to travel with him sometimes to see the fruits of his labour. I am so lucky in so many ways and sometimes I need to remind myself of that.
We have a beautiful life here by the sea on Ireland’s famous Wild Atlantic Way, but it still kills me inside that I can’t give my husband the one thing we both want the most – a family.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay when I’m gone this time?’ Matt asks, just as Merlin jumps up on me, his wet paws covering my top in muddy sand. ‘I could ask Mum to come and—’
‘No, please, Matt, don’t even go there,’ I reply with a pinch. ‘You know I’d rather be alone.’
‘But, Shelley—’
‘No buts, Matt. I don’t want your mother here,’ I say to him, my voice sharp with purpose. ‘I don’t want Mary or Sarah or Jack or flipping Jill, or whoever it is you’re going to suggest next, to pop in and check on me, or take me out to lunch or go shopping with me. I don’t want anyone, okay. Now, please don’t go behind my back arranging things. I will be perfectly fine and much happier left alone, just as I like it.’
The tears are coming, I can feel them. Matt takes a deep breath and kicks the sand.
‘I’m only trying to make sure you’ll be alright,’ he says again, and I can hear the hurt in his voice. I have nothing to give him back.
‘I’m fine,’ is all I can say.
‘But I’ll be gone for a week this time and what are you going to do for seven whole days while I’m away? Mope around here on your own in that empty shell of a house and cry until you’re sick again?’
I can feel my lip tremble at the thought of how ill I can make myself since Lily died.
‘Stop it Matt, please. I just want to be on my own,’ I tell him again. ‘It’s better that way, please.’
Matt’s face crumples with worry but he knows I won’t change my mind. I have developed a routine to get through this heartache; it centres around working at my boutique shop during the day, where I partake only in small talk about clothes or the weather with customers, and then preparing and cooking my evening meal, with which I might have a glass of wine to fill the void I constantly feel. I might then read for a while or take a walk on the beach before bed but I don’t mingle, I don’t mix and I don’t want to. Not yet.
The sun drifts down in the distance and the orange and gold light shines on my husband’s face as he looks at me with despair.
‘We’d better get back home or you’ll miss your flight,’ I tell Matt, ruffling the dog’s head as he obliviously bounces around in excitement. ‘I know you mean well, but I’d rather be alone, Matt. Please don’t worry. Plus, I have this big guy to look after me, don’t I, Merlin?’
The dog barks and jumps higher at the sound of his own name. Matt just shrugs.
‘Sorry for losing it,’ I say to him.
‘Again,’ he says. ‘You mean sorry, for losing it again.’
And again I know I am pushing it. I can see in his face that he is weary and tired of trying so hard, only to be always told no. God, I dread the day when he has had enough of tiptoeing around me.
‘Yes, I’m sorry, again,’ I say, but we both know it won’t be the last time I turn down his offers of help, or the last time I will push him away.
I may have figured out how to exist without Lily, but I have a long, long way to go before I can learn to live without her and my marriage is crumbling under all the pressure and pain that her loss has left behind. I don’t want to live like this anymore.
But least we’re still clinging on.
Juliette
As the sun sets in the evening sky, I can’t bring myself to go home just yet. I drive to Cannon Hill Park after leaving the hospital and spend the best part of half an hour trying to eat a ham sandwich that tastes like grit on my tongue, before I end up throwing it to the ducks in the lake. This place, this little slice of heaven is often the only piece of tranquillity I can find in my bustling day-to-day existence and I often wonder, now more than ever, why I settled for city life when the silence of nature has always appealed to me so much more.
Growing up on an inner-city housing estate, I always longed to live by the coast where I could walk by the sea, bake my own bread and grow my own vegetables and maybe have my own ducks in a pond in the garden. One day, I’d hoped to live a totally self-sustainable life, and I could read books and listen to loud music and no one would tell me not to because no one would be close enough to hear. That was my plan for my future, but my future isn’t happening now, is it? It’s too late. I have left it too late thinking I had all the time in the world. Christ.
It hurts my head to reflect too much, but I guess I’m going to have to get used to recalling my past as my days here come to an end. I remember telling Birgit, my Danish one-time travel companion, about my ten-year life plan and how she encouraged me to follow my dreams to travel the world.
‘Always stop and savour the simple things,’ was her advice back then, and even though I didn’t ever get to be that globetrotter (unless you count package holidays to Spain or an annual weekend camping at Pontins), I have always remembered her words and promised myself that one day I would do just that. I would slow down and be present, I’d take in and appreciate everything I had instead of always looking out for tomorrow … but I don’t have too many tomorrows left now, do I?
It is July, my favourite time of year; when daisies bow and sway in what looks like a yellow and white sea below me, and the tree I carved my name in when I was a teenager is just in the distance, looking a bit more solemn despite its summer bloom. Maybe it knows what’s going on today too. Maybe everyone knew this was going to happen. Everyone that is, apart from me.
I pick at my nails, my weak, brittle nails that haven’t seen a good manicure in months and then I close my eyes and breathe. Sometimes it’s good to just breathe.
My mind races and I battle with my thoughts, trying desperately not to think of all the things I am going to really miss when I go. I count the months forward in my head. Michael couldn’t give me a specific timeframe on my life but I know in my heart that at a big stretch I’ll make Christmas. I’d give anything to see a white Christmas this year and, just one more time, to sit around the tree with my family and snuggle up with them as the snow falls, in front of a blazing fire.
I hold my head in my hands and try to fight off the wave of panic and breathlessness that I know is just around the corner. Rosie. What the hell is going to happen to my beautiful, innocent Rosie who has no idea what is going on and what life has laid out in front of her? And then the guilt … my God, the guilt for the life I brought her into; no father in her life, and now I am set to leave her all by herself with absolutely no one to call her own. Yes, she has my sister and her grandparents, and Dan for what it’s worth, but it’s not the same.
Who will take her to the cinema like I do, where we stuff our faces with nachos and popcorn and fizzy drinks and then complain about feeling sick all the way home? Who will know that
