rest of my days vomiting and pumping my organs with chemo and radiotherapy but I’d rather spend them with you and Rosie doing nice things. I want to go out of this world with a bit of grace and dignity, if you can understand that. At home, preferably.’
Helen, of course, is having none of that and her eyes are filled with fear. My God, the agony I have caused her…
‘But there has to be some—’
‘There isn’t,’ I remind her. ‘There is nothing. I know, I know. It sucks, big time but please don’t cry, Helen. I can’t cope with any more tears and this mascara goes to shit when I sneeze, never mind coping with tears.’
But it’s too late. She is sobbing and finding it hard to breathe so just like I did with Michael earlier, I get up to comfort her.
‘I don’t want you to be sad, Hel,’ I say into her hair that smells, as always, of apple shampoo. I raise my eyes towards the ceiling and swallow hard. ‘I had a quiet suspicion, no matter how much I denied it to myself that this might be the news I’d get today. Yes, it’s crap and it’s unfair and it’s not what we want but we need to accept it because there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Nothing. I’m so sorry, Helen. I’m sorry.’
It’s as much as I can say to her as she tries to digest this latest blow because I think I may be in shock too. She gets up, wiping her nose on the back of her hand and tries to get busy.
‘But you were doing so well,’ she sniffles. ‘How can it be so far advanced? How?’
‘It’s called cancer,’ I say, and the very word makes me so angry but I will never let it show. ‘I am trying to make sense of it all too but I don’t really have time to contemplate or analyse so it’s time for me to take action and do the things I should have done years ago. I’m going to make some really nice plans.’
Now, Helen shakes her head.
‘Juliette, you don’t need to make any more plans!’ she says. ‘Your life has been one big long plan that never got completed.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The thirty things to do before you’re thirty plan? I think you managed to do five? The list of life plans you decided to make for Rosie when she turned thirteen but didn’t finish? Dan’s most magical book of wedding surprises?’
She starts to laugh and I can’t help but laugh too. She does have a point.
‘Michael says I should go away for a few days to reflect, you know, a change of scenery,’ I tell her. ‘Somewhere quiet, away from reality if you like just to let this all sink in.’
‘What? Away where to?’ she asks. ‘Is he … is he sure you won’t …?’
‘He is pretty sure I won’t die in the next week or so,’ I say with a nervous laugh. ‘I’m thinking of going to Ireland, me and Rosie, what do you think? I want to go there and stay by the sea for a few days and think about … life and well, death I suppose.’
But there’s no pulling the wool over my sister’s eyes. She knows exactly what Ireland means to me.
‘No, Juliette, you just stop right there,’ is her adamant reply as she opens and closes my kitchen cupboards and drawers, but then I didn’t expect her reaction to be any different. ‘Don’t say that. You’re not thinking straight, Juliette. You’re in shock. Just stop.’
‘But I am thinking straight,’ I say to her. ‘Even Michael said it would be good for me.’
‘Michael doesn’t know your history there!’
‘No, well, yes, but actually he knows a lot more than you think he does,’ I try to explain. ‘But that’s not why I want to go back. It’s a spectacular place, Helen. It’s my favourite place in the world.’
‘Cornwall is a spectacular place,’ says Helen. ‘Scotland is a spectacular place. It has scenery and the sea and good food and it’s—’
‘Yes, and so does Barry Island and Weston-super-Mare and bloody Blackpool but it’s not where I want to go, Helen,’ I say. ‘I want to show Rosie the one place in this world I loved the most and I want to tell her how special it was and how it still is for us both. I want to go there and switch off, and if anything else happens, then that’s a huge bonus, but that’s not the only reason why I’m going, believe me.’
My big sister is going to take a lot more convincing than that, but I was expecting this. I didn’t think for one second that she would be helping me pack my bags and cheering me on my merry way to Killara, with Rosie in tow, to find a man who once sailed boats there – when here I am, back in the real world about to pop my clogs. No way.
‘So, what are your other reasons then? I don’t believe you for one second and have you thought about Dan in all of this?’ Helen is still rifling through the kitchen drawers.
‘Helen, Dan will understand,’ I try to explain. ‘I’ll give him a call and tell him everything.’
‘Juliette, you don’t need any stress and you certainly don’t need to be chasing unicorns and rainbows at this stage,’ she says to me. ‘At last, goodness, how can it be hard to find something to write on around here?’
She opens an old notebook of mine, and then licks her finger to flick through the pages until she finds a blank one.
‘Why do you need something to write on?’ I ask. ‘I just want to go there and spend quality time with Rosie. It will be great for us both, you know it will.’
She starts to write.
‘You’ll never find him,’ she says, still writing. ‘You hardly know anything about him. You said you don’t even remember his proper name.’
She has a point. Except it’s not that I don’t remember his proper name. I never knew his proper name in the first place.
‘I do remember the rest of him though,’ I reply, and it’s true. I remember his dark hair and his muscular back and the fumbling and laughing and urgency and the smell of alcohol – and the shame I felt when I woke up alone and the fear on the way home to Birmingham when sobriety kicked in and I realised how stupid we’d been not to have used any protection whatsoever.
I remember how I looked for him before I left the village the next day, just to see if he cared or wanted to see me again or would acknowledge what had happened between us but he had disappeared. I remember the hurt and shame I felt and then how Birgit and I had laughed and laughed at the very thought of me, a good Catholic girl from a convent school having a one night stand with a handsome Irishman when I didn’t even get his real name, never mind his number.
But most of all, I remember the emptiness I felt when I got on the plane home to Birmingham without Birgit to laugh about it with, and the feeling that my life had just changed forever. And oh, how it had.
All of that, I can remember loud and clear.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask my sister who is still making notes in front of me while I daydream down memory lane.
‘Nothing,’ she says.
‘You’re writing nothing?’
‘Okay, okay, I’m making plans,’ she says. ‘It’s my turn to make some plans. It’s not just you who makes plans in life, you know.’
I look across at my sister’s notes and let out a loud sigh that makes her jump when I see the latest entry on her ‘plan’.
‘What?’ she shouts, dropping the pen with panic. ‘Are you in pain? What, Juliette?’
‘No, I am not in pain,’ I tell her. ‘I’m just wondering why on earth you’re writing that stupid stuff in front of me. Make room for Rosie? At least wait until I leave before you try and plan your life after me. Jesus, Helen, you have as much tact as our mother sometimes.’
‘Don’t