Page 20 of A Part of Me and You
‘Well, no I don’t know your mother, but—’
‘She thinks no one knows anything about her,’ says the girl. ‘But I know more than she thinks I do. I’m not stupid. I just don’t know what the hell I’m doing here and I want to go home so she can die back there instead! No point dying here where no one knows her, is there?’
So, her mother is dying. Oh no. Oh, this poor little girl.
She cries openly now and wipes her face on the back of the sleeves of her sodden jacket. I sit down beside her. I don’t think twice about it and I don’t notice the rain anymore. I just sit.
‘Just go away and mind your own business,’ says the girl. ‘You don’t have to feel sorry for me. I seem to be doing a good enough job of that myself, thank you very much.’
I should really go and do what she says, but I don’t. I wait. I stay.
‘I don’t want to go just yet, if you don’t mind,’ I tell her, not knowing where this urge to stay with her is coming from.
I normally walk straight past strangers these days. The old me would have stopped and helped a stranger, but not the me after Lily died. These days I normally don’t take time to care. I don’t take time to care because I usuallydon’tcare – but this time, I do.
‘And you didn’t scare me at all actually,’ I continue. ‘You remind me of someone that I know very well and it startled me, that’s all.’
She looks at me like I’ve just sprouted two horns at the suggestion that she could possibly remind me of someone. Imagine.
‘Well I don’t know anyone around here so you must be seeing things,’ she tells me and looks away, hugging her knees again. ‘I can’t possibly remind you of anyone you know.’
A cold shiver runs down my spine as I realize who she reminds me of, and it’s not my Lily after all.
‘It’s not someone from here I was talking about,’ I explain. ‘It’s someone who came here to live and who never went home, quite a few years ago. A young girl, just like you.’
‘Who?’ she asks. ‘Someone from England? Don’t tell me, it’s the accent that gives me away.’
Her voice is dripping with sarcasm and I can’t help but laugh just a little.
‘My mind is a bit mixed up and I thought you were someone you couldn’t possibly be, but now I realize – I realize you remind me ofmeactually,’ I tell her and this seems to get her attention.
‘Yeah, right,’ she says. ‘You have no idea who I am or what I’m like, so how can I remind you of yourself. That’s stupid.’
‘Believe me,’ I tell her. ‘When I was a lot younger. I was exactly like you are now in a lot of ways. Exactly.’
And it’s true. She really is just like me twenty years ago and it’s like looking at my own reflection, not physically, but in her I see the same sense of deep despair and anger that she feels inside right now. The hopelessness. The fear that the one person who you need the most is going to leave you soon and that no one else in the whole world can understand what you are going through.
‘My name is Shelley,’ I say to her and her tear-filled eyes meet mine again. ‘I live in the house over there on the hill, the one across from the lighthouse. I wonder … would you like to come over and get dried off and call your mum from there? She must be worried sick.’
She doesn’t look so hard around the edges now. Her lip trembles and I see she is just a little girl, really. She is a lot younger at heart than she looks, beneath the makeup and the attitude and the tears.
‘You’re scared, right?’ I say to her and she nods, biting her lip. ‘Is your mum sick?’
Her bottom lip trembles more and she breathes in stifled muffles, trying so hard not to let it all go.
‘She is … she is very sick,’ she stutters. ‘She’s dying.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I mumble.
‘She’s dying and I’m so afraid that she’s going to die really soon and I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. It’s so unfair!’
I gasp inside. This is like looking in the mirror, like looking back in time.
‘Of course, you’re scared,’ I say to her. ‘Is that why you’ve run away from her? To lash out and cry here on your own.’
She nods again and I wait for a backlash from her but instead she leans forward to pat the dog who has settled at her feet, still feasting on her bag of chips.
‘You’re scared because there is nothing you can do and you’re angry and frightened,’ I continue. ‘And you are so frightened you are going to be left on your own and it feels like no one understands what you are going through.’
