With or Without You

by Helen Warner

  As he spoke, a giant wave of grief seemed to pass through Martha’s body and escape from her mouth in a strangled moan. She curled into a foetal position as dry, painful-sounding sobs racked her whole body. Jamie moved towards her again and wrapped his arms around her. She was too distraught to shake him off and he gently rubbed her back as he rocked her. Gradually, her crying became less violent until she was just sniffing quietly.

  ‘I’m not glad,’ she said in a small voice, ‘because I thought we were the real thing and now I know for certain that we’re not. We never were.’

  Jamie desperately wanted to lie down on the floor and cry himself, but he knew it was important that he held it together. ‘We are the real thing,’ he whispered urgently. ‘We’ve been so happy together, Martha. We love each other . . .’

  As he felt her stiffen, he continued quickly, ‘Since the day I met you, I have never loved anyone else and that hasn’t changed.’

  ‘But I don’t believe any of it any more. I feel as if our whole life together’s been a sham.’

  ‘Believe it,’ Jamie said urgently, giving her a squeeze. ‘Remember all the good things. Please don’t dismiss all those happy years as if they didn’t happen.’

  Martha pushed him off gently and sat back as she looked up at him, her dark eyes still swimming. ‘I do remember the good things, Jamie, and it only makes it worse. I was so sure that we would grow old together, look after our grandchildren together, travel the world . . . We had so many dreams and now they’ve all just . . . gone.’ She clicked her fingers together as she spoke. ‘Just like that.’

  ‘They haven’t gone!’ Jamie cried, kneeling in front of her and grabbing both her hands, as he looked up at her beseechingly. ‘We’ll still do all those things we dreamed about. We’ll still grow old together, Martha. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. Please, we’re too good to let it all go.’

  Martha shook her head sadly. ‘How can we, Jamie? How could we ever pick up where we left off? Everything we had, every memory, is tainted now.’

  ‘Don’t say that! Nothing can destroy our beautiful memories. We’ll always have those.’

  Again, Martha shook her head and sighed. ‘No, we won’t. It’s like a photograph that been torn in two. We can mend it but the tear will always be there.’

  Exhaustion and misery overwhelmed Jamie and he slumped down onto the floor, resting his forehead on the thick, soft carpet. She was right. Whatever happened from now on, the scars would always be there to remind them. But he had to find a way to make her give him another chance. He might as well be dead if she didn’t. He got up and sat beside her, prepared to talk all day and all night if necessary. Sleep could wait. His marriage couldn’t.

  Chapter 26

  Liv was in her office speaking to her mother when she heard Charlie calling out to her. ‘I’d better go, Charlie’s here.’

  ‘Charlie?’ her mother, Mariella, spluttered. ‘Your Charlie?’

  ‘He hasn’t been my Charlie for a long time,’ Liv replied wearily.

  ‘Well, what’s he doing there? Has he come to collect Felix?’ Mariella persisted.

  ‘No, he’s staying here. Oh, it’s such a long story that I haven’t got the time or the energy to go into it right now. I’ll call you later, OK?’ Liv said, before hanging up, feeling shaky and a bit sick. It had been a draining and upsetting conversation, breaking it to Mariella that Danny had ended their relationship.

  Her mother would never have admitted it, but Liv knew that she was ridiculously impressed by Danny’s connections, even though her own family were already famous themselves. She had secretly been over the moon when Liv had dumped Charlie, who Mariella thought would never make it big, in favour of a Hollywood A-lister, as it had automatically propelled her up the fame ladder by association.

  No, Liv thought, as she made her way through to see Charlie, Mariella had never tried hard to disguise the fact that she was as shallow as a paddling pool; her disappointment at Liv’s wrecked relationship was definitely more for herself than for her heartbroken daughter. As the thought entered Liv’s head, it was immediately followed by the realisation that maybe she herself wasn’t as heartbroken as she had always imagined she would be. In some ways, now that the worst had happened, it felt like a relief. She had spent so long twisting herself in knots, worrying that Danny might be cheating on her, or would grow bored with her, that she couldn’t have carried on for much longer as she was.

  ‘Hi. I was just on the phone to my mother,’ she explained, as she came into the day room to meet Charlie.

  Charlie rolled his eyes. ‘And how is the lovely Mariella?’

  ‘Exactly the same as she ever was,’ Liv replied, thinking how strange it was to have her ex-husband, who knew so much about her and her family, sharing her house again, and for them to be getting on so well after so many years of clipped conversations and recriminations. ‘I told her about . . . me and Danny,’ she said quietly. She glanced towards the kitchen. She needed a drink but suspected that Charlie might disapprove.

  Charlie nodded. ‘And let me guess. I bet she wasn’t happy? Or at least not as happy as she was when you left me?’

  Liv sighed. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I hate that she didn’t treat you as well as you deserved, Charlie. None of us did.’

  ‘Forget about it,’ Charlie said. ‘I managed just fine without Mariella’s dubious support, thanks very much,’ he added, dropping down onto one of the over-sized white sofas that were dotted around the giant space and smiling up at Liv, taking the sting out of his words.

  ‘Anyway, forget about my mother.’ Liv waved her hand dismissively. God, she really did need a drink. ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘Fine,’ Charlie nodded. ‘I’ve left them to it. Dropped them at the Four Seasons . . . We were booked in there anyway.’

  Liv sat down on the floor, her legs crossed and her back against one of the easy chairs. ‘That was very nice of you, Charlie, especially considering . . .’ she tailed off. ‘Well, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. He frowned slightly. ‘I must have “mug” tattooed on my forehead.’

  ‘No!’ Liv protested. ‘You’re not a mug at all. You’ve done really well for yourself. You’re flavour of the month at the moment – everyone’s tripping over themselves to offer you stuff.’ She hoped she didn’t sound as bitter as she felt. What would her career hold now she’d been relegated to ‘Danny’s ex’?

  ‘Yes, I guess so. I’ve got a couple of meetings tomorrow, actually. I’d almost forgotten about them,’ he replied, looking down and meeting Liv’s eye.

  ‘I remember that feeling of being fêted by every director and having to turn stuff down . . .’ Liv pushed out her bottom lip glumly.

  ‘Any new roles lined up?’

  ‘A couple,’ Liv lied, before admitting, ‘Actually, Charlie, the truth is, things haven’t been so good lately. I’ve missed out on a couple of parts that I really wanted and I don’t know why. Everything seems to be going wrong at the moment,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears and her head swimming.

  Charlie looked at her appraisingly. ‘Everyone goes through lean patches, Liv,’ he said. ‘It’ll come good, you’ll see. You’ll get a call tomorrow from your agent with something amazing and wonder what you were worried about.’

  Liv smiled gratefully, remembering how good Charlie had been for her confidence. He had always believed in her. Believed that she would make it all the way to the top. And he had been right. For a very brief period, after she and Danny got together, she had been the toast of Hollywood, turning down endless parts because she didn’t have the time to fit them all in. But then, as Danny moved on to new projects with new leading ladies and she starred in a couple of movies that were universally panned, she noticed that she was starting to lose out to other actresses for parts that she would have thought were a dead cert.

  ‘It’s amazing that you can be so generous, aft
er what happened between us,’ Liv chewed her lip nervously. She and Charlie had never actually discussed what had happened, after the initial phone calls in which he had begged her to reconsider and she had coldly told him that she had made up her mind and that she wouldn’t be getting back with him.

  Charlie looked up as he considered what she had said. ‘I don’t feel generous,’ he said. ‘But I do feel as if something has changed in me recently. Maybe I’m hardening,’ he added, with a glint in his eye.

  ‘I’m the opposite,’ Liv could feel the cloud that had been hovering ominously over her shoulder start to descend just a little bit further. ‘I feel a bit . . . overwhelmed by everything. As if I can’t cope.’

  Charlie thought for a moment before he spoke. ‘I felt like that for a long while after you left me,’ he said, his tone matter-of-fact rather than accusatory.

  Liv closed her eyes and shrank back against the chair she was leaning on, her stomach churning. It might be easier if he was a bit more aggressive and nasty, but his kindness only made her guilt a million times worse. ‘I’m sorry . . .’ she muttered.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you to apologise,’ Charlie said quickly. ‘I just meant that it’s not surprising you feel like this so soon after your relationship breaking up. But it passes.’

  Something inside Liv seemed to crack as he spoke and she started to shake violently, then her chest tightened and she started to struggle for breath.

  Charlie jumped up in alarm. ‘Liv! Are you ok?’ he cried, kneeling in front of her and lifting her chin. ‘Take a deep, slow breath. Come on, breathe with me, Liv! Jesus, you’ve gone grey. Where’s your phone?’

  Liv tried to focus on what he was saying but it was as if all the muscles in her neck had disappeared and she couldn’t hold her head up, let alone breathe.

  Charlie cast around wildly, looking for the phone as Liv slid down onto the floor so that she was lying on her back. Suddenly, it was as if she was floating above herself, watching as her body continued to shake violently and her eyes began to bulge as she clutched her chest.

  Charlie finally located a phone and dialled 911. ‘Ambulance, emergency,’ he said, before giving the address. ‘It’s Liv Mason. She seems to be having some sort of attack.’

  Chapter 27

  Martha leaned against the balcony rail and looked out at the view over the pool. It reminded her of an all-inclusive holiday they’d once taken with the children, the way the sunbeds were all lined up in neat rows.

  Unlike the all-inclusive, however, where there was an unseemly scramble for the sunbeds each morning, many of the beds were available. Those that weren’t were mainly occupied by extremely attractive young women, clearly hoping to be ‘discovered’ either by a passing movie director or, failing that, a very rich man who would provide a passport into a life of Hollywood luxury.

  Every fifteen minutes or so, a handsome young man in an emerald green polo shirt and stone-coloured shorts would approach the sunbathers and top up their water jugs or refill their glasses.

  At any other time, Martha would have lapped up this whole experience. She was in one of the best hotels in Beverly Hills, surrounded by beautiful people, celebrities and God knows how many potential stories, but she just couldn’t get excited about it.

  She and Jamie had talked for hours, with Jamie desperately trying to get her to focus on the good times they had had together. They had reminisced about the early days of their relationship and all the things they had achieved together; they remembered the days their babies were born and how scared they had felt bringing them home for the first time. But underlying everything was both of them trying to make sense of what had happened and why he had done it. Eventually, Jamie had succumbed to exhaustion and jet-lag, and was still fast asleep.

  Martha stepped back into the room – she hadn’t used the other room they had booked yet – and pulled the doors closed behind her, blocking out the sunshine and the smoggy heat of the city. She sat down on the sofa and watched Jamie as he slept, thinking how troubled he looked, with the deep frown lines across his tanned forehead that moved up and down as if they were having a conversation all of their own, his square jaw clenching every now and again as he ground his teeth together. There were still traces of the three scratches she had left on his cheek when she had clawed at him that first morning, which gave Martha a strange sense of satisfaction. She decided that it was because she had inflicted pain on him the way he had inflicted it on her. Was it really less than a week since all that had happened?

  Jamie jolted violently in the bed and groaned. Clearly his dreams were as bad as hers. She had loved this man so, so much and yet, watching him, she realised how close love was to hate, because hate was definitely her over-riding emotion now. How could he have done it to her? But worse, how could he have done it to their children?

  She wondered what Charlie was doing right now and why she was missing him. Probably because he had been so kind to her, she told herself. She could picture his long-lashed, dark eyes, watching her with sympathy and understanding as she talked. It was the sympathy of someone who knew exactly how she felt.

  Martha shook her head, trying to clear all thoughts of Charlie from her mind, but it was hopeless. She needed to see him. Casting another glance at Jamie, she picked up her phone and left the room. She made her way along the plushly carpeted corridor to the lift and pressed the button for the pool area.

  As she walked out into the sunshine, she was immediately hit by a gush of dry heat and she instinctively dropped her sunglasses against the glare. Her eyes felt sore enough without exposing them to the sun’s rays. Now she understood why so many Hollywood stars were never seen without their shades. It would have been impossible to function without them here.

  She headed for one of the sunbeds and was just about to lay down when one of the attendants darted in front of her and placed a thick cream towel on the sumptuous padding and another one rolled up for her head. Martha smiled her thanks and sank down onto it, suddenly grateful that she was wearing a sundress rather than a bikini, judging by the model-like beauties draped over some of the other beds.

  She dialled Charlie’s number and felt a stab of disappointment when he didn’t pick up. She knew that he had her number in his phone; was he deliberately screening her calls because he was pissed off that she had agreed to meet Jamie? Surely not. Jamie was her husband and the father of her children. She couldn’t let him come all the way to LA and ignore him.

  As instructed by an automated voice, she left a message. ‘Hi Charlie, it’s me. Martha, that is,’ she added, laughing nervously. ‘I just wanted to . . . um, speak to you, I suppose.’ She was trying not to sound too desperate. ‘Anyway, please give me a call if you get this message. Uh, thanks. Bye.’

  She hung up and laid her head back on the rolled-up towel at the top of the sunbed, feeling strangely upset. ‘Hi there!’ said a ridiculously good-looking blond-haired man in his twenties, looming over her and making her jump. ‘Can I get you a drink from the bar?’

  ‘Oh!’ Martha stuttered, sitting up quickly and automatically pulling down the hem of her dress. ‘No, er, I’m fine, thank you. I’m with someone . . . he’s just upstairs!’ she trilled over-brightly. She knew she had started to blush. It was a long time since a man had hit on her and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

  The man managed to smile and frown at the same time. ‘No problem, just give me a shout when you’re ready to order!’

  ‘Will do,’ Martha muttered, feeling idiotic and lying back down as flat as she could, in the hope that she could disappear altogether. Of course he hadn’t been hitting on her. He worked here.

  After a few moments Martha must have dozed off because she was awoken by a voice accompanied by a hand on her arm. ‘No!’ She opened her eyes in alarm. ‘I’m still fine for a drink, thank you!’

  ‘Martha, it’s me, Charlie,’ said the voice, as Charlie stepped slightly to one side so that the sun wasn’t behind him and she could make out his
face.

  ‘Oh, hi!’ she said, aware that she was grinning now. ‘I just called you.’

  ‘Actually, you called me a while ago but I was at the hospital.’

  ‘Hospital?’ Martha echoed, sitting up in alarm. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  Charlie sighed as he sat down on the sunbed nearest to her, upon which the ever-present attendant had already placed two towels.

  Around the pool, Martha could see a couple of people glancing surreptitiously over the top of their sunglasses at him, and she realised with a start that it was because he was easily the most famous person here. Already it seemed as if Martha had forgotten that Charlie was a VIP – she just thought of him as the same as everyone else.

  ‘It was Liv. She had some sort of funny turn—’

  ‘Like the other day?’ Martha cut in, turning sideways so that she was facing him, planting her bare feet on the ground.

  ‘I guess so. Looked like she was having a heart attack but I doubt it’s that – she’s too young and fit.’

  Martha shook her head as she absorbed the news. ‘I did notice that she seems to be drinking a lot. Do you think it might have something to do with that?’

  Charlie shrugged. ‘Who knows? I guess we all go through those sort of phases . . .’

  ‘Poor Liv. So, is she still at the hospital?’

  ‘Yes, they’re running lots of tests so there wasn’t really anything I could do. I thought I’d go and get Felix from school later and take him back to get her. Then I saw that you’d called, so I decided to call in . . . to see how you were getting on.’

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ Martha said, then clamped her mouth shut, wondering if she had said too much.

  Charlie looked at her curiously. ‘So, where is he then? He hasn’t gone home already?’ he added, almost hopefully.

  ‘No. He’s sleeping. The jet-lag finally caught up with him, so I left him to it.’

  Charlie nodded and smiled at her. Martha had never noticed before but he had a slight dimple in his cheek that became more pronounced when he smiled.