by Shari Low
I reached down and wrapped my fingers around hers. It was another testimony to how pissed off she was that she didn’t pull away. PDA’s weren’t her thing. Today though, she held on as if she needed the support.
The song finally ended, and the stars took a bow as their audience clapped and cheered. Ida’s grin was so wide it could have featured in a toothpaste advert. She just lived for the adulation of a crowd.
Justin held Ida’s hand to steady her as she climbed back down to the main restaurant, then swayed his way over to us. When he reached us, it was obvious that he was already drunk.
‘Don’t,’ Sasha said, putting her hand up to stop him getting any closer to her. ‘Just don’t.’
Justin’s top lip turned into the snarl that only ever crossed his face when he was on the wrong side of a dozen beers. He followed that up by going right on the offensive.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he spat. ‘Okay, go on. Tell me what I’ve done wrong now. Because it’s not as if I ever do anything right, is it?’
We’d seen this before countless times so it didn’t come as a shock.
Sober Justin – lovely, decent and respectful.
Drunk Justin – antagonistic, arrogant and verbally aggressive.
‘I’m not dealing with you right now,’ Sasha said, but before she could walk away, he challenged her again.
‘Why? What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t a guy just have a good time? Guess not. Well, pardon me for trying. Go on then, tell me how I’ve spoiled your day, how I’ve fucked up your life…’
‘Justin, enough.’ It took me a second to realise those words, firm and not to be argued with, had come from me. ‘I’m telling you to cut it out. Go outside, get some fresh air, and cool down. Then come back and stop being a dick,’ I added.
My intervention clearly stunned him into silence. I wasn’t usually one for getting involved in my friends’ disagreements, but he was going too far. I wasn’t standing for him speaking to Sasha like that. Not today. Not any day.
‘Fuck off the lot of you,’ he spat, then took a step to walk away in the direction of the doors. At least he was doing as I’d asked. I had no idea how Sasha was feeling, but I was furious and it was taking every ounce of self-discipline I had not to tell him to go home, and then come see us again when he was ready to apologise.
Sasha got there first. Her next words stopped him in his tracks.
‘No, don’t go,’ she said, and for a moment I thought that, as she’d done many times before, she was going to defend him or make excuses for him.
I was wrong.
‘I need to say something first,’ Sasha went on. ‘I don’t want you to come back in. I want you to go home, get your stuff and leave. And I want you to check into a rehab centre and get help. If you don’t, then we’re done, Justin. I can’t live like this anymore, and neither can you.’
I wondered if the pleading in her voice would reach him, but no. His face twisted as his anger notched up a few more levels.
‘Why the fuck do I need to go to rehab? There’s nothing wrong with me. The only problem in my life is that I’m surrounded by boring bastards who’ve forgotten how to have a good time.’
With that, he turned, slammed open the door and stormed out.
Sasha watched him go, with a defeated shake of the head. On impulse, I ran after him and caught up with him twenty metres down the street.
‘Justin! Stop. Wait.’ I begged. Reluctantly, he turned around.
‘Look, I’m just going to say it. We all love you, but we can’t watch you doing this anymore. You need to get help. I know some really good doctors who can…’
‘Liv, do me a favour will you?’
For a moment I thought he was buying into what I was saying.
‘Just mind your own fucking business.’
With that he’d stormed off, flicking me a V sign as he went.
I dashed back to the restaurant, to find Sasha still waiting by the door.
‘Did you get him?’ she asked, her face stricken.
I nodded. ‘I told him we would support him, find him a programme…’
‘And?’
‘He told me to fuck off.’
‘Every time,’ she said sadly. ‘Every time I try to get him to sort himself out, this is how it goes.’
‘Maybe he has to hit rock bottom before he’ll accept help,’ I said.
Sasha’s complexion was grey now, her face etched with pain and worry as she spoke.
‘I think he’s already there.’
Chapter Ten
An Old Friend Returns
July 2008
I checked in on one of my patients, Molly, before the end of my shift, and saw her daughter Trina, sitting on the chair beside her bed, reading a Maeve Binchy novel to her unconscious mum.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Trina,’ I said warmly.
‘Bye, Liv,’ she replied. ‘Enjoy your night off.’
Trina visited her mum every day and we’d developed a lovely rapport. However, one of the hardest parts of my job was knowing that there was only one way this was going to end. For now, though, Molly was comfortable and Trina could spend a few more precious days with her, whilst I headed back to my own family.
It was four o’clock by the time I got home, almost twelve hours after I’d left it, and Nate was lying on a rug out in the garden playing with Finn. He was only coming on for two, but already he could muster a fair sprint, and was shrieking with laughter as he ran around his dad. That scene should have made my heart swell – and it would have if the rest of the house didn’t look like it had been ransacked.
I shouldn’t care. I absolutely shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. But a knot of resentment started to form in my stomach. The school term had finished for the year, so Nate had nothing on his plate at all, other than to look after Finn on the days that I didn’t take him into the hospital day-care centre. Yet, still, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to clear up the house, or do a bit of washing, or load the dishwasher. God, what a cliché I was. The wife who was pissed off with her husband because he didn’t do the bloody dishes.
The truth, if I was being a bit more introspective, was that the real reason I was a powder keg of resentment went a bit deeper.
I felt like I was invisible.
There. Needy and pathetic as it sounded, that was the truth.
Every bit of me adored being a mum, and when I was in work I felt useful and valued. But with Nate?
Invisible. Actually, that wasn’t fair. He saw me as a mum, and we were pretty much in tune when it came to Finn, but other than that?
We were housemates.
I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had great sex, or roared with laughter, or even sat down and talked about anything deeper than the location of the nappy bags or childcare schedules.
Was this it? Was this the way it was going to be? And was I being ridiculously unreasonable to want more?
I’d tried talking to Nate about it a few times over the last year or so, but he either just glazed over, said all the right things, then changed nothing, or he booked a table somewhere for dinner, made a minor effort to be more tactile, initiated sex once or twice, then slipped back into his comfortable state of oblivion.
It wasn’t that I was leaving it all to him. I’d tried too. I’d done the sexy lingerie, teased him into bed a few times, organised date nights and tried to stay positive, but eventually my ego couldn’t take the fact that I was doing all the trying and I gave up.
I wanted to be here. I wanted to be Finn’s mum and Nate’s wife. But I also wanted a bit of fun, excitement, great sex and someone whose gaze didn’t continually veer towards the sport on the telly when I was trying to talk to him.
I wanted to feel like I mattered.
Although, my son never left me in any doubt of that.
I pushed open the patio doors and squealed as Finn ran towards me and I scooped him up into a bear hug, his giggles going right to the top of his volume scale.
>
‘Hi,’ Nate said, ‘How was your day?’
‘It was fine,’ I answered. I’d also long ago realised that ‘fine’ was always the answer he was aiming for when he asked that question. If I said it was crap and launched into the reasons why, he’d switch off before I’d even stopped to take a breath. ‘Chloe has invited us over for dinner tonight. Says she’s got a surprise for us. You okay with that?’
‘Sure,’ he said. That was the thing about Nate. He was so easy-going and happy to go along with any plan – just as long as he wasn’t the one who had to organise anything.
‘Okay, I’ll see if Maisie can come watch Finn and if not, we can take him with us.’
Maisie was delighted to get the call, and promptly turned up at 6.30 p.m., half an hour earlier than planned. ‘I’ll give Finn his bath and leave you time to get ready,’ she said. I could have kissed her. Every time we went out, I was invariably running at the last minute, slapping make-up on in the car, wearing clothes that I hadn’t had time to iron.
Tonight I took an extra few minutes in the shower, half dried my hair, then left it to fall into waves, and put on enough make-up that Sasha wouldn’t come out with her usual enquiry as to whether I was channelling a consumption victim from the 1800s.
From the back of my wardrobe, I dug out an old favourite white crepe top, added a pair of jeans and sandals and I was good to go.
Chloe answered the door the minute we pressed the bell. ‘Ta-da!’ she exclaimed.
‘Ta-da what?’ I asked, laughing but confused.
‘Look behind me!’
I did as she said. I could see a male outline, and for a second wondered if she and Danny had got back together. That would definitely have been a bolt from the blue, because she’d shown no signs of regret in the eight months since she’d asked him to move out.
I squinted to get a better look, and suddenly the surprise made sense.
‘Richard! Wow! We haven’t seen you for years!’
There were hugs (me), handshakes (Nate) and then clinking of glasses as Chloe dished out the wine.
‘Congratulations! I heard you got married,’ I said, trying to rack my brain for the details. Chloe had told me about it ages ago. I was disappointed that we couldn’t all go, but it was a destination wedding. Maybe Bali. Or the Maldives. To someone called… Shannon. Or Charlotte. Or something like that.
‘And divorced. It’s a long story.’
‘Oh bollocks, I’m sorry.’ I was mortified. Foot well and truly inserted in mouth. I made a pathetic attempt to change the subject. ‘What are you doing up here?’
‘Neuro conference about new brain tumour protocols at the Southern General,’ he said. ‘So I tracked this one down – despite the fact that she made it difficult…’
‘It was my day off,’ Chloe explained. ‘He had to go to the tortuous effort of leaving a voicemail on my mobile and waiting for me to call him back.’
‘It was agony,’ Richard said solemnly. ‘But then she suggested dinner and drinks with you lot tonight and my pain was forgotten.’
I remembered why I’d always liked this guy so much and also why I’d despaired that Chloe wasn’t interested in him romantically. He was fun, he was great company, he loved to chat…
‘So tell me what’s been going on with you,’ he said, directing the question at me.
…And he was interested in others. I tried not to draw comparisons with Nate’s indifference. Instead, I bored him to death with toddler chat and photographs for fifteen minutes until Sasha and Justin arrived.
Yep, they were still together. After the argument at Finn’s christening, he’d stormed off, but when he’d sobered up the next morning, after spending the night on some co-worker’s couch, a shred of realisation had compelled him to take a leave of absence from work and check into a rehab centre that specialised in alcohol and substance abuse. Proud to the last, he’d done it on his own, without letting me or anyone else in our group help him.
They’d released him a month later, and he’d come back detoxified, sober, and more highly strung than I’d ever known him. He was like a different man and I admired him for doing it – but I could see the toll it had taken on both him and Sasha. I just hoped that the longer he was sober, the more they’d find their way back to enjoying life and each other.
But not tonight.
The food was great, the chat hilarious, but there was an underlying tension emitting from Justin.
‘Is Justin okay?’ I asked Sasha, when we were in the kitchen clearing away the plates.
I could see she was weary as she struggled to formulate an answer. ‘He doesn’t want to go out anymore, and when I coax him into it, he’s just spends the whole time in this low-level state of bloody fury. It’s like he resents everyone for having a good time, when he – in his mind – can’t enjoy himself because he doesn’t have a drink. I’ve tried everything, but nothing’s making this any better. I just need to stick with it because I’m the one that made him go to bloody rehab in the first place.’
It was an impossible situation and my heart broke for her.
‘It’ll get better, Sasha.’
‘Will it?’ she asked, pulling a huge gateau from the fridge.
‘I’ve no idea – I was just trying to be supportive and stop you comfort-eating that cake.’
At least that made her laugh. She headed back into the dining room with the gateau, while I finished loading the dishwasher with the plates Chloe was ferrying in. Table cleared, she grabbed some dessert bowls and followed Sasha.
I was almost done when I heard Richard’s voice behind me.
‘I’ve been sent in for dessert forks,’ he said. ‘Which is concerning me because I’ve no idea how they look different to any other kind of fork. If I take in the wrong ones, Sasha could turn nasty.’
I was chuckling as I opened Chloe’s cutlery drawer. ‘In our world they’re exactly the same as every other fork, so don’t worry,’ I reassured him.
He counted out six, then saw that I was wrestling with a wine cork. He took the bottle out of my hands and tried to uncork it. He failed.
‘That’s what you get for trying to be the big strong bloke coming to the feeble little woman’s rescue,’ I teased him, just as I managed to pop the bottle and fill up my glass.
‘I’d take offence,’ he retorted, ‘but I know you’re kidding because you’re the least feeble woman I’ve ever met.’
Perhaps it was the compliment, or maybe the wine, or even the sudden flashback to another time and place, years ago, when I’d felt a flush of something when I was talking to him, but I realised that, for the first time in a long, long, time, I actually felt… Oh God… I felt turned on. A bit giddy. Attractive, even.
He held my gaze for long enough to make his point, but not too long that it became inappropriate. I was married. My husband was in the next room. Richard was a dear and long-time friend.
But there, in that moment, I had the first real inkling that Richard Campbell was attracted to me.
And that didn’t just go one way.
Chapter Eleven
Sasha’s birthday
October 2009
Chloe, Nate, Finn and I stood outside Sasha’s door, hatching a plan.
‘Okay, so I think the first thing she should see is Finn’s smiley face – that way, she’s less likely to kill us,’ I suggested, before turning to my gorgeous boy, in his favourite resting place on my right hip. ‘What do you think, Finn? Can you have a big happy face for Auntie Sasha?’
Right on cue, he gave us his very best, utterly adorable grin.
‘That’s it! And what have you to say?’
‘Happy burfday!’ he cheered, clapping his hands.
‘I actually think he’s a genius,’ I declared and Chloe nodded in agreement.
That’s what friends were for: sharing delusions about children’s superior intelligence and throwing surprise birthday celebrations for other friends who really, really hated birthday celebrations.
Meanwhile, Justin had turned his addictive personality back to work and the gym. He was putting in the hours, leaving for the office at the crack of dawn, then going to train, then coming home late at night and crashing into bed. Nate couldn’t keep up with Justin’s gym schedule now that we had Finn, but he went when he could.
Ironically, on the outside, Justin looked great again – like the old Justin, with the addition of a few grey hairs – but that was as far as the similarities went.
I didn’t have the answers. All I knew was that we had to be there for them both, but we also had to make a real effort to give Sasha’s life the occasional interlude of happiness. Her parents were gone, and she wasn’t particularly close to her two brothers, so it was down to us.
I rapped on the door, and when she answered, Finn performed perfectly. ‘Happy burfday!’ he yelled, with a toothy grin.
I knew he was a genius.
Unsurprisingly, and not for the first time, Sasha’s reactions ran through several emotions, which I read as surprised, irritated, apprehensive, then resigned – all disguised behind a huge smile that was reserved for Finn and that he responded to with a squeal of ‘Auntie Dasha!’ It was how he’d first addressed her and it had stuck.
