With or Without You

by Shari Low

  There it was. My mother. What a gem. Thankfully Richard had known her long enough to handle her perfectly.

  ‘Ida, I’m a neurosurgeon. That area is way outside my expertise.’

  Ida took this on board and regrouped. ‘Facelift?’ she asked.

  ‘Nope, not my department either.’

  ‘Mum! You do not need a facelift!’

  ‘I know, my darling,’ she answered solemnly, ‘but I just love the look on your face when I say stuff like that.’ She then dissolved into hoots of laughter and offered up another toast. ‘To Chloe and Conner. And love. And boob jobs.’

  I think she’d had one too many glasses of champagne, but she was happy and George was obviously thoroughly entertained by her, so I felt no right to judge.

  One round of drinks turned to two, then three, and my head was decidedly giddy when I nipped to the loo. I was on the way back out when I almost collided with Richard, coming from the gents.

  ‘Well hello there,’ he said, and I didn’t think he looked handsome at all. Nope, not at all. It was the alcohol that was driving that particular attraction bus and, talking of which, there seemed to be a marked difference in our states of sobriety.

  ‘How come you look completely sober and yet I’m seeing two of you?’ I asked. And for the record, both of them were handsome.

  ‘Because I’m driving down early in the morning and going straight to work so I’ve had no booze today,’ he said.

  That explained it. Like us, he never drank if he was working the next day.

  ‘A man of impeccable habits,’ I joked, badly. It wasn’t my finest moment, but he indulged me by laughing anyway.

  ‘I just want to say I’m sorry to hear about you and Nate. I hope you’re doing okay.’ I’d barely mentioned it when we had our occasional chats on Facebook, feeling that it was somehow being disloyal to Nate. Instead, I’d deliberately kept our conversations sporadic, and firmly in the non-personal, frivolous zone.

  ‘I am. We both are. To be honest, it hadn’t been working for a long, long, time but it just took us a while to realise it. It’s all been completely amicable and we’ve managed to split everything without killing each other.’

  It was true. Nate had moved out, to a lovely rental flat near Sasha and Justin. It made sense. When he wasn’t with Finn and me, he’d be with Justin, either at the gym or hanging out at their house watching sport. Sasha had said many times how grateful she was for the support. Nate had turned the second bedroom in his new flat into a room for Finn, and we’d pretty much managed to keep similar childcare schedules as when we were together. Finn was at school during the day, and had activities afterwards, so if I wasn’t working, I’d collect him, and if I was, then Nate would do it. If there were any clashes, Ida and George would pitch in to help. My mother was definitely a less selfish, kinder version of herself since she got married and became a grandmother. Not that we were allowed to address her with the ‘G’ word.

  It helped that Nate had the same school holidays as Finn too. It had been an adjustment for Finn at the start, but he soon came round to the idea of two rooms, two sets of toys, and loads of one-on-one time with each of us – although we still hung out as a family at least once a week too.

  ‘We’re making it work and I think it’s going to be fine,’ I added.

  ‘I’m really glad. It’s good to see you happy,’ he said, holding my gaze, forcing my internal emotional barometer to explode with a full-on adrenalin surge.

  I wasn’t imagining it. There was a connection.

  Or maybe I was wrong and it was just me who felt it.

  I had a sudden urge to shift the conversation away from me, in the hope that this ridiculous teenage flush would subside.

  ‘Anyway, enough about my dramas. How’s work? How’s Manchester? And has Charlotte still not returned from Dubai and begged you to take her back?’

  ‘Well, there’s a story there,’ he said.

  ‘She did?’ I could feel my eyes widening and my heart thudding with horror.

  ‘No, she didn’t,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Last I heard she was marrying an obscenely wealthy plastic surgeon. Shit, I should have passed his name on to Ida.’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ I warned him. ‘She’ll come back with double-G boobs and she’ll do her back in. So what’s the big story then?’

  ‘I’m moving back up here. There’s an opening at Glasgow Central. It’s a post they filled a couple of years ago, but it didn’t work out, so now they’ve offered it to me.’

  I felt flushed again. Richard was returning to my hospital. I’d see him in the corridors. In the staff room. On consults in my ward. I was going to have to get over this pathetic crush I had going on, otherwise I’d spend a fair part of my working day with a beaming red face. Of course, I could always just tell him, but the thought of that made me want to hide under a duvet until the end of time, so it probably wasn’t an option.

  He was still looking at me strangely and I felt like there was some other meaning there. Or maybe I was completely imagining it.

  ‘Oh, that’s great. It’ll be good to see you more,’ I stammered, fairly sure that my red face had now notched the room temperature up several degrees.

  I caught a hesitation, as if he was unsure of what to say next, then he obviously decided to go for it anyway.

  ‘So I was thinking that…’ Another hesitation. ‘…That since I’ve just lost my best friend in the world to the love of her life…’ Another hesitation. Long enough for me to reflect on how cute that was. He and Chloe had been like brother and sister since the day they met and I loved that he cared so much for her. ‘Maybe we could…’ my heart rate increased and I was fairly sure I could hear it in my ears, ‘…hang out sometimes. I’d love to get to know Finn better and I’m absolutely down with superhero movies at the cinema.’

  I could feel my face smiling, then my head got in on the act and began to nod.

  ‘I think that would be great. I mean, Finn would really love that.’

  And there we were, standing grinning at each other, and I realised that he was just a little bit flushed too.

  ‘Have you seen Justin?’

  The voice instantly snapped both of us from our mutual gaze-a-thon. However, Sasha was way too wound up to notice anything suspicious.

  ‘No. He hasn’t come this way.’

  ‘And I was just in the gents and he wasn’t in there either,’ Richard added.

  ‘Fuck,’ she spat. ‘He’s a selfish bastard, he really is.’

  Her fury sobered me up immediately. This wasn’t good. ‘What’s happened?’

  She sagged against the wall, all fight out of her now. ‘We had an argument at the table. I saw him texting someone and asked who it was and he just exploded. He’s been like this for weeks. Months. Said it was none of my fucking business and that he couldn’t do this anymore…’

  I didn’t understand. ‘Do what?’

  She threw her hands up helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Then he got up and charged away and I assumed he was going to the toilets to calm down…’

  Richard shook his head. ‘He’s definitely not in there.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Sasha repeated. ‘So he must have left.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘Let’s go back in and get our coats and I’ll come home with you.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s fine. Nate has already offered to share a taxi home with me. I just hope…’

  She didn’t need to finish the sentence. She just hoped that whatever it was didn’t make Justin have another drink, then another.

  ‘He’ll be fine, Sasha. It’s been… how long?’

  ‘Maybe a year?’ she answered, and I immediately remembered. He hadn’t come home from work and Sasha and Nate had scoured the city centre for him all night. Next morning, they’d found his car in the same car park as the night of Chloe’s accident, only this time he wasn’t in the bar, he was in a room and he was wasted. They’d sobered him up and he’d sworn it was a
one-off.

  ‘I’ll walk you out then,’ I said, hugging her. ‘I hope he knows how lucky he is to have you.’

  ‘I don’t think he even notices,’ Sasha replied and I could hear the pain in her voice.

  We’d just stepped back into the restaurant when we saw the unmistakable flash of stationary blue lights outside.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked the closest waitress.

  ‘Och, it’s terrible,’ she said. ‘Someone got knocked down by a van, right outside. I don’t think it looks good. There’s police and ambulances and everything out there.’

  I knew. And when I looked at Sasha I could see she knew too.

  With Richard running behind us, we charged outside, over to the group of first responders. The medics were congregated around a figure on the road, the police talking to a van driver who was clearly in shock.

  ‘Keep back,’ a burly policeman shouted, but he wasn’t quick enough to stop Sasha barging through to see Justin, lying on the road, unconscious, blood oozing out around him, being loaded on to a stretcher.

  The paramedics were working furiously, but one of them looked up when Richard dashed forward and said, ‘I’m a doct—’

  ‘We’ve met,’ the paramedic replied abruptly. I recognised him from Chloe’s A&E ward. He must have been working there for a long time if he remembered Richard, but I was just grateful that he did. ‘Could do with your help on the way back.’

  With that, they raised the stretcher and loaded it into the ambulance, Richard climbed in the back, and then they were away.

  ‘We’ll follow them,’ I said, whistling to hail a passing taxi. It pulled over and stopped. ‘You get in here and I’ll be right back – let me just go grab our stuff.’

  Sasha was visibly shaking now. ‘Get Nate, Liv. Please get Nate.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  When the Last Party Is Over

  February 2015

  I’d wondered if she would come.

  There were only seconds until the start of the service when the door opened and she slipped in, taking a seat at the end of the pew claimed by Justin’s work colleagues. She hung her head. As she should.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw that Sasha had seen her too, and I reached over and put my hand on hers. She raised her chin, stared forward, didn’t falter.

  Just as she hadn’t faltered the night she’d learned the truth.

  We’d raced to A&E, only minutes behind the ambulance, but already Justin had been rushed through so that they could work on him. We were asked to sit in the waiting room, and this wasn’t a time to bend the rules. There was nothing we could do through those double doors. We had to let them work, to save him.

  The seating area was unusually quiet, maybe a dozen or so people with ailments that could wait. We moved to a semi-private corner, with two rows of six chairs that faced each other, tucked in to the left of reception, almost out of sight, but close enough to hear when the nurses called for us.

  We were silent.

  Sasha stared straight ahead, blocking out the world and the pain, while Nate and I sat, staring at the double doors to the treatment rooms, praying for them to open and for someone to tell us it was all going to be okay.

  It was the doors at the entrance that opened first.

  She walked in and went straight to the desk. ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Justin Donnelly. I think he was brought in here?’

  ‘He was.’

  It wasn’t the receptionist who answered, but Sasha. The woman with the blonde hair turned, saw us, and her expression told us everything that we never wanted to know.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise…’ She started to back out to the doors, to make an escape, but Sasha spoke again.

  ‘Come sit.’

  ‘I can’t, I…’

  ‘Come sit,’ she repeated. There was no anger, no malice, more a traumatised resignation to the truth.

  After another moment of hesitation, the woman did as she was beckoned, taking the seat across from Nate.

  ‘Madeleine,’ I said, as her name came to me. ‘You work with Justin.’

  She nodded, and I saw that her face was deathly pale with worry. ‘Is he okay? Is he hurt or…?’

  ‘Stop,’ Sasha said quietly. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘What?’ Madeleine asked.

  ‘How did you know we were here? And please don’t lie. Not tonight.’

  Madeleine’s whole body deflated, like every ounce of strength had been sucked from it. For a split second, I thought that she was going to get up and walk out, but she stayed and she spoke.

  ‘He texted me and asked me to come and pick him up. Told me to get him at the corner of Bothwell Street. By the time I got there, some of the street a bit further along was cordoned off and it was obvious there had been some kind of accident. The police there wouldn’t tell me much, just that a man had been struck by a van and been brought here. Justin wasn’t where we were supposed to meet so I texted him, called him, no answer. I knew. I knew it was him. But I didn’t realise that you would be here too. I didn’t know he was with you.’ For a moment I thought she was going to break down, but she was made of steelier stuff.

  ‘You’ve always known,’ Sasha said, cutting right through to the truth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Madeleine said again, and I wasn’t sure what she was apologising for now. For tonight? For more?

  How many times had I met her over the years, at parties and celebrations? She’d always been there, like a shadow in the background. Snapshot after snapshot lined up in my mind. Outside in the smoking area at Sasha’s thirtieth. At Justin’s party the following year. In Sasha’s garden a couple of years later when… the memory was like a sucker punch to the gut… she’d been talking to Justin and Sasha had been on her way over to confront them and I’d stopped her. And then a couple of years ago, the night of Chloe’s accident, when she’d come out of the pub just as we were driving away.

  I realised she was apologising for way, way more than just tonight.

  ‘How long have you been seeing him?’ Sasha asked, her voice still calm and cold.

  ‘Look, I think I should go, so I’ll…’ She started to stand up, but Sasha stopped her again.

  ‘He’s really badly injured,’ she said. ‘They haven’t told us anything yet, but it looked about as bad as it could be. I’ve no idea if someone is going to walk through those doors over there and tell us if he’s alive or if he’s dead. I think you loved him. And if you did, then you’ll want to know.’

  Every shred of colour drained from Madeleine’s face.

  ‘All I ask is that you tell me the truth. Because I need to know who he’ll want when he wakes up. If he wakes up.’

  My gaze met Nate’s and I could see he was as stricken as me. So he hadn’t known. Not that I thought for a moment that he did. He would never have stood by and let Justin do that to Sasha.

  ‘Seven years the first time,’ Madeleine said. ‘Then we didn’t see each other for a long time when the drinking…’ she paused, unable to say it. ‘And then when he came back to work after he’d been in rehab.’

  ‘All the nights he said he was working late or the times he said he went to the gym without Nate…’

  ‘With me,’ she said.

  ‘At the Clydemont Hotel?’

  ‘Sometimes. I share a flat with my sister and she didn’t approve, so we’d go there.’

  So that night, Chloe’s accident… I could feel a crushing wave of rage rise from my gut and I clenched my teeth to stop it exploding. This wasn’t the time or the place for recriminations. This was Sasha’s time, not mine, and I was incredibly impressed by her brutal honesty and composed calm.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why didn’t he leave me and come to you?’

  ‘Honestly? I think he was scared,’ she said. ‘With you, he knew where he was, what his life looked like. If he’d left you for me, everything was unknown. We would need to find a house, to uproot and start over again. He wasn’t sure
if his friends would forgive him. And I think he wondered if I could cope if he started drinking again. Sometimes he would test himself, have one drink, maybe two, then stop. Then there were the times that he couldn’t control it. He always knew that he was just one bad night away from self-destruction, and he didn’t know whether I could pick him up, support him if that happened. I didn’t know either. So he stayed with you. I think he felt it was safer, because he thought that if he left you, or you left him, there was every chance he would lose any restraint he had left and he would just drink himself to death.’

  Every word she said made sense. The times I was sure I could smell alcohol. The anger, the subdued behaviour, the resentment, the detachment. He didn’t want to be where he was, but he wasn’t strong enough to leave. Sympathy and anger fought for dominance as I tried to process how I felt about what he’d done. What a tragic, tortured existence for a man who was once the brightest light in any room.

  Sasha met her gaze. ‘So why did you put up with that?’

  ‘Because I love him. And because he told me he couldn’t live without me in his life.’

  ‘Relatives of Mr Donnelly?’ a nurse shouted from the double doors.

  Sasha, Nate and I stood up.

  ‘Come through please.’

  We’d only taken a couple of steps when Sasha turned back and showed more courage and compassion than most people possessed.

  ‘You can come too,’ she said to her partner’s mistress.

  Justin spent the next three weeks on a life support machine, all hope gone. His injuries had been too catastrophic to come back from.

  On the twenty-first day, his parents and Sasha gave permission for the machine to be switched off.

  Sasha had held Madeleine’s hand as he stopped breathing, then, when it was over, she’d let it go and she’d walked away.

  She hadn’t seen her again until Madeleine slipped in the door of the crematorium, just as the opening bars of Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’ brought everyone to their feet.

  After the ceremony, the mourners dispersed, heading in cars to the wake at a local hotel. Nate, Richard and Connor walked ahead of Chloe, Sasha and I, their feet leaving deep imprints in the snow for us to follow.