Page 78 of A Part of Me and You
Shelley
I can’t stop my hands from shaking so I put my phone on the kitchen table with the photo of Rosie as a young toddler staring back at me. I asked her to send it to me, trying my best not to relay my shock and my sense of wonder but I know the poor child was traumatised at my reaction.
‘You should go home,’ I told her. ‘You need to go back to the cottage to your mum, I mean, and I’m going to go home too. I don’t feel like walking right now, sorry Rosie. I don’t feel very well right now.’
The look on her face was like I had punched her in the heart. Like I was a boyfriend telling her it was over without giving her the full story. Like I was dumping her and telling her to just go away so I didn’t have to look at her.
I didn’t mean to shove her away but I needed to be alone to absorb this, so I wrote her a text message to try and explain without letting her know of my real suspicion.
‘Rosie, I am so sorry, I was just a bit freaked at the resemblance to Lily,I write.It’s happened before many times, even in people that bear no resemblance at all. I didn’t mean to chase you away and I am sorry. I’ll call to see you all later this evening. Please don’t be scared. I’m always here for you xx’
I press send and bring the photo of a young Rosie back onto my screen and I take the photo of Lily from the table in the hallway, then I sit them side by side. The hair is identical, there is no denying that, soft dark brown corkscrew curls. The eyes are so similar, their almond shape, their shade of green. The smile is so alike, the baby teeth, the cheeks, the dimples, but the eyes … oh my God, the eyes. I can’t breathe.
I lift my phone and call my mother-in-law, not knowing what it is exactly that I want to say but I need to show her this to see if I am finally losing my mind.
‘Eliza? Eliza can you please come here?’ I stammer. ‘I need to show you something quickly.’
‘Shelley, are you okay?’ my mother in law asks in a panic. ‘What on earth has happened, darling? Is it Matt? Are you okay?’
I never ring Eliza these days. I never ring anyone come to think of it but I need her to come and tell me that this is just another figment of my grieving imagination.
I feel sick. I can’t leave the house, no way. I need to stay here until someone tells me I am imagining things. I want to send the photo to Matt and for him to tell me no way, there is no big resemblance and not to be so silly but I can’t let him see that I’m behaving like this again when he thinks I’m getting better. He’ll be so disappointed and will definitely think I’m going insane if I’m off the mark on this.
‘I’m out for lunch with Betty right now,’ Eliza tells me. ‘We’re just in the village though so I can be with you in a few minutes. Sit tight, Shelley. I’ll be right there.’
She hangs up and I realize that Betty was meant to be sick today, wasn’t she? Why couldn’t she come to work when she could clearly go out for lunch with Eliza? What the hell is going on?
My phone rings and the sing song ringtone makes me want to throw it outside over the balcony of our home, as far away from me as it can be. Matt’s name is on the screen now but I can’t talk to him when I am in this state. He will be gutted to see me acting like this again. They’ll call the doctor for me again. I shouldn’t have called Eliza. She will call the doctor and they will bring me in to hospital again and fill me full of medication so that I am even more numb than I been for three years.
He rings again. I still don’t answer.
‘Shelley? Shelley it’s me, love?’
Eliza’s high heels click across my tiled hallway as she lets herself in and when she comes into the kitchen, I know by her face that she already knows.
‘You know, don’t you?’ I say to her. ‘That’s why you were out for lunch with Betty. She isn’t sick at all. She couldn’t face me again because she thought she might spill the beans. She practically wrote it down for me to find when she was working in my shop!’
‘Shelley, Shelley, hush darling,’ says Eliza. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about. You need to sit down. Can I get you anything? Tea? A brandy?’
‘I do not want a fucking brandy!’ I scream at her. ‘Look at this! Look!’
I push the phone under her nose and she takes a step back.
‘Tell me I’m insane, tell me I need to stop this,’ I say, barely able to string my words together. ‘Who is that?’ I ask her. ‘Do you know who that child is?’
‘Shelley, you’re frightening me,’ she says to me. ‘Why are you asking me this? It’s my granddaughter for goodness sake. I’d know those eyes anywhere.’
Her granddaughter! Oh my God. My blood runs cold.
I fall onto the nearest chair and I stare at the floor. I breathe in and out, in and out, in and out. I find my wedding ring. Something familiar. I touch it. I twist it. Can this be true? Is Eliza really seeing what I am seeing at last?
Eliza pulls a chair across beside me and puts her hand on my lap. She hands me back my phone.
‘This isn’t our Lily, is it?’ she says, her face etched with worry.
I shake my head in response. ‘No, no it isn’t,’ I mumble.
‘It’s that English girl, isn’t it?’ she whispers to me. ‘The one you’ve been spending so much time with. The one whose mother is dying. What’s her name again?’
