A Life Without You

by Shari Low

  She closed the window and climbed back down. No wonder she had the thighs of a twenty-year-old. ‘I think you’ve developed feelings for Luke and he has for you too.’

  ‘No, Josie, you’re wrong. We’ve always loved each other, but it’s not a romantic love. To me, he’ll always be Dee’s husband, whether she’s here or not. And I’ll always be Dee’s friend to him.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she argued gently. ‘And you know something, it’s OK. It’s OK not to admit it to yourself and it’s OK to take your time with it. It would be a big mistake to make if it’s not right. But I think it is.’

  No. She was wrong. Completely wrong. We were two drowning people clinging to each other in stormy waters. That was it. The doorbell pinged to signal our first customer, breaking the spell altogether, snapping me back to reality.

  ‘Josie, can I point out you always guess the wrong ending when we go to see a movie?’

  ‘I didn’t say my insights were perfect,’ she barbed. ‘But I’m here if you need me, ma darling.’ I failed to fight back more tears when she wrapped me in a hug, then wiped them away and composed myself to go and serve the customer.

  Josie left after her shift and thankfully the rest of the morning was quiet – a saving grace because the banging in my head was getting louder and the lack of sleep was kicking in big time, while over and over in my mind, I ruminated over what she’d said, with varying degrees of conviction that she was way off base.

  But the truth was, she wasn’t.

  That thought made me gasp. Oh my God, what kind of denial had I been living in? Every day, every night, for the last month, I’d only felt right when I was with him, only felt happy when I was hearing his voice.

  But this couldn’t happen. No way. No matter what Dee had done. I wasn’t her, and I couldn’t live with myself if I betrayed her like that. I couldn’t do that her. Besides, what would Val and Don think? What would Mark think?. No. Nothing could ever happen between Luke and I, no matter what feelings I was having for him.

  And while I was making definite decisions about my life, I had to clear up any ambiguity with Mark too.

  When he eventually made it through the door at 11 a.m., I was standing behind the counter and I was ready for him. I didn’t even give him a chance to put his bag in the office. ‘I just want to say I’m sorry about pouncing on you on Friday night. It’s not something I make a habit of and you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  That languid, gorgeous smile again. ‘Don’t know that I’d necessarily categorise it as “wrong”,’ he said, definitely on the flirtatious side.

  My head thudded down on the desk. ‘Dear God, make it stop,’ I murmured, before lifting it again. ‘Mark, hear the message. I’m a wreck. My life has fallen apart. I don’t need complications. And right now I’m a heartbeat away from a one-way ticket to somewhere no one knows me and I can go back to having a normal, peaceful, un-bloody eventful life. No drama. No fuck-ups. No blindsiding occurrences. So please. Forget I kissed you, forget this conversation, let’s just wipe the slate clean and act like it never happened. Can we do that?’

  ‘Sure,’ he shrugged.

  I wasn’t sure that I believed him, but I went with it.

  ‘Good. Excellent. Let’s start again.’ I took a deep breath and put on a sing-song voice. ‘Good morning Mark, how are you today? Having a good morning?’

  He shrugged. ‘Er, yeah. Bit strange to be honest.’

  This wasn’t in the script. We were no longer doing strange, shocking, tragic or dramatic. ‘Really? Why’s that?’

  ‘My mum’s been sneaking out every night to stalk Darren Wilkie and his mother.’

  I put my head back down on the desk. So much for a normal, peaceful un-bloody eventful life.

  Chapter 38

  Luke

  I remember the exact moment that I knew it was a mistake. Callie unzipped her dress and stepped out of it. Hot didn’t begin to cover it. Athletic body, wide shoulders, incredible breasts, and once I got over the fact that she did the whole Hollywood thing, I stepped forward, ran my finger down the side of her face, leaned in and felt her breath on my face and slowly, softly kissed her… and thought about someone else.

  Dee.

  And then Jen.

  Whoa, what had just happened there?

  The sex had been OK. Callie was beautiful and sexy and the complete package and – bizarrely – she seemed to be attracted to a mess like me, yet as soon as it was over, it felt wrong. There was no real connection. No love. The claustrophobia set in and I had to get out of there, which made me the kind of bloke I’d never been. Not cool. Definitely not cool. After Dee had got over bollocking me for going near another woman, she’d definitely have had something to say about the sharp exit.

  And Jen. What would she think? And why did that matter quite so much?

  Christ, what was happening to me?

  This was like one step forward, six steps back. Every time I thought I was turning a corner I ended up like this – talking to myself in clichés while feeling shite.

  I went down into our bedroom – my bedroom – pulled off my jeans and shirt and threw on a pair of joggies and a T-shirt. What did it say about my life that I now spent most of it doing the very fucking thing I avoided throughout most of my marriage?

  I pulled on my trainers at the door and stepped outside. I usually turned left to go to the cemetery, tonight I turned right. I broke into a slow jog, not bothering to limber up because quite frankly, a pulled muscle would be a welcome distraction. Save me from self-flagellation and bitter regret.

  What an arse.

  And what a hypocrite. I’d slagged off Pete for being a callous bastard and now I was even worse. I was the guy who screwed someone barely seven months after his wife died.

  I had to stop and lean against a bus shelter until the urge to vomit passed, because I knew that wasn’t the worst of it. The truth was much worse.

  I arrived in her street before I even made the conscious decision to go there. I couldn’t go up the front path, couldn’t look at the spot where my Dee had died, so I ran around the back, flicked the catch on the gate, and opened it.

  There she was, sitting on the back step, like she’d been expecting me to come.

  Hair up in a messy knot, in jeans, a white T-shirt, and bare feet, a mug of coffee in her hands.

  I walked up the path towards her and she smiled the saddest smile I’d ever seen. It was exactly what I expected to happen. She’d view me differently; decide I was like Pete, just another person that she’d known for years only to discover she didn’t really know them at all. I’d expected this would happen and yet I’d still told her. I had a fair idea what that said about my stupidity.

  ‘Hey…’ I said, my breath taking a minute to slip into a rhythm that wasn’t exhaustion or panic.

  ‘Hey,’ she replied.

  I sat down on the step beside her. ‘So are you sitting here, contemplating the fact that you’re avoiding me because I made a major fuck-up?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ she answered softly.

  She always did prefer to go with the truth.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologise to me. I don’t even know why I’m pissed off. It’s your life, your grief, your heartache to manage. I’ve got no right to judge you, yet I am.’

  ‘You’re right. Actually you’re a terrible pal.’

  That made her smile again, not quite as sadly as before and that’s when I knew I was going to tell her the stuff that I’d been struggling to admit to myself since Saturday night.

  ‘I don’t even know how to say this… I’ve stopped thinking of you as a friend. It’s more than that now. My feelings for you… they’re more than I should feel for a friend.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied, barely above a whisper, still staring forward, not making eye contact.

  What? Was she psychic? ‘How?’

  ‘Josie told me.’

  ‘Christ, she scares
me.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Neither of us could pull the words together to go on yet, so we sat in silence until she beat me to it.

  ‘She thinks I’ve got more-than-friend feelings for you too.’

  OK, I hadn’t seen that coming. I was fully expecting to be slapped down and sent off in shame. ‘ I’ll probably regret asking this, but do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I closed my eyes to try to help my processing skills along a bit. This should make the situation so much simpler, but we both knew it didn’t.

  ‘I want to kiss you,’ I told her, reaching over and turning her chin towards me, looking into her red, tired eyes for the first time.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said simply. ‘It crosses a line that I don’t want to cross because I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself.’

  I shook my head. ‘This is such bullshit. Don’t we deserve to be happy? I can’t believe Dee wouldn’t want us to be OK, to make a life without her.’ My voice was raising, exasperation running the show now. I could feel the irritation starting to twist inside me, not at Jen, but at this whole debacle of a situation. I never asked for this, and neither did Jen, but we’d been beaten and dragged down and damn near destroyed and I just couldn’t understand any rationale that didn’t allow us to recover from that and find new happiness.

  ‘Maybe, but I couldn’t live with myself if that life was the one she was supposed to have and I took it. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror in the morning or sleep at night. I just couldn’t.’

  ‘So we don’t get a chance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t do this, Jen.’ A weird mix of panic and resignation overtook me. Her reaction was so in keeping with her character. That was Jen. Do the right thing. No drama. No demands.

  A huge tear rolled down her cheek and I leaned over and wiped it away.

  She turned to me again, and this time I saw the pure determination in her features. ‘We don’t even know if it’s real or if it’s just because we’ve become this co-dependent, desperate pair. There’s no good way out of this, Luke. If we tried and it worked, I’d hate myself every day of my life for stealing Dee’s future. If we tried and it didn’t work, I’d hate myself for destroying our friendship. There’s no win for us.’

  In my whole adult life, I’d never begged for anything, but the only thing stopping me pleading with her now was the look of devastation on her face. She’d been hurt enough. I couldn’t hurt her any more. Fuck.

  ‘So what do we do? Just pretend?’

  ‘Yep. And then maybe one day we’ll wake up and realise it was just a moment in time and it’s passed. It is what it is, Luke. Don’t try to change it.’

  With that, she got up, went inside and closed the door… and I started running.

  Chapter 39

  Jen & Dee, 1999

  Dee handed me a cigarette and I took a puff, then passed it back to her and she took one more puff, then tossed it into the toilet and flushed. Outside, we checked our hair in the mirrors, then headed back into the school hall, decorated by the art department to look like their interpretation of a Christmas disco. Glitter balls, streamers hanging from the ceiling and red fabric on the walls, a light box with two record players on the stage at the front of the hall.

  Robbie Williams’ ‘Millennium’ faded out and All Saints’ ‘Never Ever’ faded in. Dee shrieked and dragged me up to dance, our matching cargo trousers rustling as we moved. Khaki green trousers, white Adidas trainers, tight white T-shirts, huge hoop earrings. Val had told us we were gorgeous as we left the house, and for the first time ever I felt it. My mum hadn’t been able to afford to buy me new clothes for the couple of years before she died, and my dad had drank everything away before and afterwards. When I’d arrived to live at Dee’s house I had one case, and that was it. My whole life in one case.

  Dee had shared everything with me. Her room, her music, her make-up and then when I turned fourteen, she’d got me a Saturday job in the hairdressers she worked in. ‘Double trouble, you two,’ Don would laugh, when we appeared downstairs, dressed to go out, wearing identical clothes, identical hair, identical make-up. And even though the truth was that everything looked better on Dee, I felt grateful because I’d become part of something. I was one of the Murrays.

  When the record stopped and merged into Cher’s ‘Believe’, we headed back to the chairs at the side of the room. Dee’s boyfriend, Jake McGuinness, two years older than us and halfway through sixth year, came over with one of his mates, and asked Dee to go outside with him. Of course, she wanted to. Jake McGuiness was the second coolest guy in the school, only one step down from Ian McGuire, who held top rung position because he played football for Scotland.

  ‘I’ll be back. Cover for me.’ And then she was gone, leaving me to chew my nails while Jake’s pal Pete stood next to me. ‘Do you want to go outside too?’ he asked, when he could no longer stand the awkwardness. ‘Sure.’

  We found Jake and Dee in the corner of the sports pavilion, her sitting on his knee, his hands inside the back of her T-shirt. My first thought was that Val would kill her, my second was that Don would kill Jake.

  ‘Jen-jen,’ Dee giggled and I had no idea what was funny. ‘Here, have some.’

  She handed me a bottle of wine. Lambrusco. Screw top. Choices: say no, never live it down, or go ahead, and end up throwing up in a bush like last time she made me drink.

  Of course, I took it, drank it, was completely wasted by the time we went back inside. I don’t know who produced the mistletoe, but Pete knew what it meant, leant down, kissed me.

  It was the first time I’d ever kissed a boy. I’d always been Jenny with the dead mum. Jenny with the drunk dad. Jenny that lives with Dee. Now I was Jenny that had kissed a boy.

  I floated home, beyond thrilled with myself, stopping at the end of our terrace so we could spray perfume and pop a couple of Juicy Fruit to cover the smell of the wine and the cigs. Val and Don were on the couch when we got in, same position as always, her head lying on his chest, his arm around her as they watched the telly.

  ‘Good night, girls?’ Val asked, scrutinizing us from head to toe. We must have passed the test.

  ‘We’re just going to go on up to bed,’ Dee announced. ‘Night mum, love you. Love you too dad.’

  ‘Night girls, love you both back. With hearts on it,’ Val said, same as she did every night.

  We went upstairs, I pulled off my clothes, replaced them with my pyjamas and climbed into bed. I’d got off with a boy and a gorgeous one at that. Pete McLean.

  ‘Told you he fancied you,’ Dee giggled. ‘You’re totally going to go out with him again.’

  I so hoped she was right. I’d been praying for it for weeks. It was only then I noticed she wasn’t getting ready for bed. Instead, she was sitting on the windowsill, curtain open, watching outside.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, completely puzzled and a bit annoyed. I wanted her to get into bed so we could lie awake and go over every detail of tonight, especially the bits that involved me kissing Pete McLean.

  ‘Just… there he is,’ She blurted.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ian McGuire. I told him to come meet me tonight and he’s there.’

  ‘But you’re going out with Jake!’ I reminded her.

  She laughed. ‘Jen, have you seen Ian McGuire?’ she teased, sarcasm dripping.

  The window was open and she was halfway out before I could say any more.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she said.

  ‘Dee, you can’t…’

  ‘Of course I can,’ she chuckled. ‘But promise you’ll never tell Jake. Promise me.’

  Argh, she drove me nuts. Completely crazy. But I loved her.

  ‘I promise I’ll never tell.’

  And I didn’t.

  Now, almost twenty years later, staring out of the front window at the spot where she died, I knew I’d keep the promise.

  I’d never tell. And this time I didn’t mean about Ian
McGuire.

  Chapter 40

  Val

  The October wind was biting but I barely felt a thing. There was a man at the door with a camera, taking pictures like this was some kind of entertainment event. I put my head down and walked right by him, never looking at him. This wasn’t a day that should have mementos. I didn’t want any part of it captured for posterity.

  In any other situation I might stop to admire the building, with its pale blond sandstone frontage and foreboding columns making up a grand, circular entrance. A Doric portico. I knew that was what it was called. Our Dee had done a project on Glasgow architecture in high school and this was one of the buildings she’d chosen to write about. The High Court of Justiciary. I’d brought her here to the Saltmarket area on a Sunday afternoon so that she could take a picture of it with her Polaroid camera. Now she was the only one of our family who wasn’t here. Don, Luke, Mark, Jen and Josie surrounded me as we went through the door, following a police liaison officer who showed us through to the public gallery. I wanted to tell her we weren’t ‘public’. We weren’t just here to pass the time and watch a show. I was here to get justice and see that piece of scum pay, to look him in the eyes and make sure that he knew that for the rest of his life I’d be wishing him a sentence of pain and suffering, just like he’d given us.

  Don’s hand was wrapped tightly around mine and our shoulders were wedged so closely together that I could hear the movement of his breathing. On the other side, Mark stared straight ahead. Three quarters of our family. That’s all there would ever be again. The rage rose inside me, almost exploding out of me when we were told to stand and various people entered and then there he was. Darren Wilkie. An officer on each side of him, handcuffed, standing behind a wooden barrier. I recognised him from photographs, but what I hadn’t expected was how utterly insignificant he would look. A wee, skinny runt, in cheap tracksuit trousers and a hoodie, not even the respect to dress appropriately for the court. Thin, almost skeletal, his head was shaved, his grey skin pockmarked with spots, his eyes narrowed, staring at his lap, where one hand was picking the skin from some unseen scab on the other. He was vermin. Rotten, stinking vermin.