Page 11 of A Part of Me and You
‘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.Weare 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 manages 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.
