Juliette
As the sun sets in the evening sky, I can’t bring myself to go home just yet. I drive to Cannon Hill Park after leaving the hospital and spend the best part of half an hour trying to eat a ham sandwich that tastes like grit on my tongue, before I end up throwing it to the ducks in the lake. This place, this little slice of heaven is often the only piece of tranquillity I can find in my bustling day-to-day existence and I often wonder, now more than ever, why I settled for city life when the silence of nature has always appealed to me so much more.
Growing up on an inner-city housing estate, I always longed to live by the coast where I could walk by the sea, bake my own bread and grow my own vegetables and maybe have my own ducks in a pond in the garden. One day, I’d hoped to live a totally self-sustainable life, and I could read books and listen to loud music and no one would tell me not to because no one would be close enough to hear. That was my plan for my future, but my future isn’t happening now, is it? It’s too late. I have left it too late thinking I had all the time in the world. Christ.
It hurts my head to reflect too much, but I guess I’m going to have to get used to recalling my past as my days here come to an end. I remember telling Birgit, my Danish one-time travel companion, about my ten-year life plan and how she encouraged me to follow my dreams to travel the world.
‘Always stop and savour the simple things,’ was her advice back then, and even though I didn’t ever get to be that globetrotter (unless you count package holidays to Spain or an annual weekend camping at Pontins), I have always remembered her words and promised myself that one day I would do just that. I would slow down and be present, I’d take in and appreciate everything I had instead of always looking out for tomorrow … but I don’t have too many tomorrows left now, do I?
It is July, my favourite time of year; when daisies bow and sway in what looks like a yellow and white sea below me, and the tree I carved my name in when I was a teenager is just in the distance, looking a bit more solemn despite its summer bloom. Maybe it knows what’s going on today too. Maybe everyone knew this was going to happen. Everyone that is, apart from me.
I pick at my nails, my weak, brittle nails that haven’t seen a good manicure in months and then I close my eyes and breathe. Sometimes it’s good to just breathe.
My mind races and I battle with my thoughts, trying desperately not to think of all the things I am going to really miss when I go. I count the months forward in my head. Michael couldn’t give me a specific timeframe on my life but I know in my heart that at a big stretch I’ll make Christmas. I’d give anything to see a white Christmas this year and, just one more time, to sit around the tree with my family and snuggle up with them as the snow falls, in front of a blazing fire.
I hold my head in my hands and try to fight off the wave of panic and breathlessness that I know is just around the corner. Rosie. What the hell is going to happen to my beautiful, innocent Rosie who has no idea what is going on and what life has laid out in front of her? And then the guilt … my God, the guilt for the life I brought her into; no father in her life, and now I am set to leave her all by herself with absolutely no one to call her own. Yes, she has my sister and her grandparents, and Dan for what it’s worth, but it’s not the same.
Who will take her to the cinema like I do, where we stuff our faces with nachos and popcorn and fizzy drinks and then complain about feeling sick all the way home? Who will know that when she gets a headache, it’s a sign of her time of the month and to get her a hot water bottle for her stomach cramps? Who will know that if you blend the vegetables in homemade soup she will eat it and love it with no idea that it’s laced with more greens and garlic than she could ever turn her nose up at? Who will drive her to her latest boyband’s gigs and wait for her as she tries to get a selfie with them afterwards and then who will mop up her tears when she is broken-hearted because they didn’t have time to stop to say hello? Who will hug her and wipe away very different tears when she has her heart broken for the first time in real life?
My phone bleeps for the third time since I got here, disturbing my train of thought, and I give in and read my messages despite my need to switch off and absorb what I have just been told.
‘I still love you, today and every day,’ says the first one, sent earlier this morning and I bite my lip, knowing that it’s from Dan. De’s changed his number because of our ‘break’ but despite our agreement of no contact until I’m ready, or until he does what he needs to do, he can’t resist sending a message – so I have his number just in case I need him. Despite his troubles I sometimes think I don’t deserve him. I never did.
‘Are you okay? Please text me Juliette,’ is the next one, from my sister Helen who is undoubtedly sick with worry as she waits on me to give her news. She wanted to come with me to the hospital but I wouldn’t hear of it. Michael was right when he said I was stubborn but I can’t face breaking any more hearts just yet. I want her to stay ignorant for as long as possible, even if that’s just for another hour or so.
‘Hope you enjoyed your pamper day, Mum!’ says the last one and on reading this I burst into tears. I had genuinely forgotten it was my birthday today.
Rosie has been planning something, I just know she has. I didn’t have the heart to tell her not to bother, that all this turning forty nonsense wasn’t really on my mind. This time last year I had so many plans for how I would celebrate this milestone and I suppose I still should. I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m not dead yet.
I’d better get home.
I pretend that I had no idea there would be any big fuss and smile through my touched up lipstick when I am met with a small, but perfectly formed, surprise gathering in my kitchen.
The duck egg blue cupboards and the fridge which is covered in pictures, drawings and memories from Rosie’s playgroup days through to her secondary school life, now greet me like a warm hug. It’s so good to be home.
‘You little rascal!’ I say to my teenage daughter. ‘How on earth did you do this without me knowing?’
To be fair, she has done a pretty good job as I take in the banners and the show stopping cake. Wow. I guess this really is quite a surprise.
‘Aunty Helen helped me,’ says Rosie and I hug her close again, closing my eyes and praying for the tears to stay put. When I open my eyes I see my sister staring at me, that old familiar look of fear bursting from her soul. I can’t react. Not now.
The party consists of my sister, her three boys and my daughter. I want to ask where my mother is but my sister beats me to it with an explanation.
‘Mum couldn’t face it,’ she whispers to me as soon as the kids are distracted with phones and other gadgets. ‘She has a migraine and has gone to bed. She’s crippled with worry, Jules.’
I shake my head.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I tell Helen. ‘I’ll call her later. It’s probably for the best that she rests. The less fuss we have today, the better.’
My sister gulps back her biggest fears when I say that.
‘So, what’s on the menu?’ I ask, sniffing the air. ‘Don’t tell me? Is it Helen’s famous fish pie?’
‘You got it in one!’ says my oldest nephew George as the children now wrestle for seats around my kitchen table, eyeing up the cake that sits as its centrepiece. It has my name on it and a big ‘40’ candle. Shit, this is too much.
‘I hope you’re hungry, Mum,’ says Rosie with wide eyes. ‘This is just the beginning of the celebrations. We have your favourite sweets for after and prosecco and chilli crisps and I even made Aunty Helen get ice cream though we already have cake – but my teacher told me that life begins at forty so we’ve pulled out all the stops. This is going to be your best birthday ever and you deserve it after all you’ve been through with that horrible chemo.’
Ouch.
‘It’s not every day you turn forty,’ says Helen, still trying to catch my eye but I just can’t look at her. I keep smiling and wowing and making other over-exaggerated sounds of enthusiasm to my daughter and my three young nephews but I know that Helen can see straight through me. I dare not catch her eye.
She just nods and stares as I touch my synthetic wig and when the kids have settled in front of a movie later and I break the news to her, she slowly shakes her head in disbelief and shock.
‘There has to be something we can try.’
If anyone looked through the window right now and saw us with our prosecco and cake, they’d think we really were celebrating.
‘There are no more somethings, Helen,’ I tell my only sister. ‘I could try and fight on and spend the rest of my days vomiting and pumping my organs with chemo and radiotherapy but I’d rather spend them with you and Rosie doing nice things. I want to go out of this world with a bit of grace and dignity, if you can understand that. At home, preferably.’
Helen, of course, is having none of that and her eyes are filled with fear. My God, the agony I have caused her …
‘But there has to be some—’
‘There isn’t,’ I remind her. ‘There is nothing. I know, I know. It sucks, big time but please don’t cry, Helen. I can’t cope with any more tears and this mascara goes to shit when I sneeze, never mind coping with tears.’
But it’s too late. She is sobbing and finding it hard to breathe so just like I did with Michael earlier, I get up to comfort her.
‘I don’t want you to be sad, Hel,’ I say into her hair that smells, as always, of apple shampoo. I raise my eyes towards the ceiling and swallow hard. ‘I had a quiet suspicion, no matter how much I denied it to myself that this might be the news I’d get today. Yes, it’s crap and it’s unfair and it’s not what we want but we need to accept it because there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Nothing. I’m so sorry, Helen. I’m sorry.’
It’s as much as I can say to her as she tries to digest this latest blow because I think I may be in shock too. She gets up, wiping her nose on the back of her hand and tries to get busy.
‘But you were doing so well,’ she sniffles. ‘How can it be so far advanced? How?’
‘It’s called cancer,’ I say, and the very word makes me so angry but I will never let it show. ‘I am trying to make sense of it all too but I don’t really have time to contemplate or analyse so it’s time for me to take action and do the things I should have done years ago. I’m going to make some really nice plans.’
Now, Helen shakes her head.
‘Juliette, you don’t need to make any more plans!’ she says. ‘Your life has been one big long plan that never got completed.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The thirty things to do before you’re thirty plan? I think you managed to do five? The list of life plans you decided to make for Rosie when she turned thirteen but didn’t finish? Dan’s most magical book of wedding surprises?’
She starts to laugh and I can’t help but laugh too. She does have a point.
‘Michael says I should go away for a few days to reflect, you know, a change of scenery,’ I tell her. ‘Somewhere quiet, away from reality if you like just to let this all sink in.’
‘What? Away where to?’ she asks. ‘Is he … is he sure you won’t …?’
‘He is pretty sure I won’t die in the next week or so,’ I say with a nervous laugh. ‘I’m thinking of going to Ireland, me and Rosie, what do you think? I want to go there and stay by the sea for a few days and think about … life and well, death I suppose.’
But there’s no pulling the wool over my sister’s eyes. She knows exactly what Ireland means to me.
‘No, Juliette, you just stop right there,’ is her adamant reply as she opens and closes my kitchen cupboards and drawers, but then I didn’t expect her reaction to be any different. ‘Don’t say that. You’re not thinking straight, Juliette. You’re in shock. Just stop.’
‘But I am thinking straight,’ I say to her. ‘Even Michael said it would be good for me.’
‘Michael doesn’t know your history there!’
‘No, well, yes, but actually he knows a lot more than you think he does,’ I try to explain. ‘But that’s not why I want to go back. It’s a spectacular place, Helen. It’s my favourite place in the world.’
‘Cornwall is a spectacular place,’ says Helen. ‘Scotland is a spectacular place. It has scenery and the sea and good food and it’s—’
‘Yes, and so does Barry Island and Weston-super-Mare and bloody Blackpool but it’s not where I want to go, Helen,’ I say. ‘I want to show Rosie the one place in this world I loved the most and I want to tell her how special it was and how it still is for us both. I want to go there and switch off, and if anything else happens, then that’s a huge bonus, but that’s not the only reason why I’m going, believe me.’
My big sister is going to take a lot more convincing than that, but I was expecting this. I didn’t think for one second that she would be helping me pack my bags and cheering me on my merry way to Killara, with Rosie in tow, to find a man who once sailed boats there – when here I am, back in the real world about to pop my clogs. No way.
‘So, what are your other reasons then? I don’t believe you for one second and have you thought about Dan in all of this?’ Helen is still rifling through the kitchen drawers.
‘Helen, Dan will understand,’ I try to explain. ‘I’ll give him a call and tell him everything.’
‘Juliette, you don’t need any stress and you certainly don’t need to be chasing unicorns and rainbows at this stage,’ she says to me. ‘At last, goodness, how can it be hard to find something to write on around here?’
She opens an old notebook of mine, and then licks her finger to flick through the pages until she finds a blank one.
‘Why do you need something to write on?’ I ask. ‘I just want to go there and spend quality time with Rosie. It will be great for us both, you know it will.’
She starts to write.
‘You’ll never find him,’ she says, still writing. ‘You hardly know anything about him. You said you don’t even remember his proper name.’
She has a point. Except it’s not that I don’t remember his proper name. I never knew his proper name in the first place.
‘I do remember the rest of him though,’ I reply, and it’s true. I remember his dark hair and his muscular back and the fumbling and laughing and urgency and the smell of alcohol – and the shame I felt when I woke up alone and the fear on the way home to Birmingham when sobriety kicked in and I realised how stupid we’d been not to have used any protection whatsoever.
I remember how I looked for him before I left the village the next day, just to see if he cared or wanted to see me again or would acknowledge what had happened between us but he had disappeared. I remember the hurt and shame I felt and then how Birgit and I had laughed and laughed at the very thought of me, a good Catholic girl from a convent school having a one night stand with a handsome Irishman when I didn’t even get his real name, never mind his number.
But most of all, I remember the emptiness I felt when I got on the plane home to Birmingham without Birgit to laugh about it with, and the feeling that my life had just changed forever. And oh, how it had.
All of that, I can remember loud and clear.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask my sister who is still making notes in front of me while I daydream down memory lane.
‘Nothing,’ she says.
‘You’re writing nothing?’
‘Okay, okay, I’m making plans,’ she says. ‘It’s my turn to make some plans. It’s not just you who makes plans in life, you know.’
I look across at my sister’s notes and let out a loud sigh that makes her jump when I see the latest entry on her ‘plan’.
‘What?’ she shouts, dropping the pen with panic. ‘Are you in pain? What, Juliette?’
‘No, I am not in pain,’ I tell her. ‘I’m just wondering why on earth you’re writing that stupid stuff in front of me. Make room for Rosie? At least wait until I leave before you try and plan your life after me. Jesus, Helen, you have as much tact as our mother sometimes.’
‘Don’t exaggerate, I’m not that bad,’ says Helen, tearing out then scrunching up the notepaper but it’s too late, I already saw it. ‘And don’t try to change the subject. You are not going to Ireland to track down this stranger after all this time. You’re not going. End of.’
I pull a funny face. She doesn’t laugh.
‘I think his nickname was Skipper,’ I remind her. ‘He was a captain on the boats so that sounds about right, doesn’t it? Skipper. Or was it Skippy? Something like that. Or Skip … No, it was Skipper. A captain. A boatman.’
‘Yes, you said he was a sailor or something. You dirty rotten stop out.’
‘A mighty fine sailor he was too,’ I say with a cheeky grin but my sister is disgusted. ‘I’m joking! Well, actually I’m not joking. Look, I swear, I don’t even know if he was from Killara! He was probably just ‘sailing’ through like I was. He’s not why I’m going back, I promise.’
But Helen has had enough of my jokes. She closes her eyes and then looks at me, not joking one bit right now.
‘Please, Juliette,’ she whispers. ‘Oh my God, please think of Rosie right now. She was so excited today to arrange your party. I couldn’t bear to watch her put the candles in the cake and wrap your presents. Did you like your presents? She was so proud of herself. And Dan? He left you a gift. Did you see it?’
I nod my head. A silver locket that he has known I’ve had my eye on for years sits on the worktop. It’s too hard. All of this is too hard.
‘I loved my presents,’ I tell my sister. ‘Thank you. You’re the best sister in the world, you know that.’
‘I’m your only sister,’ she reminds me. ‘You have to say that.’
‘You’re still the best, though.’
‘That poor little girl has no idea,’ she says to me. ‘Her little face will … oh, how are you going to tell her, Juliette? You’re her whole world.’
Helen is at breaking point now as this all sinks in. I do not want to see this so I look away.
‘Don’t, Helen. Please don’t say “poor Rosie” and don’t you dare cry again. I don’t want you to be so sad.’
But she’s off. It’s hitting home with my sister that my life is about to end while hers and Rosie’s and Dan’s lives will all change dramatically.
‘You do know I will look after her as best I can,’ she sniffles. ‘It won’t be the same as you, I mean, it won’t be as good as you, but I’ll do my very best by her and Brian will help out too of course. I promise you we will do our best. We’ll try and let her have her own room. My boys can bunk in together, it won’t do them a bit of harm and—’
‘We’ve had this conversation before, Helen. I know you will look after her for me,’ I tell my sister. ‘You’ve already told me all of this.’
‘What I’m trying to say is that she doesn’t need him, Juliette,’ Helen tells me. ‘She doesn’t need a stranger entering her life with everything else that’s going on. She’s got me and Dan and Brian and the kids. Think about it. Think about Rosie. Please.’
‘But what if I’m not her whole world?’ I suggest to her. ‘What if there is another world out there for her and just by bringing her there, it might give her some options? What if …?’
I shrug and she squeezes my hand, wiping her eyes with the other and shaking her head. She is right, of course. My big sister Helen, mother of three, wife of one, and wise old owl, has always been right. She was not surprised when, sixteen years ago, I arrived back from a summer backpacking around Ireland with more baggage than I’d left home with. Not that I was ever overly promiscuous, but more that I was the careless sort who never thought anything would ever happen to me. Happy-go-lucky and carefree, I wouldn’t have recognised trouble if it had stared me in the face. In fact, I still probably wouldn’t.
‘Gullible,’ was my mother’s way of putting it. ‘Our Juliette would believe anything you told her and go back for more. She’s as gullible as a fish.’
I’ve learned to shrug it off and accept that they might be right; but gullible, careless, silly or whatever way they wanted to look at me, I’ve managed very well, thank you very much, since my Emerald Isle vacation all those summers ago. Rosie has never wanted for anything, despite not having a father figure in her life … well apart from Dan of course, but he was more like a friend to her. So why do I want to start picking at holes that aren’t there, by digging into my sketchy past? Why am I potentially going to turn her whole world upside down and leave a terrible mess behind, when I could leave well alone safe in the knowledge that she will be just fine?
It’s because I know that someday she will want to know who he is, and I’m the only one who can tell her.
It’s because I do believe that there is another world waiting for her over there.
‘I promise I will say nothing to Rosie until I know more about him,’ I tell my sister and I can see her tongue twist into syllables and words she cannot get out quickly enough to stop me so I keep talking. ‘It’s what I’ve always thought I should do, you know, even though I’ve never mentioned it much. He might not be there anymore. I might not find him. I could have every door shut in my face, but imagine it was you. Imagine you had a child that you didn’t know about. I don’t think it’s so wrong to tell someone the truth, do you?’
But Helen isn’t listening to one word I say. She is miles away. She looks like she is already in a place where I don’t exist anymore, where this seat I am on is empty already – where I’m gone.
‘She writes to him, you know,’ I tell my sister and her reaction is just as I thought it would be.
‘No way,’ she says, the sorrow etched in her saddened eyes. ‘Does she really?’
‘She’s been doing it for a while now. She doesn’t have a clue that I know so don’t say anything to her. I didn’t read a lot of it. No more than a few lines, but she’s pining for a man she doesn’t know one thing about. Please don’t deny her the right to have this last chance of knowing where she came from, Helen.’
Helen twists her hands together and takes a deep breath, looks away and the tears threaten to spill again.
‘She breaks my heart,’ she says. ‘You break my heart. You are so much braver than I could ever be, Juliette, you know that. I hope it works out for you both, I really do, but my hard, cynical knowledge of the world is just so frightened it will all go horribly wrong.’
‘I want to go there to make some new memories with Rosie,’ I try to reassure her. ‘I want to awaken her senses to everything that this beautiful world has to offer – so that when I go she will remember all the positive things I have told her and shown her, and not just the darkness of sickness and death. Simple things over seven days, just Rosie and I, away from it all where I can teach her some of life’s greatest lessons as I know them.’
For the first time in my life I think I have silenced my sister.
‘That’s a pretty amazing way to look at it,’ she eventually says.
‘I’ll stay there for one week,’ I promise my sister. ‘We’ll sail over on the ferry tomorrow at our leisure, stress-free, and it will be like a holiday for us both; our last holiday together. I will make a list of things for us to do, but this time I’ll break my habit of making lists and not completing them. We will complete this one. We’ll share some bonding time. Anything else that happens will be secondary, I promise.’
Helen takes a deep breath in and then out again. She rubs her eyebrows with her eyes closed.
‘I just hope this works out for you because this is hard enough as it is,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t want to see you make it worse. Please don’t make it worse.’
‘I won’t make it worse, I swear to you,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to take the ferry in the morning and spend seven days by the sea with my precious girl in the place where she came from. There’s no time like the present and like you said, it’s not every day you turn forty, is it?’
Helen wipes her eyes and smiles.
‘You are the most determined, stubborn person I know,’ she tells me.
‘That’s the second time I’ve heard that today,’ I reply.
‘Well, you go and do what you have to do in your favourite place in the world, sister,’ she tells me. ‘I will always be right behind you and I’ll still be here if it all goes tits up. Now, let’s go upstairs and I’ll help you pack for your trip down memory lane you absolute …’
I don’t wait around for her to finish her sentence. I am already on my way up the stairs.
I agree to meet Dan at my favourite coffee shop, just around the corner from our family home, and when I see him walk past the window my stomach gives a leap. My hands are shaking as I lift my cup, and I take a small sip just to give myself something to do. I don’twant a coffee and I certainly don’t want to be telling Dan what I am going to have to eventually.
‘I got you an americano,’ I say to him when he sits down opposite me. He is ashen with worry and his blue eyes look exhausted. This is exactly why I needed to give him some space from all my sickness and darkness. He hasn’t been coping and when he can’t cope, it makes all my problems multiply.
‘You always know what’s best for me,’ he says. And I know I do. It’s exactly why I had to ask him to leave,.
‘You look tired,’ I say to him, my maternal instinct and concern kicking in as usual. ‘Have you been sleeping and eating okay?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘I’ve been in better places,’ he says. ‘My sister’s spare room is very comfortable but it’s not home. Please tell me you brought me here to say you’ve changed your mind.’
I can’t change my mind though. I need to stay strong and protect him from any more pain. If I create distance now, it might help in the long run when he has to deal with things after I go.
‘I’m taking Rosie away for a few days,’ I tell him, and his face falls.
‘A holiday?’ he asks and I hear the words in his head that follow – without me?
‘Well, kind of,’ I reply. He reaches across the table and puts his hand over mine, his coffee sits untouched. ‘Quality time, just the two of us. I think it will be good for her and for me, to just get away from here for a short while.’
He looks out the window and puts his hand to his face, then breathes out in an obvious release of heartache and pain.
‘That will be good for you both, yes,’ he says to me, still looking away. ‘It’s your birthday today after all so you deserve to treat yourself.’
I stare at my coffee cup, unable to watch as his world comes crashing down. We both know why it has to be this way. His drinking lately has just been too hard to handle. It has been like having another child tugging and pulling at me, tearing me apart when I need him to be strong and deal with what’s happening. Tough love, you might call it and believe me, it’s tough on me too because I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and tell him to come home.
‘This time out will be good for you too, Dan,’ I whisper and at last our eyes meet. ‘Make it work for you, make it work for us.’
‘How can I do that? I’ll do whatever it takes if you just tell me, Juliette.’ He looks so desperate.
‘I need you, Dan, just not like this and you know it,’ I say to him firmly. ‘I need the man I married and the man I love and I want to be by your side till death us do part, just like we promised when we took our vows. But we can’t do that while you’re the way you have been, I want you to be the man I know you can be again. I need you to put down the bottle and be there for me and Rosie, Dan. And I need you to do that now, more than ever.’
He breathes out again, then his face brightens up and my heart lights up
‘I am going to do this, Juliette. I am going to be the man I want to be for you, I promise you and Rosie,’ he says to me and I close my eyes and inhale his words. ‘I am going to be with you the way you need me to be.’
I want to pull him close and hold him so tight so that our love squeezes all of this pain and illness away, and if only it was as simple as that. This is complicated. We are complicated, but somehow I believe him. I believe that soon I will have my husband back and it’s what I want so, so badly.