Shelly Rossington was an MND sufferer and friend of Paul Foreman, who died in September 2023.
Shelly and Paul first met when he attended an MND support group in July 2023, with him unwittingly committing a faux pas by leaning down to talk to her, but Paul didn't stay for very long as he became freaked out by how sick everyone was and left. The pair crossed paths at the next meeting when Paul found the courage to attend again, and Shelly assured him that she understood why he walked out last time. Paul liked Shelly's positive attitude and befriended her, however, Shelly refused to tell him how long she had been suffering from MND as it would be wrong for him to chart his progress against someone else's. Paul told his partner Billy Mayhew that speaking to Shelly had cleared a lot of things up in his mind, and the threesome later met up at Roy's Rolls where Billy wasted no time confiding in Shelly about Paul's assisted suicide request.
Over the next month, Shelly and Paul became close friends with him visiting her when he felt suffocated by Billy's mollycoddling. Paul's mother Bernie Winter worried that he was over-exerting himself by trying to look after Shelly as well as managing his own condition and insisted on helping Shelly out too whenever she could. Paul and Bernie were both present as Shelly's flat when she took delivery of a load of laptops. Shelly confessed that her employers fired her for having MND, so she decided to get back at them by buying laptops on her old company credit card and commission a neighbour to sell them on in order to pay for her carers. Shelly offered to buy Paul anything he needed on the cards too, but he refused as to avoid getting in trouble with the law again like he had earlier in the year for his role in a carjacking. After hearing that Shelly's neighbour could no longer sell the laptops, Bernie returned and offered to sell them for a cut of the profit to which Shelly agreed. Bernie recruited Big Garth to help her sell Shelly's laptops and her partner Dev Alahan was disgusted in her actions.
In September, Paul became concerned by how ill Shelly seemed after visiting her. He attempted to call her the next day to tell her that he had been waylaid visiting her that day, unaware that she had already been found dead in her sleep by her carer Jim. Paul was saddened by Shelly's death especially when he learned that she had died alone. He took it upon himself to organise Shelly's funeral but during the proceeding he was called out by her brother Kieran who objected to Paul performing a reading as he had only known Shelly a short while. Paul retorted that Kieran hadn't cared about Shelly when she was alive and a fight broke out between the pair after which the outraged mourners shamed Kieran into leaving the funeral.
In light of Shelly's death, an investigation was opened into her credit card scam and Bernie was arrested. She was sentenced to three months in prison that December but was released the following month.
List of appearances[]
2023