A Part of Me and You

by Emma Heatherington

  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.

  Chapter 4

  Shelley

  SATURDAY

  My Saturday, the day that would have been Lily’s sixth birthday, starts off just as I’d dreaded it would. I wake up to be faced all over again with another day to stumble through, another day of dodging people and their sympathetic smiles and well-meaning ways, another day of being at work where I will try my best to muster up some enthusiasm for the business I built up for so long with such energy and passion. And on top of that, Matt has gone away for a week but perhaps that’s a good thing.

  I have drawn a solid line down my life and it helps me to deal with it all. There was my life when I had Lily and my life after I lost her – the lives of two very different people. No matter how much counselling or therapy I get, I just can’t find that person I was before anymore.

  On the outside I look more or less the same as I did before; a bit thinner, a few more lines and wrinkles and more gaunt in the face, but still the same Shelley physically. But inside I am screaming. Inside, I am so different that I don’t recognize myself anymore. I am stone cold inside and if not for Matt, who tries to keep me sane and who sometimes man
ages to melt just a tiny corner of that ice-cold heart, I wouldn’t believe that I have a heart left at all.

  I feel very little emotion these days and it’s a horrible existence. I am nothing more than an empty vessel lost at sea, just bobbing along and never to find any real direction. I am killing time. I sometimes wonder why I am still alive at all.

  ‘You’re like a boho princess,’ one well-meaning customer told me yesterday as she admired the way I had matched up my long flowing dress with a headscarf, a chunky necklace and a long messy plait. ‘You’re the perfect advertisement for this shop. It’s a real treasure trove. You must be so proud of it.’

  And I used to be so proud of my business. If only I could get just a little spark of that energy and passion back that other people still can see in me.

  I talk to Lily sometimes and it helps, it makes me smile. I close my eyes and I hear her little voice and I smell her skin and feel her hair on my face and I wonder where she is now. I hope and pray that she has found my own mother to look after her in heaven. I wonder what she would have looked like now, aged six in her blue school uniform. I wonder, would she still be friends with little Teigan from playgroup and would she have loved to read books and dance just like I used to do, and would she love to draw houses and big buildings like her daddy does?

  ‘Mum, please look after her up there,’ I whisper into the emptiness of my bedroom and a tear falls onto my pillow at the thought of the two of them together in heaven, at peace, happy. I really hope they are.

  I need to get up and face the day.

  So I do that; I cry as I brush my teeth, I cry as I fix my hair and I cry when I try and do my make-up. Eventually, I give up and lie on the sofa and let my exhausted body heave and shake and howl out noises in this giant, quiet empty house. I want my mother so badly.

  ‘Why did you have to go too?’ I plead at her photo that sits on the white marble mantelpiece across from me. It’s the only photo I have kept on display in this house. All the pictures of me, Matt and Lily were packed away when I decided I wanted to move away from here and never come back – a decision I never followed through with because Matt managed to change my mind. ‘Why is this house so sterile and cold and why did my baby have to die? I hate you God! Why did you take my baby and my mother so soon? I hate all of this!’

  I curl my body up and hug my knees and tell myself that this too will pass. It’s all part of the grieving process – the seven stages of grief that I have read so much about, that I have been familiar with for most of my adult life since I lost my mum when I was sixteen years old. I could write a book on bereavement and what to expect next and how to get through it all, day by day, one day at a time like my dad kept telling me then and he keeps telling me now. I don’t care to know what stage I’m at right now, but I wish I could fast forward through them all and get rid of this feeling of hollow emptiness that follows me everywhere I go these days.

  ‘She’s the Jackson woman,’ is what I hear from locals, whispering when I walk past them in the village. ‘You know, the couple who—’

  They all whisper and nudge and look on in pity.

  It’s like a label that I wear now, a label that replaced ‘she’s the northerner who came here after her mother died and never left’ or ‘she’s the one that Matt Jackson, the architect, fell for the moment he saw her in the Beach House Café.’

  I am used to the whispers of a small town and I always did like to overhear the one that connects me to Matt. He is the best thing that ever happened to me.

  My aching cries turn into more gentle sobs and I stretch my legs out, knowing that my breathing will soon steady and the tears will stop. I make myself a mug of coffee to drink out on the balcony that looks over Galway Bay where I can feel the sun on my face. I know I will soon be almost okay again. I need to be okay again. I can’t go on like this. I need my life back and I need to find the strength to move on.

  It is raining outside, so I open the French doors and let the sea air soothe my soul. I focus on the lighthouse in the distance and stare at it. I sometimes pretend that Lily is there in my mother’s arms, both of them waiting for me, and if I wave out to them they can see me. I wave across and blow a kiss then close the doors.

  I try again with my make-up and I plait my hair just like I automatically do every day. Then I grab my coat and keys and make my way out of the house, reminding myself that every little step I take is an achievement and that I will get through this day no matter what it takes.

  Juliette

  When it rains in the West of Ireland, it really does creep under your skin – a fact that the other tourists who wander the colourful streets of my beloved Killara seem to have copped on to as they’re all in waterproofs and branded umbrellas in comparison to my light blouse and floaty skirt. And as for the sandals I’m wearing – well my toes are floating in a sea of mud and rainwater and the smell of the sea, oh how much the smell of the sea takes me right back to the heady days of that youthful summer when I last walked the streets of this picturesque paradise.

  We left home this morning and almost ten hours later, after a car journey to the ferry port with Helen, a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin and a bus journey across Ireland, we are finally here. I don’t yet believe this is real. Maybe it’s because of Dan and our conversation this morning which I can’t seem to shake off.

  ‘You are killing me,’ he said to me when I told him I was coming here. I couldn’t bear to tell him how ironic his words were. It’s not him who is dying, it is me and this is exactly the reason why I need to create some space between us. He can’t cope with my illness, he never could and the more he drowns his sorrows in drink and self-pity, the more I feel the need to run. I love him, I need him, but right now I don’t have the energy to prop him up when I need to focus on what will become of Rosie.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ I ask her as we stand in a puddle on the pavement.

  ‘It looks boring,’ she says. ‘I don’t understand why you wanted to come here to mark your birthday. Why couldn’t we have gone to Spain or Paris or even London like you said we would? Somewhere exciting! You’re such a weirdo.’

  Weirdo I can live with. Boring I can definitely live with. I am just delighted I convinced her to come with me in the first place, because believe me, it wasn’t easy. There were so many more important things to do at home like hang out with Josh and Sophie and the new kid on our block, Brandon whose father does security for some Disney pop princess whose name I can’t remember. But I just know that Rosie will love it as much as I do, even if she never finds out the very important, but very much secondary, reason I decided on here over any other more exotic location.

  Apart from the weather, I must admit that nothing seems very different about Killara from that summer all those years ago. I recognize the pubs of course – the bright pink exterior walls of O’Reilly’s with the nightly Irish trad music sessions’ the Beach House Café on the pier, that boasts the best seafood chowder in the country; and the bright blue Brannigan’s Bar and B&B, the place I met Skipper on that hazy, drunken night when my daughter was conceived.

  I’m not staying in Brannigan’s this time but I decide I will pop in just for old times’ sake while we wait on our check-in time at our cottage, a funky little rental right by the harbour which is the only thing that Rosie seems excited about.

  ‘Aunty Helen has such good taste,’ she said when my sister emailed us a link to the cottage rental website last night. We couldn’t believe that it was available but the owner had had a last minute cancellation – a little whitewashed two bedroom cottage with a bright yellow door, fully equipped with surf boards and wet suits and the owner offers boat rides out to the famous Cliffs of Moher, which I’ve promised Rosie will be on our agenda. The very thought of doing even half of what I’ve planned to do here exhausts me but, as promised, my list is made and I can’t wait to get stuck in and make some memories with my girl.

  We stop outside Brannigan’s and I take a deep breath and bite my l
ip.

  ‘Do you mind if we pop in here, just for a look around?’ I say to Rosie. ‘We have half an hour until our cottage is ready.’

  Rosie shrugs and shivers a little, then follows me inside to the steamy heat of the bar and it really is like stepping back in time. Its interior smells like home-cooked dinners and alcohol, there’s a patterned navy and beige carpet on all the floors and despite being only just after lunchtime, there is already a crowd gathered in the poky bar, all glued to some sort of sport on the giant TV in the corner.

  In my head it’s the summer of sixteen years ago, and despite the noise in the bar I can hear his voice, I can see Birgit dancing, I can smell the booze and the sweat and his aftershave on my skin and—

  ‘Sorry about the noise!’

  ‘What? Sorry, I was miles away,’ I tell the barman. ‘I’m just thinking how … it doesn’t matter. What were you saying?’

  ‘I was apologizing. About the noise. There’s a big game on today,’ he says to me with a smile. He’s cute and if I wasn’t so sick I might try and flirt with him. My sister would kill me if she could read my mind. He looks about twenty-five years old at the most.

  ‘Who’s playing?’ asks Rosie, who all of a sudden has taken an interest in Irish sport and seems to have forgotten how dull this place just seemed to her. ‘You’ll have to forgive my ignorance, being English. Foreign and all that.’

  The man-boy winks at her and then smiles at me. Oh, how I wish I was in a position to flirt back – if my teenage daughter wasn’t here to compete with me of course. And if I was fit enough to even contemplate having some fun. I am wearing my favourite blonde bobbed wig on this trip and apart from my bloated, puffy face and slightly podgy frame from the steroids, to the outside world it’s not at all obvious that there’s anything wrong with my riddled body. I almost feel sorry for the lad who definitely has a twinkle in his eye and doesn’t realize the pitiful truth in front of him.