What If?

by Shari Low

  Acknowledgment

  Twenty-one years ago, I was working as a sales manager and had been married for five years to a bloke I got engaged to a week after I met him. I was a bit spontaneous like that.

  And despite having a good job, a nice flat and a first name relationship with our local travel agent, I was in the midst of a premature mid-life crisis on two fronts. I’d been trying to get pregnant for years but my ovaries weren’t obliging, and I’d harboured a dream to be an author ever since I was a teenager who, like Carly Cooper, secretly read eighties bonkbusters using the light on my electric blanket so I wouldn’t get caught.

  ‘I just want to be a writer,’ I’d wail at my husband. Eventually, the poor man snapped. ‘Well, maybe it would help if you actually wrote something,’ he suggested gently.

  Despite being knee deep in a self-indulgent whirlpool of woes, I had to admit he had a point. The problem was, I had no idea where to start. I’d never written a word of fiction, or been part of a creative writing group, or studied at college or university, so I had absolutely no idea how to pen a book.

  However, I had a story floating about in my head, so I decided to try. For the next fortnight, I wrote every night after work and then sent my first ever 10,000 words off to agents and publishers.

  On a chilly afternoon in March, I got a phone call to offer me a book deal. Twenty minutes later I discovered I was pregnant. A parade, a brass band and a Red Arrow flyover wouldn’t even have come close to our feelings of celebration.

  In November 2000, my first son was born and in January 2001, my first novel, What If? was released.

  Two decades, two sons and twenty-six novels later, I’ve been lucky enough to have made a career out of writing. There have been many high points and some awful lows, disappointments and jubilations, skint panics and sales peaks, but I’m still here and happier than ever to have found a home with the brilliant team at Boldwood Books.

  A few months ago, my first novel came up in a chat, and it set off a thought in my mind. Where would those characters be now, twenty years later? Would they still be friends? Would their dreams have come true? Would they have had happy lives?

  I was desperate to answer the questions, so for the last few months I’ve been locked away writing the sequel to What If?. It’s called What Now?, and it will be released in January 2021, twenty years after these characters first made it to the book shelves. I’m loving spending my days with them again.

  The 20th Anniversary of my first book also feels like a great time to thank the people I’m eternally grateful to.

  I first worked with Amanda Ridout and Caroline Ridding over a decade ago and I’m so happy to have joined them, the wonderful Nia Beynon and the rest of the fantastic team when they set up Boldwood Books in 2019. Ladies, thank you for your endless encouragement and for being the finest publishers I’ve ever worked with. Caroline, you deserve extra points for being my brilliant editor, a force of nature who inspires me and always has faith that we’ll get there, even when it’s all going wrong. Which it often is!

  Thanks to the copy editors and proof readers, and to all the reviewers, bloggers and book sellers who have supported me so faithfully with every new release. I appreciate every one of you.

  Thank you to the incredible women in my life, the pals who sit round my kitchen table, the far-away friends who are always on the other end of the phone, the aunts, cousins, sisters-in-law, nieces and grandmothers who have cheered me on.

  Thanks to my husband, John, my sons, Callan and Brad, and my stepdaughter, Gemma, for the love, the laughs, and for twenty years of bringing me tea while I thump the keys on my laptop.

  And finally, thank you, thank you, thank you, to all of you have read my books over the years. You’ve changed my life and I couldn’t ask for more.

  Except maybe that parade, a brass band and a Red Arrow flyover…

  Much love,

  Shari xx

  PS – As always, I’d love to know what you think – I’m on facebook, twitter, Instagram and my website is at www.sharilow.com

  What Now?, the next chapter in the life of Carly Cooper, will be published by Boldwood Books in January 2021.

  More from Shari Low

  We hope you enjoyed reading What If?. If you did, please leave a review.

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  If you’d like to gift a copy, this book is also available as a paperback, digital audio download and audiobook CD.

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  My One Month Marriage, another warm and insightful novel from Shari Low, is available to buy now by clicking on the image below. Or read on for an exclusive extract…

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  1

  I’m in one of those unofficial clubs that no one really wants to be in. You know, like the ‘Association of People Who Got Jilted at The Altar’. Or ‘The Secret Society of Dumplings Who Let Online Scammers Empty Their Bank Account Because They Believed They Had A Long-Lost Uncle Who Left Them Millions In His Will.’

  In this case, I’m Zoe Danton, the latest fully paid up member of the ‘Collective Of Fools Who Had Marriages That Lasted For Less Time Than A Four-Part Mini-Series.’

  A month. Thirty days to be precise.

  It’s not even as if I have the folly of youth as an excuse. Thirty-three years on this planet is long enough to learn some vital life lessons. For healthy oral hygiene, always floss morning and night. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. If you get caught in a riptide, swim parallel to the shore. Pot pourri has no purpose. And if you’re getting married, ensure that it’ll last longer than the flowers you carried up the aisle.

  Otherwise, you’ll be me, the idiot who is sitting on her wide plank, oak floor, consumed by fear that the local newspaper will use my story as a human-interest feature, surrounded by gifts that I need to return. Except the cocktail shaker. That one’s already open and in use.

  ‘Do you feel like an idiot?’ Verity asks, handing me a drink that’s so pink it could very well be radioactive. She was the first member of the Sister Emergency Service to respond to my text and rush over to my city centre Glasgow flat. I hope she kicked the bin bags containing the last of my short-lived husband’s things on the way in to our marital home. Actually ‘marital home’ is a stretch. It’s my flat, a one bedroom waterfront apartment in an eighties block on the city side of the Clyde, and even though he’s lived with me for the last year or so, I realise now that it always felt like he was just visiting. Maybe that should have been a hint. So, to answer Verity’s question, did I feel like an idiot?

  ‘No,’ I lie, only to be met with her raised eyebrow of cynicism. I capitulate like an eight year old caught spray-painting the school toilet walls. ‘Okay, of course I do. I mean, even Kim Kardashian’s shortest marriage lasted seventy-two days. It’s a sad day when I make worse life choices than a reality show star who built her career on the size of her arse.’

  I take a sip of… ‘What is this?’ I ask, when my taste buds throw their hands up, at a loss as to what they are faced with.

  Verity shakes her head, her deep red ponytail swinging as she does so. Even on a Sunday morning, in the midst of this traumatic episode in our family’s history, she still looks great. My elder sister has been on this earth for fourteen months longer than me and something happened in those fourteen months that gave her a level of physical superiority that the rest of us could only aspire to. She’s one of those women who has visible cheekbones and naturally fiery, thick long red hair, so you could pretty much put her through a car wash and she’d come out the other end, sweep her hair up in a messy bun and look fabulous. Even more annoying, she has absolutely no awareness of this. Her appearance and personality are the complete opposite of each other. On the outside, fierce, bold, striking. On the inside, restrained and the most conservative of us all. Now she is shrugging. ‘No idea. I just put a bit of everything in the fridge i
nto the cocktail shaker. There’s gin, cream, raspberry juice, pineapple—’

  ‘I don’t have pineapple juice,’ I interrupt.

  Verity doesn’t break stride. ‘Crushed pineapple from a tin… you’ll find it lurking at the bottom of the glass. Vitamin C has so many benefits…’

  ‘Will it prevent me marrying dickheads in the future?’

  She glides right over that. ‘No, but it does help with the absorption of iron, decreasing blood pressure, combatting heart disease and…’ Off she goes into full education mode. This is what happens when one of your three sisters is a primary school teacher. Not only is she relentlessly organised and can calm a class of stroppy eight year olds with some kind of Jedi mind trick, but she has a remarkable memory for facts and an absolutely pitch-perfect technique for delivering them.

  Unfortunately, in this case, her pupil has zoned out. What does it matter what is in there? As long as it contains alcohol that will reduce my feelings of general crapness by even one degree, I’m game.

  There’s a crash at the door.

  ‘What have I missed?’ Yvie wails as she enters the room, balancing several plastic bags and a tray giving off a distinctly ‘lasagne’ aroma on her forearms.

  I swallow a slither of pineapple. ‘Just some rampant self-pity, wails of regret and general pathetic wallowing.’

  My younger sister nods thoughtfully. ‘All just as expected then. Will lasagne help? Jean, one of the cleaners on the ward, made it. She says it’s her ancient, traditional family recipe, but she’s from Paisley, has no Italian ancestors and has never been further than Great Yarmouth on her holidays, so I have my doubts. In saying that, I’m starting the diet tomorrow, so no point letting this go to waste.’

  Dropping the bags on the floor, she wanders out in the direction of the kitchen clutching the lasagne, the stiff blue trousers of her nursing uniform rustling as she goes. The youngest of the four of us, Yvie is a nurse on a geriatric ward at Glasgow Central Hospital. When I’m in my dotage, there’s no one else I want to look after me. Although, I’m hoping that she’ll tend to my every need on the fourteenth deck of a cruise ship floating around the Caribbean, rather than in an aging Victorian building on the edge of the city centre with a bird’s-eye view of the nearby motorway. Still, she loves her job and nursing is what she has always wanted to do. Even when we were kids, she got an undeniable thrill when one of us needed emergency first aid.

  I hear the sound of the oven door banging shut, before she re-enters with a glass of radiation pink. ‘I took some of this from the cocktail shaker,’ she informs us. ‘It looks suspiciously like something I’d prescribe for acid reflux. Right, what’s the latest? Married anyone else since I saw you yesterday? Divorced yet? Engaged again?’

  I refuse to rise to her innocent-faced sarcasm, instead going for dry threats and indignation. ‘If you carry on like that, I’m going in to work.’

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ Verity points out, always one to insert facts into the equation.

  ‘And I hate to point out that your job was at the root of this whole debacle in the first place,’ Yvie adds, following it up with, ‘Jesus, my bra straps are killing me. Did I mention I’m going back on the diet tomorrow?’

  ‘You did. Is it the same one as last week? And the week before?’ Verity teases.

  ‘Not sure, but right now I’m hoping I lose nine and a half stone of smug older sister,’ Yvie fires back. She takes no cheek from anyone and I love her for it.

  ‘I thought you were embracing your curves?’ I enquire, confused.

  ‘That was last week. This week, I want to book a holiday, wear a bikini and I’ve realised that to feel good about that I’ll need to lose the equivalent of a small dinghy in weight in a month and a half. Starting right after that lasagne.’

  I don’t argue. Only a fool would get in between Yvie and her ever changing body-confidence issues.

  ‘Anyway, I preferred it when we were revelling in your disaster of a life,’ she tells me. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘Where were we?’ It’s like an echo, only said in a voice that is sharper than the other three in my living room. Marina, only her head and neck visible round the side of the door, is the oldest of the four of us and the designated grown-up. She’s the kind of woman who makes lists, has a pension plan and who knows the difference between a vintage bottle of plonk and something off the shelf at Lidl.

  ‘Yvie has just pointed out that my job was to blame for all this.’

  ‘Yes, well, she’s not wrong. At least at the start. Although, to be fair, you did take an unfortunate situation, handle it badly, then let it descend into a complete roaring balls-up,’ Marina concurs before her head and shoulders disappear and I hear the sound of her clicking heels fading as she heads down the hall to the kitchen. I’d bet my last pound that she is carrying a bag containing sushi and hummus – she considers healthy food to be the only option, even in a crisis.

  Yvie gestures to the door. ‘See? Even her Highness agrees. I finally feel validated as an adult.’

  I ignore the playful barb. Successfully negotiating life with three sisters is fifty per cent love, thirty per cent tolerance and twenty per cent dodging the ever-changing dynamics between us.

  Especially, in this case, as they both have a point. My job, first as sales director, then latterly as partner of Glasgow marketing company, The B Agency, definitely contributed to my current situation. If I hadn’t worked there, I wouldn’t have met Tom. I wouldn’t have fallen in love. He wouldn’t have broken my heart. And then I wouldn’t have gone on to screw up my life so colossally that I’m now contemplating eating dodgy lasagne while wondering what I am going to tell my mother when I return her generous wedding gift of a lavish, smoked glass beaded chandelier. Granted, it is lovely – in a blingy, wear sunglasses because it’s so bright it could cause eye damage, kind of way. But the fact that I live in a flat with low ceilings transforms it from an ostentatious decorative statement to a concussion risk.

  But back to the point. Yvie and Marina are right. If I worked anywhere else – the Civil Service, Top Shop, NASA – then none of this would have happened.

  And to quote everyone in the entire history of the world who ever messed up, I just wish I could go back in time and change so many things.

  In fact, right now I’d settle for just understanding what has happened to my life because there are still so many questions. So many uncertainties.

  My phone buzzes and I stretch over a ceramic planter in the shape of a pair of wellies (from Auntie Geraldine – she has a picture of Alan Titchmarsh on her kitchen wall) to retrieve it from the table beside the sofa.

  Marina’s heels click into the room and in my peripheral vision I can see that she slides elegantly into the armchair by the window, plate of sushi in hand.

  The name at the top of the notification makes my anxiety soar. Roger Kemp. Sadly, no relation to anyone who was ever a member of Spandau Ballet. Or that slightly scary bloke who played Grant Mitchell in EastEnders and now makes documentaries about criminal gangs and serial killers.

  With a shaking thumb, I swipe open the message.

  Roger Kemp is a friend and client, the director of a hotel chain that employs our agency for all its marketing needs. After the proverbial hit the fan, I’d asked him for a favour. A slightly underhand, confidentiality-breaching, possibly borderline-illegal favour. With a bit of luck, the bloke that makes the documentaries about true crime won’t find out about it.

  I’d asked Roger to check on who paid for a room in one of his hotels last weekend, on the night that my husband broke his vows only thirty days after making them. You know, that fairly insignificant one about being faithful in good times and bad. You see, I know it wasn’t my husband because he’d put his credit cards in my handbag that evening, so it must have been someone else. The other woman.

  The thought forces me to take another swig of the unidentifiable pink cocktail.

  Anyway, the favour I’d requested of Roger would mean ask
ing someone in his financial team to pull up the credit card records and sharing the sordid details with me.

  Now I stare in disbelief at the answer, typed right there on the screen of my phone.

  This didn’t come from me and I’m sorry – the name on the credit card was Ms Danton.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  One for each of the three of my sisters. And yes, I’m aware that I’m not yet in possession of the facts, but right now, I don’t feel like being balanced and reasonable.

  The idle chit-chat in the room stops as each of my sisters, Marina, Yvie and Verity, spot my expression and realise that something is very, very, wrong.

  Marina, always direct in any situation, is the first to react.

  ‘Oh God, what now? What is it?’

  Without even realising what I’m doing, my gaze goes from one of them to another as I speak.

  ‘I just need to know…’ I say, my voice low as I struggle not to choke on the words. ‘Which one of you slept with my husband?’

  We hope you enjoyed this exclusive extract. My One Month Marriage is available to buy now by clicking on the image below:

  About the Author

  Shari Low is the #1 bestselling author of over 20 novels, including My One Month Marriage and One Day In Winter, and a collection of parenthood memories called Because Mummy Said So. She lives near Glasgow.

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  Visit Shari’s website: www.sharilow.com

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  About Boldwood Books

  Boldwood Books is a fiction publishing company seeking out the best stories from around the world.