A Part of Me and You

by Emma Heatherington

  ‘Why don’t you surprise your husband with a night out on the tiles this weekend?’ I suggest to her and she bursts into laughter.

  ‘Surprise him? Me and Brian? We are way past the stage of surprises, Juliette. I think he would die of shock and imagine the horror if I arranged something for the weekend that didn’t involve watching football on a big screen or playing darts down the pub.’

  ‘Surprise him, I dare you!’ I tell her. ‘Get dressed up, book a table somewhere nice, arrange a babysitter and let your hair down, just the two of you. Then book a flippin’ holiday and go enjoy it. There’s no point in just ticking along, Helen. Get busy living or get busy dying, that’s my motto for as long as I can stick to it.’

  I feel Rosie shift in her seat. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that – the ‘dying’ bit.

  ‘Mum’s right,’ says Rosie, much to my relief. ‘There’s a lot more to life than just ticking along. I know you mean there’s no big news or no drama and that’s fantastic, of course it is, but you should be enjoying yourself a lot more than you do. You should travel more. I can’t wait to travel the world.’

  Helen smiles at us and lets out a sigh.

  ‘I have three very lively boys to keep me busy,’ Helen reminds us. ‘But yes, I get what you mean. I should be stepping out of my comfort zone a little bit more, just like you did today, Juliette and I should be tasting things like crab claws just like you did yesterday, Rosie. I’ll get my thinking cap on and do something nice this weekend.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to break the bank,’ I say to her, knowing that with a mortgage and a family and a million other things on her mind when it comes to finances, it’s not as simple for Helen to get up and go as we are insinuating.

  ‘There is a movie I’d love to see on the big screen,’ says Helen. ‘Brian would probably rather pull his own teeth out than watch it but we could maybe go for a drink after I suppose, that might convince him to forego the darts league.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ I tell her. ‘And make sure to hold hands and snuggle up in the back row. Put on something nice, you know, underneath too.’

  ‘Mum! Too much info!’ says Rosie and I shrug.

  ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of romance,’ I reply.

  ‘You know what ladies, I am just going to make him go,’ says Helen. ‘I’m actually looking forward to it now that you’ve said it. It’s been a while since we went out together, just the two of us. Sunday lunch at the local with the boys has been my social life for too long and with sport of some sort on in the background it doesn’t leave much room for romance. I’m going to make my husband take me on a date.’

  ‘That’s more like it!’ I tell my sister. ‘Now, on that note, we are going to leave you to your planning and go to bed as we’ve another big day lined up for tomorrow, haven’t we Rosie?’

  ‘Have we?’ asks Rosie. ‘That’s news to me.’

  I smile smugly and shrug my shoulders.

  ‘You’ll just have to wait until then to find out what exactly I’m talking about, but it’s going to be another good one, just you wait and see.’

  ‘You can’t leave me hanging like that,’ says Helen. ‘Tell me what you’re up to so I can sit here pulling my hair out as the boys wreck the house tomorrow and be green with envy.’

  ‘I’ll text you,’ I tell my sister. ‘Now, babysitter, Brian, movies, booze and dancing. Get it sorted!’

  ‘I love you both, you know that,’ says Helen, just as we are about to sign off. I can see her lip wobble. Mine starts to tremble too.

  ‘Right back at you, Aunty Helen,’ says Rosie, but I can’t speak. I just wave at her into the camera and hug Rosie a little tighter than I should.

  ‘It’s the cliffs tomorrow, isn’t it, Mum?’ says Rosie. ‘You finally got someone to take us out on a boat, just like you’ve been wanting?’

  I inhale her hair and close my eyes. I am so tired but I don’t want her to see it.

  ‘Let’s get you to bed, missy,’ I say to her and her arm goes around my waist and we sit there for what feels like forever. How am I ever going to leave her on her own? She gives me a squeeze as if she is reading my mind and despite my fears, I know that she is a strong, feisty lady like her mother and part of me knows that she will one day be okay.

  Chapter 17

  Shelley

  TUESDAY

  I wake up from the sweetest dream with a smile on my face and I open my eyes to a burst of sunlight that seeps in between the curtains, forming a sparkling line that falls right on to my bed. I have no idea where I was in my dream, or what I was doing or who I was with but something wonderful certainly did happen and now I am lying here with a smile on my face and a warm fuzzy glow inside.

  And then it comes back to me. I saw Lily and she was smiling at me from the lighthouse in my mother’s arms. She was wearing her favourite yellow coat and her bright pink wellington boots and it was raining so she had her hood up but she looked so happy and safe. She was waving at me and giving me a thumbs-up as my mother looked at her with such endearment.

  It was beautiful.

  I stretch slowly under the covers and check my phone from my bedside table and it’s a lot earlier than when I normally wake up. As usual, there is an early morning greeting from Matt and another from Eliza which was sent only minutes before I woke. She says she is going to town and she is wondering if I need anything. Nothing new there in that the woman has the patience of a saint as I always tell her no and she still insists on asking every time she is passing through to do her own bits and pieces.

  ‘Town’ to us is thirty minutes away in Galway City and I haven’t had any interest in going there for so long, even though I used to go at least once a week, if not on errands, then just for the experience. I used to adore walking the cobbles of Shop Street and listening to the buskers, or sitting on a bench eating a fish supper by the Claddagh basin and watching the swans sail up and down, or catching a play at the Town Hall or a gig at Monroe’s or the Roisin Dubh and marvelling at the variety of live music on offer. That was a different me. That was me when I knew how to enjoy myself.

  I have truly pressed pause on my life. I have stopped being me but I feel ever so slightly stronger with each day that has passed since Lily’s birthday at the weekend and with her help, each day from now on I will try and fix that. No matter how hard it is to keep moving forward, it is what I have to do.

  I read Eliza’s message again.

  ‘Do you need anything from town, love? I’ll be passing through if so.’

  I don’t really need anything in town, just as I always don’t, and I press reply to tell her so. What I do need to do is get up and shower … and then I suppose I will cook the same breakfast that I won’t even taste and watch the same daytime TV that is like chewing gum for my brain and then I’ll worry and wonder and relive the same things that I do every day as I wait for 2pm to come round when I need to be in work and the clutching pain of grief will slowly ease off until I come back here again in the evening and battle through it until bedtime.

  I close my eyes and I see Lily’s little face again. Her hand waving at me from side to side like she used to – those chubby little dimpled hands that used to touch my face and melt my heart just by looking at them. My mother kisses her on her temple and she gives me the same thumbs-up again just like in my dream. Mum’s smile is so radiant, so safe, so comforting and I find myself smiling back at them, hoping that they can see me ever so slowly getting better.

  I don’t need to do any of that mundane stuff again today, do I Lily? Tell me what I need to do, Mum.

  And then I feel it.

  What I need to do is hold on to this glimmer of positivity that has embraced me since Saturday, and which has come to me even stronger since I woke up only minutes ago.

  What I need to do is grasp this opportunity, this spark of life that has been ignited since I met Rosie and Juliette. What I need to do is try and live again.

  So I’m going to make today matter, just
as I did yesterday and the day before with Juliette and Rosie. And so I do something that I should have done ages ago. It’s only a little gesture, but I’m going to push myself and make the effort. I send my mother-in-law a text that reads as follows:

  ‘Fancy a passenger into Galway? I might need a few things after all and will tag along if you don’t mind?’

  I press send and a wave of shock overcomes me but I can’t back out now.

  She calls me straight away.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m just making sure I’m not imagining things,’ she says in disbelief. ‘I mean, I was just messaging on the off chance but I didn’t even expect you to be awake yet? I hope I’m not imagining things! I’m on my way to you right now if you want to come? Please say you do?’

  ‘You are not imagining things,’ I tell her, sitting up on my bed. The stream of sunlight sits right on my lap now and I get a strange energy from the light of a new day, as if it’s urging me on, encouraging me to get up and do this. ‘I can be ready in fifteen minutes if you can pick me up then? I have to be at work at two o’clock, of course, so I’ll go only if it doesn’t make you have to rush back?’

  ‘The morning is young, darling,’ says Eliza. ‘I will be there in fifteen and I will have you back at the shop for two on the button, fed, watered and feeling great for a change of scenery. Now go and get ready! Go, go, go!’

  I hang up the phone and smile, then I close my eyes and say thank you. I don’t know who or what I am thanking but something has shifted within me. I’m not on top of the world of course, I’m not even ten steps up a mountainside when it comes to living life to the full again, but I have one thing that I couldn’t find within myself for too long now. I have hope. I now have found some sort of hope and faith and belief that I will soon, very slowly, be able to move on. With Lily’s love in my heart and my mother’s soothing voice in my ear, it is beginning, dare I say it, it’s beginning to feel good.

  I step into the shower and I feel a thin layer of the darkness of grief wash off my hair, down my back and I gulp back tears at the sheer relief of just a glimmer of hope.

  Eliza toots the horn fifteen minutes later as promised but I’m already at the door, ready and waiting and I distract Merlin with a squeaky toy to let me get away. Five minutes in the shower, a quick lick of makeup (nothing compared to Rosie’s masterpiece yesterday but enough to take away the ghostly pale look from my face), a spray of perfume and I’m ready to face the world again. It really is so different to the days when it would take me at least an hour to gather up Lily’s belongings, put together a change of clothes just in case of any accidents, her drinking cup, her cuddle toy, her second ‘flavour of the week’ toy and then the time it took to dress her and convince her to get into her car seat. I’m not even going to think about that this morning. I don’t have to punish myself. I’ve been punished enough.

  ‘Look at you, Shelley! You look radiant,’ says Eliza, lifting her sunglasses to get a better view. ‘You look like a different person. Well, you look like you but in the best possible way and it’s wonderful! What’s going on?’

  Eliza is driving her pale blue convertible Volkswagen Beetle which suits her personality to a tee, and her wavy, thick, auburn-dyed hair is coiffed to perfection. Matt’s family don’t do things by halves. Eliza totally believes in living life to the full and she has a great taste for the finer things in life, well, as much as she can afford, but she is also incredibly generous and charitable and a very warm and popular lady around the village of Killara and beyond.

  ‘I do feel a little bit better, Eliza,’ I admit to her, putting my handbag in the back seat and getting into the front beside her. ‘A good bit better, actually. I didn’t even allow myself to think twice earlier. When I saw your message, something clicked in me. I had the strangest dream, or maybe it wasn’t even a dream, it was more like a feeling that pushed me on, a sign. Can we get signs in our sleep do you think? It’s just that I woke this morning with what felt like a new sense of reassurance that everything was going to be okay? That it was okay to smile a little bit more? I saw Lily and she looked happy and I guess that’s made me feel a bit happier. Is that stupid?’

  Eliza steers the car down my driveway and out onto the winding road, taking a right for Killara village which we pass through before we take the main road for Galway City.

  ‘Of course, it’s not a bit stupid, it’s very real, Shelley,’ she explains to me softly. ‘We get signs when we sleep as that’s when we are at most vulnerable and at ease. We are wide open to receiving messages from loved ones or even simple spiritual guidance, and we wake up with, just like you have, a sense of reassurance to keep going forward. I’m not surprised that you feel better after sleeping if you think you may have had some sort of spiritual communication.’

  ‘It really has spurred me on,’ I tell her. ‘Not only that, though. I’ve had an eventful few days, I suppose you might say.’

  Eliza glances at me and then back to the road.

  ‘I was wondering what was going on,’ she says. ‘I’ve called at the house and even Merlin wasn’t there and I was beginning to think you’d fled the country? I didn’t want to torture you with phone calls, but then today when I was heading into town I thought I’d left it long enough and would check in.’

  I don’t even know where to begin to explain all the wondrous things that have happened to me, so I start with Saturday afternoon, the day of Lily’s birthday and the lady with the blue dress. Eliza doesn’t make a fuss or say ‘I told you so’ when I mention the colour blue, just as she’d predicted. She just smiles and nods her head as I tell her all about Juliette and Rosie, why they’re here and their connection to Matt’s old friend Skipper.

  ‘Oh Eliza, when the poor woman told me that the name of the man she was hoping to look up was Skipper, I didn’t know how to break it to her. Imagine that feeling that your only child was going to be an orphan? Imagine, what she’s been hanging on to as some sort of happy ending for her daughter has been destroyed. And wee Rosie, gosh she really would break your heart because she has no idea of the huge loss she is about to experience. I really felt something for her the moment I saw her on those sand dunes and then when I found out she was Matt’s friend’s biological daughter, it all made sense.’

  Eliza seems to be in deep thought, like she is taking it all in. Eventually she responds.

  ‘I don’t think you feel that connection to little Rosie because of a man you have never met,’ says Eliza. ‘I’d doubt that’s the case.’

  ‘You don’t?’ I ask. Gosh. I thought she would be totally convinced that it was so fateful that I was to run into the long-lost daughter of my husband’s deceased friend from yesteryear.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I think there is more to it than that. I think Juliette and Rosie have been sent to you for much more personal reasons. You feel you have been helping them, yes?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I have,’ I tell her. ‘It was by helping Rosie and listening to her that I first felt something change inside of me. And then when she encouraged me to have lunch on Sunday it was like I was actually tasting food for the first time in ages, and then I saw them together on the beach yesterday and the joy they felt from sharing that time on horseback together. It just moved me so much and I felt so much in my heart for them both.’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Eliza. ‘We reap what we sow, Shelley. Sometimes when we take the emphasis off our own grief and troubles, and reach out to others, we get so much more from it without realizing it. Your friendship and kindness to those people in their time of need is paying dividends your way. I don’t think it’s anything to do with, what was his name again?’

  ‘Skipper,’ I remind her. My goodness she is as bad as her son when it comes to names.

  ‘Skipper … something to do with boats, then, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s him. He used to sail in here from time to time. Do you remember him?’ I ask her.

  ‘No, I don’t, sorry,’ says Eliza. �
��I can’t say I remember him at all. Where did you say he was from?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I tell her. ‘He’s from Waterford. At least I think that’s where Matt said. They were good friends about … well, I suppose it’s over fifteen years ago now.’

  Eliza shakes her head.

  ‘Hmm, Skipper … it’s not ringing a bell at all.’

  We’re driving more slowly now through Killara and the village is bright and bustling with tourists just as it always is at this time of year. I see Betty in the shop dealing with a customer and then further down the village I spot Juliette and Rosie buying an ice cream from a van by the pier and I wave to them but they are too far away to see us.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t remember him?’ I ask her. ‘Skipper? I think his real name was Pete? Matt told me all about him one night when he was feeling all sentimental about people who touched his life who have been and gone. He was a sailor and he used to come here and hang out with Matt and his friends in the summer. People like Tom and Sarah and others round his age? No?’

  Eliza shakes her head. ‘Definitely not, darling,’ she says to me. ‘Mind you, I can’t keep up with some of the people Matt has been friendly with down the years. His school-friends, his university friends, his work friends from his many different jobs. Did I ever tell you he once wanted to be a postman?’

  ‘No,’ I laugh. ‘I don’t think he has ever admitted that one to me, ha.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure this man you are talking about was indeed a friend of Matthew’s but I don’t remember ever meeting him,’ says Eliza. ‘And you say this lady has a child to him and was here to find him?’

  I look out onto the bay as we take our time behind a bus full of sightseeing tourists which is deliberately driving slowly to admire the view of the harbour.

  ‘This was where she met him, yes,’ I sigh. ‘Poor lady. I feel for her so much to be in such a dreadful situation with her little girl.’