A Life Without You

by Shari Low

  I’d read on the website that there was a rooftop pool, so purely for research purposes obviously, I changed into a swimsuit, pulled on one of the white robes that were hanging in the wardrobe, and took the lift skyward. Actually it required two lifts to get there – one that went to the twenty-fifth floor and then another for the pool level above.

  I pushed open the door from the corridor to the swimming pool deck and my eyes took a moment to adjust to the blinding light. When they did… wow. I understood now why Dee wanted to come here. The pool wasn’t huge, maybe twenty metres long, but it was surrounded by a dark wood deck on three sides, lined with huge white leather double sun loungers. To the left, was a long bar. Behind me to the right, just around the corner, I could see a seating area under a white canopy. But what really sold it was the view. On all sides, I could see for miles, the city of Barcelona in front of me and to the left, the mountains in the far distance beyond the city, and way to the right, the port area and the sea. It was breath-taking. Just stunning. I realised the word ‘magnificent’ was in danger of being overused on this trip.

  In the far corner, I noticed a lounger was free so I padded round to it, dropped my book and my sun cream, then went back to the bar for a towel and a drink. A gin and tonic and a black coffee. Dee’s order. Her favourite combo. It seemed perfect for the moment. I was here, trying to live up to her unspoken wishes by carrying out her plans, so it was only right I gave it a twist of Dee authenticity.

  Towel under my arm, I carried both drinks back to the lounger and put them on the table beside it, spread my towel and discarded my robe, then stretched out like a sleeping bag being unfurled after months in its carrier. The heat immediately warmed me and I pulled my sunglasses – Gucci, found in the office, so either Dee’s or freebies we’d been sent as part of a summer package – down on to my face, and rubbed on the SPF 50. My Scottish complexion, fair with a tinge of blue, wouldn’t stand up to the sun for more than a few minutes without a thick coating of cream or a duffle coat.

  With the sunglasses on, I was able to surreptitiously scan the other loungers. This was definitely the ‘beautiful people’ set. Designer swimwear, beautifully toned bodies, deep caramel hues, buff nails… and that was just the blokes. On every set of eyes there were the signature styles of the most exclusive designer sunglasses. Just from where I was sitting I could see Chanel, Tom Ford and Prada.

  I didn’t belong here, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to make the most of it.

  The stresses and strains, and thought of Mark’s tongue, dissipated in the searing heat and I pulled out my book, Anna Smith’s Kill Me Twice, and started to read, sipping my drinks and wondering why the hell I’d always taken a back seat on the windswept travel. Of course, I knew. I was just as happy at home, pottering about the garden or having lunch at Val’s. As work went though, this definitely wasn’t a bad shift.

  My eyes flicked up as I turned the page, took in the view. I wondered what the two beautiful girls over at the bar, with golden tans in elaborately slashed swimsuits, were laughing at. I also wondered what their tan lines would look like when they took those cossies off. That should have been Dee and I – in more sensible outfits, naturally.

  I smiled at the older couple in the corner, the man snoozing, the woman lying next to him reading something on a Kindle, their hands touching as if they just liked the reassurance of the other one being there. I thought that would be Pete and I.

  The overwhelming sense of loss seeped into my pores. Don’t cry. Do not dare cry. Do not be the woman in the corner, snivelling, making the people around you back off in case you suddenly decide to latch on to them and share your woes.

  I closed my eyes, inhaled, fought back the tears, opened them…

  He was there.

  It was definitely him.

  I sat bolt upright. Yes. Over by the door, in a T-shirt and shorts, scanning the area. The guy from New York.

  I could see him holding open the door of the cab outside the jazz club. He was in clear focus as he passed me when I went into Tiffany’s. And now he was turning, walking back towards the door.

  I shot up, not caring that my blue-white flesh wobbled in outrage. This was a serene oasis of calm, so shouting or sprinting around the pool and causing an international incident was out of the question. Instead, I adopted the hip-swinging gait of an Olympic speed-walker, not caring that it made me look like I was in urgent need of getting to a loo.

  Along one side, left turn, along the other side… people were turning to look now. Och, sod it. I burst into a run, down towards the door, through it… Lift or stairs? Stairs. I ran down the one flight to the floor below, where I’d changed lifts earlier. No one there.

  There were five lifts in this lobby and I scanned the numbers at the top. Three were going down, one coming up, one was at this floor. I pressed the down button and the doors on the closest one flew open. I quickly jabbed the button to descend but it already felt hopeless. He could be in any of the three lifts going down, and he could stop on any floor to get out.

  ‘Come on, come on…’ My heart was racing. What the hell was going on here? Twice was a coincidence, but to see him a third time, in an entirely different country… There was definitely something untoward about all this. Was Dee in some kind of trouble? Was it a friendship? A fellow blogger she occasionally met up with? Was she… oh bugger, I hated thinking it again, but was she doing something illicit? No. She wouldn’t.

  The doors opened on the ground floor and I flew out and scanned the lobby, searching for his face amongst the crowd congregated at the door, the lines of people waiting to check in and out at reception, the group of guys sitting at the bar to the left, the security staff. Nothing. He wasn’t there. Dammit. However, had I ever wanted to be centre of attention, now was my moment, because almost every set of eyes in the lobby were trained on the woman in the bikini who was standing there, blue-white flesh on show for the world to see.

  Mortified, I backed up into the elevator area, grateful to see a gaggle of elderly ladies disembarking, all wearing large hats and pulling trolleys, no doubt on a stopover, before going to join one of the many huge boats that left the port, the fourth busiest cruise ship dock in the world.

  I ignored their curious glances as I slipped around them, back into the lift to make my way skywards again. I conceded defeat. There was no way I was going to find him in a hotel this size, let alone this city.

  Back on the roof deck, I ordered up another gin and tonic and took it back over to my lounger, letting the ice-cold sensation of the liquid cool me down and calm the throbbing sensation that had started in the side of my head, probably as a result of the combination of the heat, the exertion, the shock and the sheer bloody mortification at having flashed my thighs to a large section of the population of Barcelona. Dee would think that was hilarious. Resting my head back on the padded luxury of the lounger, I had a conversation with her in my head.

  I wish you were lying next to me, drinking gin and laughing at the orange-hued bloke in the corner in Speedos. And I wish you would tell me what the hell you were up to. Come on, Dee, let me into the secret.

  She didn’t answer. However, a thought did occur to me. She had dinner planned tonight at a restaurant near here. On two out of the three bookings she had in her diary for New York, he was there. And I would bet my last drop of SPF 50 that he would be there tonight too.

  Chapter 32

  Val

  The cemetery was deserted apart from a group of teenage boys, maybe fourteen or fifteen, huddled in the little shed at the gate, with half a dozen cans of lager, a large plastic bottle of cider and a packet of cigarettes between them. There wasn’t much to do in the town on a Saturday night for that age group, but still I wondered where their parents thought they were. I was never mother of the year, but I always knew exactly where my two were, who they were with and what time they’d be back.

  And look how that worked out for me.

  I kept Dee safe, all through her chi
ldhood and teenage years, protected her, helped her make good choices, and then, when my job was done, I let her out in the world and what happened? That’s when she needed protecting most and I wasn’t there to pull her back inside, to push her out of the way or change her plans for that day so she was nowhere near that piece of scum when he killed her.

  As I reached the boys in the shed I could see that they were already well on the way to a drunken night. I stopped as I passed, and stared at each one of them in turn.

  ‘Whit?’ the smallest, therefore the one with the most to prove, asked. ‘Whit ye looking at?’

  ‘I’m just memorizing your faces, son, because that way if anything happens to any of these gravestones, if there’s a single flower damaged or a stone chipped, I’ll know who I’m hunting for.’

  That shut him up and the rest of them just put their heads down and reached for their cans. I kept on walking, past decades of death, until I got to Dee’s corner. It was a bright, warm July night, and the white roses I’d planted along the front of her stone looked beautiful.

  As always, the first thing I did was give the granite a clean with the packet of wet wipes I carried in my bag, talking to her the whole time in my head. ‘Just me, love. Your dad’s down the pub and I was at a loose end so I thought I’d pop up to see you. Our Mark’s out with the girl he’s been seeing. Lizzy is her name and I’ve not met her yet, but Josie has given me the rundown – sounds like a right character if you ask me. Non-exclusive, he calls it. What a load of nonsense. Wouldn’t have happened back in the day with me and your dad. Never did go in for all that free love carry-on. What else? Oh, Jen is away at some hotel you’d booked in Spain. Poor love didn’t want to go, but she’s trying to keep everything the way it was with the shop and the website and make sure you’d be proud of her. I worry about her though. That imbecile Pete still hasn’t shown his face. He’ll get a piece of my mind when he does. Shameless, he is. Utterly bloody shameless. None of us have seen hide nor hair of him since he walked out on the lass. Not even Luke. I’m worried about him too. All that weight he’s lost. Josie says she went over to give the house a clean last week and it was exactly the same as when you left it. You picked a good man there, pet. Solid and dependable, like your dad.’

  Stone polished, flowers clipped with the pruning shears I always brought with me, a few weeds pulled up and put in a pile for me to take away when I was leaving, I parked myself on the bench we’d had installed right in front of where she lay and continued my one-way chat.

  ‘I went to see her again. The mother. I know I said I wouldn’t but I couldn’t help myself. Still no sign of that son of hers. And wait until I tell you Dee, the police liaison officer told me the evil bastard plans to plead not guilty. Not guilty. I can’t tell you how angry that makes me. If he was not guilty, then I wouldn’t be sitting talking to you in a cemetery on a Saturday night. I hate him, Dee. I’ve never wanted to kill anyone with my bare hands, but I’d gladly squeeze the last breath out of that boy. No, not a boy. A man. Twenty-four, he is. Old enough to know better and be responsible for his actions, yet he’s trying to squirm his way out of it by pleading not guilty. I won’t let him get away with it, pet. I’ll get justice and I’ll watch him rot.’

  I was suddenly aware of a presence right behind me and it wasn’t of a spiritual nature.

  ‘Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’ he asked me.

  ‘God Almighty, Luke, you scared the living daylights out of me. Thought it was one of those wee rascals that were boozing down at the shed. Had a word with them on the way in and I don’t think they were best pleased.’

  He had come round to the front of the bench now and I could see he was in his full running kit, his T-shirt, hair and face dripping with sweat.

  ‘Did you threaten them with vigilante justice if anything got vandalised?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Just an educated guess,’ he laughed.

  He had a lovely smile, this man. No wonder our Dee loved him. I’d worried at first that he was too laid-back, too amenable, and our Dee would walk right over him, but to give him his due, he managed to hold his ground in most things in a calm, understated way. He was good for her and I was grateful.

  ‘Wild Saturday night planned then?’ I went on.

  ‘Crazy. You?’

  ‘Heading to the clubs as soon as I leave here,’ I replied, keeping the banter up because I was determined to keep it together and not have him thinking that I was here because I was in some kind of sad, lonely state. Truth hurt. ‘Josie’s at home with her sequined knickers on just waiting for me to pick her up.’

  He howled. ‘Nooooo. I may never get rid of that mental image,’ and there was nothing to do but laugh.

  There were a couple of minutes of silence as we both thought about the best way to ask the same question. I knew that because he went first.

  ‘So what’s brought you up here then, Val? Are you OK?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ I wasn’t. ‘I just like it up here…’ I hated it. ‘Because it’s quiet and I can think.’ I couldn’t – unless it was about the vile ways I wanted Darren Wilkie to suffer.

  Luke seemed to accept this though.

  ‘What about you?’

  He leaned back, sighed. I could see he was troubled. Who wouldn’t be in his situation? ‘Sometimes I think I just run up here to prove to her I’m out running and not comfort-eating myself into a blob.’

  He was trying to joke himself out of it, but I wasn’t for letting him.

  ‘And other times?’ I probed.

  ‘I just don’t know how I’m supposed to live my life without her. And I don’t just mean without loving her. Since the day we met we spent all our time together, either Dee and I, or the four of us, with Jen and Pete. We went on holiday, did stuff every weekend, met up after work for dinner. And now, Dee and Pete are gone and Jen and me… well, we’re just lost. I go out running, I go to the gym, but it’s just existing. I don’t know when I’m supposed to start living again, Val. And I don’t know how I’d even start. I have no idea what makes me happy without her. Sorry. I shouldn’t be unloading all of this on you.’

  My heart was breaking as I listened to him. I was ashamed to admit I hadn’t really thought about where he’d go from here. He was still a young man – too young to have given up on finding more happiness. Dee wouldn’t want that. She really wouldn’t. And much as it made the pit of my stomach ache with pain, I felt that I had to give him permission, for his sake.

  ‘Don’t you apologise. You can talk to me anytime about anything at all, Luke. You know, Dee wouldn’t want you to carry on like this. Our Dee believed you should live for the moment, I don’t have to tell you that. Even when she was a kid, she ran me ragged with plans and ideas, and madcap schemes. Don used to think it was hilarious, but he wasn’t the one out roller-skating up and down the front path with her or sitting in A&E when she’d fallen off the rope swing for the tenth time.’

  ‘She still had the scars,’ he said, smiling sadly.

  ‘She did. And she still kept on going. That’s the point, Luke. It’s OK to keep on going, to stop living in the past and start finding a new way to live. And I know it’ll be hard if you meet someone else – God knows, I can’t stand the thought of it – but you can’t go through the rest of your life not being loved. When you’re ready, your new life will come.’

  I near lost it when he put his hand on top of mine and I saw his eyes were filled with unshed tears. Dee always did say he had a sentimental side, but I’d seen only strength and care for the rest of us since she passed. He’d been doing what we all had – fighting to keep our heads above water so we could keep each other afloat.

  ‘Thanks Val,’ he said, kissing me on the top of my head. ‘I think I needed to hear it. I find it hard to contemplate the future, but when I do, I just can’t get past the thought that I’d be disrespecting her if I go on to have a great life.’

  ‘I think you’d be disrespecting her if y
ou didn’t.’ Much as it hurt to me to say it, I meant it.

  We sat like that for a while, both lost in our own thoughts. I’ve no idea where Luke’s mind had gone, but mine was right back at Darren Wilkie and the things I told myself every day that I would say to him.

  Without making a conscious decision to talk about it, I heard myself blurting out, ‘Do you ever think about him, Luke?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That evil bastard who killed Dee. Darren Wilkie.’

  I could see him mulling the question over, thinking about his answer before he spoke. ‘Sometimes, when I see something in the paper or think about the trial. Other than that, I don’t, because it won’t change anything. He did it. As long as he gets what’s coming to him, that’s all I care about as far as he’s concerned. Aside from that, I give him no headspace. He’s not worth it.’

  I knew he was right and I so wished I felt the same, but the twisting, gut-wrenching hatred I felt for Wilkie would just not allow it.

  What a state we’re all in, Dee, I told her, and I felt her roll her eyes and heard her voice telling me to get it sorted.

  I will, love.

  I will.

  Just as soon as I’ve seen that bastard pay the price.

  Chapter 33

  Jen

  I was starting to make a habit of arriving early. The restaurant was a traditional little tapas place, maybe fifteen tables, and given the resemblance and ages of the staff, I made an educated guess that it was a family-run business: mum, dad, and two adult sons.

  The walls were a deep burgundy, the floors made of mahogany slats that looked a hundred years old, and every particle of air was infused with the aromas of tomatoes and garlic and oils and spices.