Page 50 of A Part of Me and You
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.
