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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 recognise 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.

‘You are killing me,’ he said to me when I told him I was coming here. I couldn’t bear to tell him how ironic his words were. It’s not him who is dying, it is me and this is exactly the reason why I need to create some space between us. He can’t cope with my illness, he never could and the more he drowns his sorrows in drink and self-pity, the more I feel the need to run. I love him, I need him, but right now I don’t have the energy to prop him up when I need to focus on what will become of Rosie.

‘So, what do you think?’ I ask her as we stand in a puddle on the pavement.

‘It looks boring,’ she says. ‘I don’t understand why you wanted to come here to mark your birthday. Why couldn’t we have gone to Spain or Paris or even London like you said we would? Somewhere exciting! You’re such a weirdo.’

Weirdo I can live with. Boring I can definitely live with. I am just delighted I convinced her to come with me in the first place, because believe me, it wasn’t easy. There were so many more important things to do at home like hang out with Josh and Sophie and the new kid on our block, Brandon whose father does security for some Disney pop princess whose name I can’t remember. But I just know that Rosie will love it as much as I do, even if she never finds out the very important, but very much secondary, reason I decided on here over any other more exotic location.

Apart from the weather, I must admit that nothing seems very different about Killara from that summer all those years ago. I recognise the pubs of course – the bright pink exterior walls of O’Reilly’s with the nightly Irish trad music sessions’ the Beach House Café on the pier, that boasts the best seafood chowder in the country; and the bright blue Brannigan’s Bar and B&B, the place I met Skipper on that hazy, drunken night when my daughter was conceived.

I’m not staying in Brannigan’s this time but I decide I will pop in just for old times’ sake while we wait on our check-in time at our cottage, a funky little rental right by the harbour which is the only thing that Rosie seems excited about.

‘Aunty Helen has such good taste,’ she said when my sister emailed us a link to the cottage rental website last night. We couldn’t believe that it was available but the owner had had a last minute cancellation – a little whitewashed two bedroom cottage with a bright yellow door, fully equipped with surf boards and wet suits and the owner offers boat rides out to the famous Cliffs of Moher, which I’ve promised Rosie will be on our agenda. The very thought of doing even half of what I’ve planned to do here exhausts me but, as promised, my list is made and I can’t wait to get stuck in and make some memories with my girl.

We stop outside Brannigan’s and I take a deep breath and bite my lip.

‘Do you mind if we pop in here, just for a look around?’ I say to Rosie. ‘We have half an hour until our cottage is ready.’

Rosie shrugs and shivers a little, then follows me inside to the steamy heat of the bar and it really is like stepping back in time. Its interior smells like home-cooked dinners and alcohol, there’s a patterned navy and beige carpet on all the floors and despite being only just after lunchtime, there is already a crowd gathered in the poky bar, all glued to some sort of sport on the giant TV in the corner.

In my head it’s the summer of sixteen years ago, and despite the noise in the bar I can hear his voice, I can see Birgit dancing, I can smell the booze and the sweat and his aftershave on my skin and—

‘Sorry about the noise!’

‘What? Sorry, I was miles away,’ I tell the barman. ‘I’m just thinking how … it doesn’t matter. What were you saying?’

‘I was apologizing. About the noise. There’s a big game on today,’ he says to me with a smile. He’s cute and if I wasn’t so sick I might try and flirt with him. My sister would kill me if she could read my mind. He looks about twenty-five years old at the most.

‘Who’s playing?’ asks Rosie, who all of a sudden has taken an interest in Irish sport and seems to have forgotten how dull this place just seemed to her. ‘You’ll have to forgive my ignorance, being English. Foreign and all that.’

The man-boy winks at her and then smiles at me. Oh, how I wish I was in a position to flirt back – if my teenage daughter wasn’t here to compete with me of course. And if I was fit enough to even contemplate having some fun. I am wearing my favourite blonde bobbed wig on this trip and apart from my bloated, puffy face and slightly podgy frame from the steroids, to the outside world it’s not at all obvious that there’s anything wrong with my riddled body. I almost feel sorry for the lad who definitely has a twinkle in his eye and doesn’t realise the pitiful truth in front of him.

‘Galway are playing Mayo,’ he says but our faces tell him we’re clueless. ‘Gaelic football? A derby. A bit like Manchester United playing Liverpool, only a little bit rougher and tougher.’

‘Ah, I get it now,’ says Rosie. ‘I hope you win. My great-grandad is from Waterford. Is that near here at all?’

He shakes his head and laughs, then whispers.

‘I’m secretly cheering for Mayo, but don’t tell anyone in here that. If you’re around later, pop by and I’ll explain the rules.’

She glances at me and smiles back at him in a way I have never seen before. My daughter is flirting with this young man and she doesn’t care that I am standing here. She is growing up. Oh God, I am going to miss all of this and I won’t be here for her to turn to when her crushes don’t go her way. Who will be her first proper boyfriend? Who will break her heart? Who will she cry to when she doesn’t know how to understand all the feelings that come with falling in love?

But I have witnessed this moment, yes. We have only arrived here on our little vacation and already I am seeing new things in her, and I hope she does so with me too over the next few days. I have seen with my own two eyes, my darling teenage daughter catch the eye of a boy she fancies and if I never get to see it again, at least this is something I can carry in my heart until the end of my life. We are making memories already, but every one of them is going to remind me that I don’t have many left.

Damn you, sickness. This dying game is no fun at all.