply some lipstick and I sit there like a mannequin, doing exactly what I am told.
She holds up a mirror to my face and when I see my reflection, I have to take a moment. My goodness, I swear I am unrecognizable, but only in the best possible way. Her touch was subtle, like she knew exactly what I needed. A natural look, some light gold around my brown eyes and a soft blush on my cheeks that hasn’t been there in, yes, you’ve guessed it, three years.
To my great delight and surprise, I don’t feel guilty though, like I usually do when I think of taking any tiny steps to move on in my life after Lily. I feel something different, something I just cannot put my finger on right now.
‘So do you like it or not?’ asks Rosie ‘Because my hand is getting sore holding up this mirror. You don’t have to say you do if you don’t. My friend Melissa is probably better. She has—’
‘I love it, Rosie,’ I whisper, and then I look up at her and I smile – not just a forced smile that I use for customers when I tell them an outfit is beautiful on them, or for Matt when he asks me if I enjoyed dinner, or for Eliza when she asks if I’m okay, or even for my dad when he tries to make jokes on the phone.
This is a real smile. I know it is because it is touching that feeling that I couldn’t put a name to a moment ago. For the first time in a long time I don’t feel stuck or stagnant or numb. I feel something more real. I feel present. I am in the here-and-now and it feels quite overwhelming, but in the best possible way.
‘Thank you, Rosie,’ I say to my teenage makeup artist. ‘Thank you so, so much. You made me look a little more alive and that really means a lot to me.’
Rosie shrugs and packs up her makeup bag like it’s no big deal, but to me, it really is.
‘I suppose I should go check on Mum,’ she says, and my heart jumps when I think of how long we have been chatting. I had totally forgotten about Juliette and her whereabouts. ‘I bet she’s fallen asleep like she always does after a glass of wine with her lunch. I’ll be right back. Don’t leave without saying goodbye though or Mum will be gutted.’
This little girl … this precious little girl who has made me feel pretty on the outside has no idea how she and her beautiful mum have made me feel on the inside today. I could have walked away from that restaurant in a drowning state of tears. I could have wallowed in my pity as I made my way back up to my house, all alone, waiting on Matt to call so I could tell him about how horrible it was having everyone staring at me, blaming me for what happened to our daughter when they had no idea how tired or stressed I was that day or how quickly it all happened. He would have told me, no, begged me, to stop and to try and move on which would have angered me more and I’d have hung up and fallen asleep on top of the bed, just as Juliette is doing now, only with my scars wide open and the world blocked out.
Instead, here I am, feeling a little bit more alive for having a champion by my side today. Juliette, this stranger, and her strong and beautiful daughter have taken me under their wing through an overwhelming act of kindness. She made me walk right back to my seat today instead of running away, she made me face up to my fears and do something as simple as eating a dessert and actually taking the time to taste it.
Maybe Eliza is right with her predictions.
Maybe angels do walk around us after all.