Page 10 of A Part of Me and You
‘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.’
