With or Without You

by Shari Low

  There wasn’t much to argue with there so I didn’t.

  Instead, I marvelled at the splendour of a blessing with 200 guests at the cathedral, followed by a reception for 300 at Lomond Grange, the same hotel we’d spent Millennium Eve in all those years ago.

  I’d drawn a line at being bridesmaid, and Ida hadn’t minded because she felt disinclined to dilute her limelight. Therefore, the only person in the wedding party other than the groom, was Finn, who held his gran’s hand as they walked up the aisle and gave her away, to the pre-recorded soundtrack of Ida singing ‘Ave Maria’.

  It was both glorious and ridiculously lavish too. George, it turned out, had made his fortune in property in the eighties and never married. Now, he was more than happy to indulge my mother’s whims and pay for everything. Had my mum asked for the streets to be paved with gold, I was sure he would have done it. Instead, she settled on an opulent two-centre spectacle, with the wedding party being chauffeured the thirty-five-minute journey to the hotel in a Rolls Royce, while the rest of us followed in luxury coaches.

  ‘Are you taking notes?’ I asked Richard, when we were shown to our seats at the top table.

  ‘Should I be?’ he said, grinning.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I replied, truly meaning it. I’d been married once. I had absolutely no intention of doing it again, even if I adored this man sitting next to me. He’d been living with us for three months now and it had been so much more than I could ever have hoped. He’d won me over with his offer to move back up north, and by an incredible stroke of luck, just a few weeks later, the head of neuro at our hospital had announced his retirement. Richard had immediately applied for the job and got it. Given that he’d worked there for years, they were delighted to have him back. So was I.

  It had taken a few months to get everything organised and for him to work his notice period, but during that time, he’d come up as often as possible so that Finn could get to know him. By the time he was ready to make the move, we both knew that it was unnecessary for him to live anywhere else, so he’d moved straight in with us. On his first day in his new job, I’d kissed him at the door. ‘Good luck. Don’t break a leg. Or a head.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ he laughed.

  A thought struck me. ‘I’ve just realised you’ll be working with Francine. Do you remember her? The girl that…’

  ‘You saved in your underwear. Yeah, I met her again when I was up to meet the board. I reminded her that she was once my patient. Strange how things work out sometimes.’

  It sure was. Twelve years ago, I’d saved Francine’s life. She’d then gone on to save Justin and countless others. What a loss that would have been to her family, to Justin and to all those other patients if she hadn’t made it.

  And while we were on the subject of strange happenings, I’d never have predicted that Richard and I would end up here.

  Once upon a time we’d worked together and lived together. Now, ten years later, we were doing it again. Our disciplines rarely overlapped, though, so it wasn’t too claustrophobic. Instead, it just made the logistics of running our new family so much easier. Finn absolutely adored Richard and loved having him around.

  Meanwhile, I’d never been happier. And looking along the table, I could see that my mother was feeling exactly the same.

  After the meal, George gave a beautiful speech that made his bride cry – a result that would no doubt horrify my mother because it would threaten to ruin her make up. She recovered to belt out My First, My Last, My Everything’ and had the whole place dancing in their chairs. Then they kicked off the first dance to ‘You Are So Beautiful’, and I cried. Yes, unromantic, never getting married, oh my mother’s so embarrassing… and at that moment it all went out the stained-glass windows and I cried tears of happiness for her.

  I was definitely getting more emotional as I got older. However, age didn’t seem to be having the same effect on my friends.

  ‘Christ Almighty, every time I look at you, you’re spouting water like a hose pipe,’ Sasha groaned as she bumped across into Richard’s vacant seat to be next to me. The top table had been cleared away and we were now at a big round table with Chloe and Connor, Nate, Justin, Sasha, and, of course, Richard, who chose that moment to come back from the bar with three ice buckets filled with champagne.

  Justin had announced a few weeks before that we had to stop with the teetotal thing around him because it was making him feel guilty. Despite our protestations to the contrary, he’d insisted, and eventually we’d capitulated. There would be no getting falling-down pissed, or shots or hard spirits, but we were okay with a few glasses of champagne on special occasions.

  ‘She’s not letting me marry her,’ Richard announced, ‘so I just thought we’d have the champagne anyway, and I’ll work on the vicar, the ceremony and the rest of the official stuff.’

  ‘Good plan,’ said Chloe, who was already giddy after two glasses of wine with dinner. She and Connor didn’t get out much – it was tough to have a rampant social life with toddlers – so she was making the most of this child-free night, thanks to our babysitter Maisie and her friend Carly, who had come to the church and taken Finn, Joshua and Jasmin home to Chloe’s house, where they’d be taken care of until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Bliss!

  That gave us a serious window of opportunity to party and we did. We danced, we sang, we drank (with the exception of Justin) and we laughed all night. It was the closest we’d come to those thirty-year-olds we’d been a decade ago. Only we’d pay way more for this tomorrow morning.

  ‘I’m just going to the ladies,’ I told Richard, then squeezed past Nate on the way from the table. I had to give kudos to my ex-husband because he had been brilliant over the last year. He’d been supportive when Richard had moved in, and there was absolutely no sign of any jealousies or resentment. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had someone else and had moved on. I made a mental note to ask Sasha. She was the one who was with him most, because she’d now taken up a post as head of Business Studies at the same school as Nate, and out of school hours, she was always over at his house spending – purely platonic – time with Justin. Both Sasha and I were still friends with our ex-partners after all these years. That didn’t happen often and I was grateful that we’d somehow managed it.

  I was halfway across the lobby on the way to the toilets when I spotted the very person I wanted to speak to sneaking out the front door. I nipped into the ladies, then went to track her down. It wasn’t hard. She was sitting on a bench to the right of the entrance, at the edge of the gravel drive. Thankfully, it was an unusually balmy night for September in the west of Scotland.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, sitting down next to her, ‘Is everything okay?’

  Poignant moments and introspective solitude weren’t things I’d ever associated with Sasha.

  ‘I’m fine. Just needed a minute.’

  ‘For what?’

  She shrugged. This wasn’t like her at all. ‘To clear my head. I’m fine,’ she repeated. ‘Are you having a good night?’ She shifted gear halfway through that response and I could see she was really making an effort to shrug off the melancholy.

  I wasn’t letting her get away with that though. ‘Is it Justin? Is something going on?’

  Sasha’s first instinct was always to keep her problems to herself, but I wasn’t allowing her to do that this time.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing more than you know already. The doctor says his liver tests will be back this week, but he’s fairly sure he has cirrhosis.’ Justin’s liver function tests had been abnormal, so his doctors had ordered an ultrasound-guided liver biopsy. I was depressingly positive that it would show he had Alcoholic Liver Disease and had explained to Sasha that this was the umbrella term that medics used, encompassing cirrhosis and other alcohol-related disorders.

  It wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t make it any less heart-breaking. He’d just never overcome the need to drink. I’d lost count of how many times he’d fallen off the wagon
in the last few years, only for Nate and Sasha to pick him up again. He was a shadow of his former self now. Skin and bone and sorrow. Since that night we’d almost lost him in hospital, we’d all tried so hard to help him, but the reality was that he had to help himself by stopping drinking for good. So far, he hadn’t managed to do it, but we lived in hope.

  ‘We’ll all be there for him, you know that don’t you? And for you too.’ I reached over and took her hand. ‘I know this will make you hurl or stomp off in disgust, but I love you. Just in case you were in any doubt.’

  I waited for the reaction to this public declaration of emotion, but it didn’t come. Instead, one solitary, bulbous tear ran down her cheek. There was something going on here, something she wasn’t telling me.

  ‘Sasha, what is it? Tell me!’ I said, grabbing her hand for support. She didn’t even try to shake me off. This must be really bad.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, her words strangled by emotion.

  ‘Of course you can. Honey, there’s nothing we can’t deal with or fix. Unless… Oh no, Sasha, are you ill?’

  Noooooo. How could Chloe and I have missed this? We were nurses for God’s sake and our closest friend was sick and we hadn’t even…

  ‘I’m not ill.’

  I sagged with relief, still clutching her hand. ‘Then anything else we can fix or get over.’

  She still wasn’t speaking, so I decided to take a different approach that would bring down her distress.

  ‘Look, if you don’t tell me, I’ll go get Chloe and we’ll come out with pathetically sentimental declarations of love until you crack and tell us.’ That was Sasha’s idea of emotional torture – sure to work.

  Or perhaps not.

  She sighed, looked out into the darkness and shook her head. ‘Not tonight. This isn’t the right time to talk about it.’

  ‘Yes, tonight,’ I argued. ‘Sasha I’m not going to be able to go back in there and enjoy myself for worrying about you. Tell me, so we can come up with a plan and then go back and gasp in awe at my mother’s third costume change of the night.’

  ‘I’m in love with Nate.’

  She said it. Deadpan. No emotion. Just right out there.

  My brain wasn’t computing. ‘You’re in love with Nate? Nate who?’

  I knew I was being ridiculous, but it was so outlandish I just couldn’t grasp it.

  ‘Nate that you were married to, Nate,’ she clarified.

  ‘Oh.’ Not the most articulate response but a canon full of questions were exploding in my head. ‘Since when?’

  She shrugged, and I knew she would be honest. In all the time I’d known her, Sasha didn’t ever lie to spare feelings. ‘I don’t know. I think I realised it a couple years ago. Maybe more. It was after Justin got sick and I went back to help him. Nate and I became… a team. We spent so much time together and I gradually realised that he was more than just the mate who was helping me take care of my ex-boyfriend. I’m so sorry, Liv.’

  I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with fresh air in the hope of clearing my mind. Okay, get it together. Say the right thing. I had absolutely no idea how I was feeling about this, but there was no judgement or disapproval, just surprise.

  ‘Why are you sorry? Sasha, Nate and I haven’t been together for twelve years. Apart from, you know, Finn, but that was a one-off…’

  Bugger, I was so shocked I was doing the nervous rambling thing

  ‘I guess I’m just really surprised because you two are about as different as two people can be. I never figured him for your type.’

  ‘Me neither,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I’ve thought so much about this and I think I get it…’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I think it’s…’ she paused, struggling to put it into words. ‘I grew up in a really chaotic house, with a mum who left when I was a teenager, and a dad I could never depend on, always fending for myself and fighting my own battles. Dad died when I was seventeen, and a few years later, I met Justin. He was a whole different kind of chaos. At least I thought so. Turns out he was pretty much the same. The drinking. The womanising.’

  I started to see where she was going with this.

  ‘And then Justin and I split up and I decided I didn’t want another man in my life. Too much drama. Too much unpredictability. I was tired of it. I just wanted peace. But I couldn’t turn my back on him when he hit rock bottom. I thought I was going to have to do it myself but Nate was right there, helping me lift him. Over the years since then, how I feel has become something else. I love that he’s dependable, that he’s decent; that he’s solid and he’ll stand by the people he loves. He doesn’t want drama, or thrills, or adrenalin rushes. He makes me feel safe. Secure. Content. I’ve never understood what contentment actually meant. I’ve never had that before, and now that I know what it feels like, I don’t want to let it go.’

  The irony didn’t pass me by. So many of the reasons that Sasha wanted Nate, were the ones that had made me walk away.

  ‘Does he feel the same?’ I realised that I really, really hoped he did.

  Her mouth formed into a rueful, sad smile. ‘I don’t think so. Who knows?’

  ‘Hang on – you haven’t told him? Sasha, come on!’ Here was the most direct woman I’d ever met and she was keeping this to herself?

  ‘I can’t put him in that position. Things have been over between Justin and me for almost as long as you and Nate have been apart, but I know Nate. He’s loyal. And he’s right to be. How could we even think of having a relationship when Justin lives with him? The slightest blip can send Justin over the edge – can you imagine what something like this could do? I can’t risk even telling Nate in case it makes everything impossibly uncomfortable. Which it probably will, because he’s never shown any sign at all of having those kind of feelings for me.’

  She was right and I completely understood. I wrapped my arms around her. ‘Sasha, I’m so sorry. You deserve to be happy. I wish I could sort this for you. And for what it’s worth, I think you and Nate would be wonderful together. I really do. You’d be great for him. I won’t say a word, but if you need me to talk to, to rant to, anything at all, I’m always here.’

  It had taken me a long, long time to find the person I should be with and make it work. It had taken Ida even longer.

  After everything she’d sacrificed and given, Sasha deserved love.

  I just hoped that Nate felt the same way too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Make or Break

  May 2013

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Sasha asked me for the tenth time. ‘I mean, you don’t have to do it. You could walk away now, go back to your normal life and no one would even know you had this moment of temporary insanity.’

  There was a lot of sense in her argument, but I was frozen to the spot. ‘Nope, not moving,’ I said, only to be rewarded with a roll of her eyes.

  I had to do this. I knew I did. It was time. Once before, I’d contemplated staying with someone who didn’t make me completely happy, and I’d walked away in the hope of finding more. It had been a risk, a gamble that had terrified me. Now I was about to take another leap of faith and I was just as scared.

  The doors flew open and in rushed Chloe, Justin, Connor and Nate, with Finn, holding his dad’s hand, running to keep up with them. I’d called the four adults earlier and warned them what I was going to do. Like every event in the last twenty years, they’d pitched up in a time of need.

  We were in a little private enclave of a restaurant in the city centre, a fantastic tapas place that Richard had discovered a few months ago and it had become his favourite place to eat. We were there at least once a week now, usually with some of the others in tow. Chloe absolutely adored it too, even if we did tease her because Danny, the head chef, clearly had a massive crush on her. Every time she was there, he’d insist on sending out mouth-watering extra dishes, so we weren’t complaining. Thankfully, Connor took it all in his stride and just enjoyed the Spanish gastronomic be
nefits of having a beautiful wife.

  I checked my watch. It was still only four o’clock so there were no other diners in yet.

  Danny had sent out a tray of tapas, but I was too nervous to even contemplate eating it.

  ‘Christ, if ever I needed a drink,’ Justin whistled, and Sasha eyed him with a lethal stare. ‘Don’t make me kill you with one of those potato croquet thingies,’ she warned.

  Justin laughed, and for a moment, their conversation distracted me from my tension. It was good to see the easy rapport they had now. And good to hear that the slight slur in his speech that remained after Francine had operated on his brain bleed a few years ago had almost completely gone. Touch wood, he’d been sober for five months now. He’d had another lapse at Christmas, but Nate and Sasha had scooped him up and worked with the team at the rehab centre to get him straight again, with Chloe, Connor and I helping and supporting them too. His liver disease was under control for the moment and didn’t seem to be getting any worse. He was a shell of the man he’d once been, but I had to believe that he would beat this for good. We all did. Over the years I’d nursed countless patients who’d been alcoholics in their thirties and forties, and who’d recovered and gone on to lead long, happy lives. Despite the signs, I just had to remain positive that Justin was going to be one of them.

  ‘Have we missed anything?’ Chloe gasped.

  I didn’t answer quickly enough.

  ‘HAVE WE MISSED ANYTHING?’ she barked this time, and Finn’s eyes widened with interest. At almost seven, he loved any kind of drama, excitement or disaster. I wasn’t sure which category this fell into.

  I looked at Nate, desperately seeking reassurance. He was sensible. Strategic. A voice of reason. He’d tell me if I were being a fool.

  ‘Nate, am I being crazy?’ I asked him.

  After a long pause, he nodded his head. ‘You are, but I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.’

  That really didn’t help.