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?’
A Part of Me and You Page 3