Page 76 of A Part of Me and You
Rosie doesn’t talk much when she arrives in the shop around lunchtime but I know what she is after. Her eyes are red and puffy and her hair is scrunched back off her face and she is without her signature make up. Instead she is pale and blotchy and looks like she needs a good chat.
‘You want to go for a walk?’ I say to her as she pretends to look through rails of clothes she isn’t interested in. ‘We can go and grab Merlin and take twenty minutes on the beach?’
‘But it’s your lunch break and you need to eat,’ she tells me, not looking my way. ‘You don’t have to come too if you don’t want to. I just needed to get out of the cottage and I didn’t know where else to go. Aunty Helen is getting on my nerves already, Shelley. She is just freaking out and I can’t cope with it right now.’
I know that feeling all too well.
‘Come on,’ I say to her. ‘It’s almost one o’clock and I’ve been here since nine which I’m not used to, so I’d love a bit of fresh air to blow off the cobwebs.’
‘I can get the dog if you like?’ she says to me. ‘If you need to stay until one?’
‘You’re an angel,’ I say to her and I give her the keys to the house. God, I am so going to miss her when she leaves tomorrow. ‘You know the alarm code, yes?’
‘Just as well I’m not a robber in disguise,’ she jokes and off she goes to get her good old buddy while I close up the till.
Ten minutes later Rosie is back with the dog and we walk down to the beach together in silence. She sniffles a bit as she walks which helps me start up a conversation because Ireallydo not know what to say now. There’s no point telling her that everything is going to be okay because we both know that it really is not. There’s no point in saying clichéd statements about time healing everything, because I am the one person who knows that it certainly does not.
‘Are you getting a cold?’ I ask her and she shakes her head.
‘Allergies,’ she tells me. ‘I always sniffle and sneeze at this time of year but Mum normally gets me antihistamines. She forgot to pack them this time.’
‘I can get you some on the way back,’ I say to her and she doesn’t reply. ‘I used to suffer terribly with hayfever in summer. It sucks big time.’
‘So does cancer,’ says Rosie and we both stop in our tracks. She throws her arms around me and leans into me as she sobs and I just let her do so without any questions, without any words, because there is really no way to deal with this other than to let her lean on me and cry.
I look out onto the lighthouse as I rub her weary head and I ask my mum to give me the strength to get through this for Rosie. The thought of losing Juliette after knowing her only a week is almost killing me inside but this is not about me. It’s about this darling teenage girl who seems to have taken a shine to me and is leaning on me for comfort so I can’t get sad for me. I have to stay strong for her.
We slowly start to walk again along the sand and Merlin provides a nice distraction when he tugs at his lead and when Rosie lets him go we watch and laugh as he bounds straight for the water until we can only see his head as he paddles along.
‘I hated this place when I first got here,’ Rosie says to me. ‘I don’t know why but I didn’t want to like it. I think I was jealous of my mum’s enthusiasm for it. Like, I wanted her to focus all her attention on me and not be so consumed with happy memories of a place that existed in her life before I did.’
We sit on the sand dunes and look out at the sea.
‘That’s totally understandable,’ I say to her. ‘I can’t say I was a big fan either when I first got here because for me it represented a change that I didn’t want to face up to. I didn’t want to come here and stay with my aunt. I wanted to be at home with my mum and dad and for things to be just like they used to be, but that was never going to happen. It is going to be very difficult for you, Rosie but all I can say is that if you ever need me, you only have to call no matter what time of day or night. I know I’m not your mother and no one will ever mean the same to you but I will always be your friend. And you have Dan as well. You really do seem close to him. You seemed happy to see him last night?’
She smiles when I mention Dan.
‘Maybe Dan will go back to being the old Dan that I loved so much and not the Dan who has been totally unrecognizable lately,’ she says. ‘We used to fight like cat and dog for Mum’s attention but as I got a little bit older I realised how much Mum loved him and needed him and I accepted that he is really a very cool person after all.’
‘That’s very mature of you,’ I say to Rosie. ‘It can’t have been easy for you when you were used to having your mum all to yourself for so long.’
‘I hate being an only child,’ she says, looking at the sand now as she makes circles with her fingers. ‘Like you said, if I had a sister or brother maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone?’
She looks up at me with huge tear-filled eyes and I put my arm around her and hold her close.
‘I always wanted a big sister too,’ I say to her. ‘I watched my cousins grow up together and saw how they stuck together when times were tough like they were knitted from the same pattern. And then when I had my own daughter I realised the bond you have with blood relations really is like that. You are knitted together. It’s totally unconditional. It’s the best feeling in the world.’
I can feel myself spiralling backwards to that dark hole again when I think about the bond I had with Lily and how I will never get that back again, with anyone, and I don’t want to let it happen right now. I need to stay positive. I need to help Rosie. I can’t slip. I just can’t.
‘Do you ever think of your father?’ I ask her, feeling that I can bring this up now that we know that Skipper wasn’t Juliette’s one-night stand after all.
Rosie looks up at me with wide eyes like I have asked her the million-dollar question she always wanted to answer.
‘All the time,’ she says. ‘I don’t bring it up to Mum or Dan but I always thought that someday we would find my real dad and I’d have a ready-made family who would fill in all these gaps I feel inside. Someone who wasn’t just an aunt or a step-dad or a friend – someone who is connected to me for real, you know?’
I think of my own father and how despite his struggle in the earlier years after Mum died, and despite the miles between us I don’t know how I would have coped this far without him.
‘Your dad is out there somewhere,’ I say to her. ‘And I am going to help you find him, Rosie.’
