I pause.
‘Of course you can,’ I tell her in sincerity. ‘Anything at all.’
‘Can you tell Rosie about her dad, about Matt, when the moment is right, Shelley?’ she asks. ‘I don’t think I can break it to her at this stage.’
‘Gosh, yes of course but are you sure you want it to come from me?’
She nods her head very slowly and licks her dry lips.
‘I’m so weak and sick,’ she says, ‘but I trust you more than anyone else to tell her after I go and please make sure she knows that I’m so happy about it all. You’ve done so much for us this week and now you have, through an incredible twist of fate, made my dying wish come true. You’ve found my daughter’s father and I know she will be loved so, so much. I can’t ask for anything more. I am happy. I will go from this life very content and happy.’
Juliette closes her eyes and sobs, squeezing my hand as she does and I realize that I am crying too, tears of sadness, happiness and joy all in one.
‘I am going to miss you so much, Juliette,’ I tell her, gasping now for breath between my free-falling tears. ‘You’re an amazing friend, woman and mother and I will look after your baby girl so well knowing that you are with us every step of the way. Sleep now, Juliette. Sleep and know that everything is safe with Rosie. She will always be welcomed at our home with her new family in this place that you loved so well.’
But Juliette doesn’t speak back to me anymore. Instead she just rests her weary soul and as she lies here in the silence of this room apart from the clock ticking and the rush of the sea outside, I slip away with my head bowed, hoping that I might one day see my very good friend again.
Now, I just need to break the news to my husband. Tomorrow can’t come quick enough.
Juliette
I am drifting.
I am sailing along on what feels like a big fluffy cloud and it is taking me somewhere but I don’t know where to. I see faces in the distance, familiar faces, waving to me, smiling and urging me to come to them, to keep sailing. They are like a magnetic force, pulling me along invisible rails on a one-way system and I feel that there is no going back. There is a woman, holding a little girl and their smiles warm my heart and make me go faster towards them.
‘Mum!’
I hear Rosie behind me, calling me back. I try to turn back but I can’t.
‘Mum!’ she calls again, louder this time and the faces in front of me fade away. When I slowly open my heavy, tired eyes, the room that was so bright and breezy when Shelley was here earlier is now dark and cosy and I see Rosie’s face in the glow of my bedside lamp.
‘Rosie, darling,’ I say softly. ‘You’re here. Where’s Dan?’
‘He’s fine, he’s asleep,’ she tells me. ‘Aunty Helen is asleep on the armchair. She only left you moments ago, to be with Nan and Grandpa but I didn’t want you to be alone in here.’
The worry on her face crushes my heart.
‘You don’t have to sit in a vigil for me,’ I say to my only daughter. ‘Did they sit for long? I didn’t even know Nan and Grandpa had arrived.’
‘They sat for a few hours. They talked to you but you couldn’t hear them.’
‘I must have been in a very deep sleep,’ I whisper. ‘I’m very tired, Rosie. You need to get some sleep too.’
‘I tried and tried but I can’t, Mummy’ she says to me. ‘I can’t sleep because I’m frightened. I don’t want to leave you alone. I don’t want to be alone.’
Mummy.
She called me ‘Mummy’. She hasn’t called me that since she was about three years old, she hasn’t woken me up frightened in the night since she reached double figures and my heart breaks for her.
I pat the bed beside me, just as I used to back then when she was so little and dependent and she crawls in beside me under the covers. She drapes her warm arms around me and I inhale her familiarity, my safe haven, my first true love. My daughter.
I think of Shelley and what she told me earlier about Matt and I wonder if it was all a dream. How can I even bring up what I now know to Rosie? I don’t think I can right now. It would be too much for her to handle.
‘Tell me what you were dreaming of,’ says Rosie, taking me by surprise. ‘You were almost singing in your sleep like you were having a really fun time. I shouldn’t have woke you, I’m sorry.’
I close my eyes and in my mind I try to go back to the bright yellow glow and the safety of the drifting cloud but I can’t. I can’t place the faces I saw anymore. The feeling I had has subsided and even though I remember how good it felt at the time, nothing compares to lying here with my baby girl in my arms.
‘I don’t know where I was in my dreams, darling,’ I say to Rosie. ‘But I want you to promise me something when and if you ever get scared again at night, maybe when I’m no longer here to soothe you.’
‘No, Mum,’ she says, but I need her to know this. ‘I can’t think of you not being here.’
‘I want you to remember something, darling,’ I say to her. ‘I want you to remember the day we spent on the beach horse-riding. I want you to picture my face and how I was so scared yet I did it, I totally did it and when I did I realised that I had nothing to be afraid of after all. ‘
‘I said you were a superstar and I will always believe you are,’ she whispers to me. ‘I will always remember you as a superstar, my hero, my brave, beautiful mother.’
‘And the songs we danced to here a few nights ago, I want you to turn them up in your head and when fear overcomes you, sing them out loud and remember how we laughed and danced and sang together,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll be dancing beside you. Dancing and singing. You won’t see me but you’ll know I’m there.’
She snuggles closer to me and I can tell by her breathing that her fear is beginning to subside.
‘I had no idea what I was going to do when you were born, you know,’ I whisper into her hair. ‘You were a fiery little bundle of energy and I was very alone and very afraid, yet as well as me teaching you the ways of the world in the best way I could for fifteen wonderful years, you taught me even more than I ever taught you, Rosie. You taught me the power of unconditional love, of the extremes that we will go to for the people we really love. Never let anything stand in the way of love, my darling. Always be kind, always be positive and always choose love.’
My voice is tired and I can feel myself drifting off to sleep again, just as Rosie is in my arms. She feels so peaceful beside me and I cherish this moment of silence and bliss, with only the sound of the clock ticking away my time and her breathing as she lies in my arms, clinging to me like she will never let go.
‘I will never let you go, Rosie,’ I whisper. ‘You will never be alone. I will always watch over you.’
I see the faces again, calling to me, urging me to come their way to a place free of pain and worry, where no heartache or fear exists and I don’t think I’ll be able to turn back this time. The woman and the little girl, waving at me to keep going, another much older couple wrapped in each other’s arms reassure me to come closer. A small crowd gathers and they do the same, faces from my past, faces that I know so well.
My eyes open and the pale yellow of the bedroom in this sweet little cottage blurs into the deep yellow of the light that is calling me in the distance. I am safe, I am happy, I am at peace.
‘I’ll sleep now, Rosie,’ I whisper. ‘I really need to sleep.’
My heavy eyes close again and the clock is ticking louder now, soothing me as the hours pass by, minute by minute, second by second.
Tick, tock; tick, tock; tick, tock …
Stop.
Chapter 26
Shelley
SATURDAY
I haven’t slept a wink all night as I wait for Matt’s key to turn in the door and announce his arrival home at last. He told me he would be here for nine yet it is almost ten and there is no sign of him yet but I know not to panic. He will be here soon, I am sure of that. I lie on the sofa, wrapped up in a cocoon with m
y duvet tucked around me and I’m ignoring the outside world as I ride these waves of mixed emotions as everything sinks in.
Since the call came through, I have been clutching my phone to my chest as I cry and Merlin whimpers on the floor beside me, sensing the devastation I am experiencing since I heard the news just moments ago.
I hear Matt’s car in the driveway at last and I bury my head deeper into the duvet that is wrapped around me. I can’t look at him even though I have been waiting for him all night long. I don’t know where to start right now. There is too much to explain and I don’t know where to begin.
Merlin’s ears prick up when Matt’s key turns and he bolts for the hallway, bouncing and barking with joy and I am pleased that at least one of us is able to give my husband the homecoming he so deserves.
‘Shell?’ I hear him call in the distance. ‘Shell, I’m home. Where are you, love?’
I want to run to him, to fall into his arms and tell him how glad I am that he is here but I don’t have the energy to move and I hate that he has to come home to see me so upset. I had visualised this moment for days now where I would be waiting for him with a big breakfast, with music on in the kitchen and I’d be casually dressed but looking quite fine and he’d wrap his arms around me and we’d dance and make love and make up for so much lost time.
He comes into the sitting room, still calling my name and when he sees my tear stained face, his look of joy and anticipation changes to one of despair and disappointment. This is not what he was expecting at all.
‘You fixed the house up, Shell,’ he says, and then he hunkers down beside me by the sofa. ‘Has something happened to upset you? What’s going on, love?’
I swallow hard.
‘She’s gone,’ I whisper to my husband. ‘My friend, Juliette, she died this morning, Matt. She died in her daughter’s arms.’
‘Oh, baby,’ says Matt and he pulls me towards him where I sob into his chest for Juliette and the hole in my heart she has filled within me by her presence, and the hole she has left in her cruel untimely death.
‘I need to go to see Rosie,’ I sniffle, knowing that my darling husband must be so confused right now. When he left I was a mess, when he was gone I was making great progress and now that he is finally home, I am a wreck again but it’s nothing, and at the same time it’s everything, to do with him or Lily and my ongoing grief.
‘Can I get you something?’ he asks me. ‘Some tea? Have you eaten yet?’
‘No, it’s okay, I can’t think of food,’ I mutter. ‘I’m so sorry you have come home to see me like this but she made such a difference to me, Matt. She made me see how important it is to keep living and to keep loving and even though I knew she wouldn’t be here forever, I already miss her so, so much.’
‘She sounds like she was an amazing woman,’ he says. ‘She must have come into your life for a reason. I know I sound like my mother now being all ‘serendipity’ but maybe Eliza isn’t so far off the mark after all.’
‘She was amazing and she did come into my life for so many reasons,’ I say to him, sitting up now and I close my eyes and see Juliette’s face. She looks happy now. She is not physically weak anymore and her skin is glowing as she waves at me. I breathe in. I feel her strength and when I open my eyes, I hear her words of wisdom in my ear as she tells me not to ever push my husband away when all I really want to do is hold him closer.
‘I love you, Matt,’ I say to him and he swallows hard, then takes my hand and kisses it softly. ‘I love you and I love what we have and all that we have worked for. We can still live, even though we miss Lily, and we can still laugh and we can still smile. Lily would want her mum and dad to smile. And most of all, we can still dance.’
Matt is lost for words. He just keeps kissing my hand and smiling and then he pulls me closer and this time I don’t push him away.
‘I have something to tell you, Matt,’ I say to him and he looks right into my eyes. ‘It’s going to take a while to sink in, but I need to tell you this now. It’s not bad news, believe me. It’s a surprise, a big one, but it’s not bad news, no way.’
He frowns but my smiles through my tears seem to reassure him and he wipes my tears with his thumbs like he has done so for so long.
‘You have …’ I begin. Oh God how do I say this. ‘You have a very beautiful daughter that you have never known about, Matt,’ I tell him and his frown returns.
‘What?’
I nod to him to tell him that it’s really true.
‘You have the most amazing daughter called Rosie,’ I continue. ‘She is fifteen and she looks a lot like you and she is the most beautiful creature, just like our Lily was, and I cannot wait for you to meet her. You never knew she existed but she’s real and she’s yours and she is so wonderful.’
Matt sits down on the sofa and stares at the floor, waiting for my words to sink in.
‘I have seriously no idea what you are talking about, Shelley?’ he says to me. ‘Where did this all come from? What’s going on? Are you okay?’
Am I okay? It’s a question I have been asked so many times, but one that I definitely know the answer to now.
‘Yes, I’m okay and we are all going to be okay, I promise,’ I say to Matt. ‘Some people are blessed with just one guardian angel, Matt, but I believe that I now have three and I’m going to be okay after all.’
‘You’re talking about this woman? And her daughter? I’m lost, Shelley? I have no idea what to take from all of this.’
‘One summer in August, here in Killara, an English girl called Julie, or so you thought? You told her your name was Skipper?’
His eyes widen and his face drains of colour. I nod in acknowledgement.
‘The summer I broke up with Alicia?’
‘Now, you’re with me?’ I say to him. ‘She had a baby, Matt, all on her own over in England and that baby is Rosie and you are going to love her. I already do. I can’t wait for you to meet her. She is going to need her daddy so much and I will do my best to be a great friend to her, just as I promised her beautiful mother I would.’
Matt puts his head in his hands and I put my arm around him and lay my head on his shoulder.
I have a lot of explaining to do to my bewildered husband, but I thank God that, unlike Juliette, we have plenty of time to do all the explaining that is needed and grow together, still taking one day at a time.
And I intend to use my time on this earth very wisely from now on, because I won’t wait for tomorrow, or until I’m forty, or until I’m anything, or anywhere, anytime in the future.
I will believe every day when I wake up and feel healthy and well enough to do so, that life begins right now.
Right here, with me, right now.
Epilogue
Shelley
Christmas Day, 5 months later
It’s late in the evening and Matt is tipsy and half-asleep, Dan is tipsy and half-asleep, Eliza and my dad are having an argument over a game of Scrabble at the table while Juliette’s parents look on not knowing what to say, desperately trying to interpret the mix of Irish accents that fill their side of the room.
Helen and Brian and her boys are helping themselves to leftovers in the kitchen, still wearing their paper hats from the crackers we pulled at the table earlier and Rosie and I are on the balcony sharing a blanket around our shoulders as we look out onto the black of the sea, the moody December sky and the only light we can see is the twinkle on the lighthouse in the distance.
‘Did you have a nice day?’ I ask her, knowing that whatever her reply, there is absolutely nothing more I could have done to make this Christmas as peaceful and perfect as I possibly could.
‘Yes, it was beautiful, thank you,’ she says and she looks right at me, her green eyes full of happiness and pain all rolled into one. ‘Do you think she is watching us right now, Shelley? I really hope she’s here in some way, enjoying the day as much as we all did. She loved Christmas, especially when it snowed.’
I close m
y eyes and try to feel her near me. I have my own hopes too. I hope that she has found my girl like she said she would. I hope she has found my mum too and that she will let me know, just like she said she would.
‘I have no doubt she is watching our every move and trying to tell us what to do from away up there,’ I say to Rosie. ‘Bossing us around, making us laugh and pushing us to be the best we can be. I have no doubt.’
Rosie chuckles. ‘I think you’re right, she probably is,’ she says. ‘She loved Christmas so much. It’s the one time of year that will always remind me of her, no matter how old I get. Christmas was her time. I think she’d be very happy to see how much fun we had today. Thank you for having us all over for dinner and presents and all the works. It means a lot and it was a great distraction from how we would have been otherwise, sitting round the table in Helen’s and staring at an empty chair.’
‘It means a lot to us too to have you all here, believe me, Rosie,’ I say to her. ‘We’re family now so it’s the least we can do. You and Matt have a lot of catching up to do and your mum didn’t believe in wasting time, so neither should we.’
‘We do have a lot to catch up on,’ she says with a smile. ‘That day when you found me on the sand dunes … It seems now that it was all meant to be, doesn’t it?’
‘Maybe it was. Do you believe in angels, Rosie?’ I ask her and she shrugs.
‘I dunno. I would like to believe that something makes things happen for the greater good,’ she says. ‘I sometimes like to think of my mum as an angel now, looking out for me, making sure that I don’t get too sad or lonely. She brought me here to you, after all.’
‘She did,’ I whisper. Look out for the colour blue, I remember Eliza telling me and I smile at the memory and how far we have all come.
‘At least I know now where I get my geekiness from now,’ says Rosie. ‘Oh, I don’t mean that in a bad way! No offence! Matt’s not a geek at all, but you know what I mean.’
‘None taken,’ I say and I can’t help but smirk. ‘I know exactly what you mean. He’s an architect and a stickler for detail so I suppose you could say he has a geeky side. You have so much to learn from each other, Rosie and it’s going to be so much fun. I know you and Matt are going to get on very well.’
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