by Shari Low
‘Thank God. I love you, Liv.’
‘I know.’
‘Two secs,’ he said, as I lay down on the bed and waited for him, champagne in hand. Somewhere, along the corridor, Sasha was ripping the clothes off Justin. In this room, Nate was removing his own clothes, hanging up the jacket and then folding the rest in a neat pile.
By the time he joined me on the four-poster, the combination of alcohol and doubt were combining to make my anxiety rise.
I pushed it back down again.
‘We can do this, Liv,’ he said, with far more certainty than I felt.
I should have asked him why he thought that now, when we’d tried for a year and had failed spectacularly to get back on track. But I didn’t.
Instead, after I’d wrestled my way out of my dress and cardiovascular-impinging support wear, we had sex. Comfortable, predictable, enjoyable, didn’t-set-my-knickers-on-fire sex.
Afterwards, when his gentle snoring told me that he’d fallen asleep, I got up and wrapped the bed throw around me, then sat at the window, staring out at the moonlight and the jet-black outline of the hills in the distance.
What was I doing?
I was trying, that’s what I was doing. I was being loyal and optimistic and strong.
Or weak.
It was hard to tell the difference.
Blue flashing lights coming towards the hotel snapped me out of my contemplation. No siren, but then we were in the country, in the middle of the night, so I guess they didn’t need to alert other vehicles to their position.
Twice in one night the emergency services had been here, once for the pissed guy in the lobby, and now they were back, no doubt for the same guy, who’d probably drank himself into oblivion by now. Just another Hogmanay.
Below our window, the gravel of the car park crunched as the ambulance came to a stop and two paramedics leapt out and disappeared into the building.
The lights, still on, were hypnotic, holding my gaze as the hand on the clock ticked down the minutes. They were taking a while, so not a false alarm or a harmless drunk this time. I said a silent wish that whoever they were here for was okay.
Twenty minutes later, they raced back out, pushing a stretcher. They loaded it on to their ambulance and roared off, lights still flashing.
They were far in the distance by the time I closed my eyes and finally fell asleep in the chair.
It was thunder that woke me. Unfortunately, it was nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the hangover caused by drinking a selection of cocktails followed by a whole bottle of champagne.
On top of that, I had raging cramp in my legs, caused by sleeping in a bucket chair with them folded beneath me.
Nate was still sleeping soundly on the bed, so I practically crawled to the bathroom, took two paracetamol from my toilet bag, knocked them back and then clambered into the shower.
Plan for today. Go downstairs, have breakfast, go home, and then get on with making this marriage work. Maybe if I requested constant day shifts it would help. It couldn’t be easy being married to someone who was only there a couple of nights a week, and on those evenings, she was usually knackered because swapping between day shift, night shift and back shift really took it out of you.
Thunderous headache and dehydration aside, I tried to work out how I was feeling. Definitely a bit relieved that I wasn’t going home to start looking for somewhere new to live and bicker over who got custody of the Tupperware tubs. Yes, definitely relieved. There was a bit of optimism in there too.
If I were being brutally honest though, there was a niggling doubt that I’d done the wrong thing and I should have stood my ground. Aaaargh! I couldn’t have this internal conversation again. I’d been having it every day for the last year and I’d resolved nothing, so it was time to shut it down, stay put and make it work.
We could do this. We could. We had a true friendship and years of history – that had to be something worth saving. Although, I might have to bring up the whole ‘folding of the clothes before sex’ thing.
‘Hey baby,’ Nate said sleepily as I came out of the bathroom. The sheet had slipped down and his toned torso was on show – a throwback to his years playing football and rugby, maintained by his present life as a PE teacher and coach, keeping the current generation of teenagers off couches and on sports fields. ‘So the Y2K bug didn’t wipe out civilisation while I was sleeping?’
‘Apparently not. Or if it did, it missed us.’
There had been countless scare stories over the last year about how mass computer malfunction caused by the dawn of the new millennium could wreak havoc, wrecking everything from the space program to my microwave, and destroy life as we know it.
Obviously I hadn’t yet checked on my microwave, but I was going to take a guess that it was just dandy. Although, if it somehow managed to affect the hotel computers and wipe out our bar bill, I wouldn’t complain.
‘We need to be down in the restaurant within ten minutes if we want breakfast.’
‘I’m starving,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘I could eat something.’ I couldn’t, but I didn’t want to come across as pathetic. I also didn’t want to add any more pain to my aching head by trying to analyse why we were casually carrying on as normal, as if this was just another day, as if we hadn’t just decided to salvage our marriage last night. We’d just reverted back to Liv and Nate, married couple, everything exactly as before.
He threw on jeans and a T-shirt, while I tied up my wet hair, then tracked down jeans, boots and a chunky jumper. We made it down with a couple of minutes to spare to find the others already congregated, the technicolour excitement of last night replaced by grey pallor and tentative movements.
‘Hangover Central, I take it?’ I asked in a muted voice.
Chloe winced as she nodded.
I slipped into one of the two empty chairs. ‘Great, then I’ll fit right in.’
‘So are we deciding which one of you we like best and picking who to stay friends with, or does the fact that you were holding hands when you came in here mean that you’re still together?’ That was from Sasha, naturally.
‘Honestly, someone should give the United Nations a heads-up about your skills in tact and diplomacy, Sasha,’ Chloe said. ‘There must be a warring nation that we could drop you in to stir things up more.’
The others laughed, before Nate answered.
‘Still together,’ Nate said, grinning at me.
I tried to return the gesture but it made the pain in my head hurt even more. I settled for a thumbs up.
Chloe cheered at half volume. ‘Yay! I’m so glad. It’s the right thing. Definitely is.’
Despite the confidence of her words, my gaze met Chloe’s raised eyebrow and I knew what she was thinking: Are you sure?
This time I managed a half-smile and a nod, and her whole beautiful face relaxed. I could see she was happy about this. She loved Nate, but until last night she’d opted out of the discussions about leaving or staying because she said it had to be my decision. No judgement, no attempt to sway. Whatever I decided, I knew she’d be fine with it as long as I was happy.
I didn’t even look back at Sasha, because I knew she’d be somewhere along the reaction that went: eye roll, shake of head, pursed lips of disapproval, shrug of ‘well, hell mend you and don’t come to me for sympathy when it all goes wrong’.
‘Ida will be delighted,’ Chloe went on. ‘Have you told her yet?’
‘Nope, but yes, she will.’ Ida’s reaction to my gentle warning that Nate and I were in trouble was to start wearing black and brush up on her repertoire of power ballads. Every time I’d seen her since, she’d go about her business while delivering a mournful version of Whitney’s ‘I Will Always Love You’. The happy news would get her back into primary colours and disco tunes from the eighties.
My stomach lurched as a plate loaded with a full English breakfast was placed in front of me. I ignored most of it and just took two slices of
bacon, wedged them into the middle of two slices of toast, and washed it down with strong tea. I dipped in and out of the conversation going on around me until I heard Justin mentioning an ambulance.
‘Yeah, I saw that. It must have been about 4 a.m. It came roaring up the drive with its lights flashing.’
‘You were still awake at 4 a.m.?’ Nate asked me.
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
A flinch of guilt shadowed his face. ‘You should have woken me.’
‘It was fine, honestly. I just sat at the window for a while.’ There was no point sharing the truth of the angst-ridden, cramp-inducing night. We were moving forward. Onwards and upwards. If it didn’t hurt to move my eyes, I’d have been rolling them at the overuse of mental clichés. ‘Anyway, what was the ambulance here for?’ I continued. ‘Someone overdo the champagne?’
Justin shook his head. ‘No. I was outside for a smoke this morning and the bellboy was telling me that a woman was hurt in the toilets. A head injury. Her friends thought she’d gone to bed, so they didn’t go looking for her. Apparently, she lay there for hours.’
‘God, that’s awful. Was she okay?’ Chloe asked.
Justin shook his head. ‘No. The bellboy said she’d lost too much blood because she was there for so long. The poor girl died on the way to hospital.’
Chapter Two
Sasha’s 30th Birthday
Oct 2000
The phone rang just as we were stepping out of the taxi to go into the restaurant. Chloe. I skipped the small talk and went straight to the important stuff. What I really meant to say was it wouldn’t be as much fun without her, but that came out as, ‘Don’t you dare call off tonight. That’ll leave me with just Sasha and Justin and if I try to keep up with her drinking capacity I’ll end up dead in a gutter.’
‘Nope, just want to let you know that the ward is chaos, so I’ll be late. Save me a seat. Two seats, actually.’
‘Two? Did Rob change his mind about going to Ibiza?’
I was still finding it hard to believe that Chloe and Rob had split. He’d gone off to sell timeshares in the Balearics and left my friend fluctuating on the break-up scale somewhere between ‘surprised’ and ‘he’s such a dick, I had a lucky escape’. I was just glad she wasn’t devastated. When her ex, Connor, had taken off to live in Chicago, right around the same time as she realised she should never have called it off with him, she’d been inconsolable for months. I still didn’t think she was completely over it. Rob had been a great stand-in, but he was never a big love.
‘No, not Rob. I’ll surprise you.’ And then she was gone.
Nate held his hand out and I automatically took it. Things were actually really good. Weirdly, in some way it was partly down to that poor girl who had died at New Year. I still thought about her. It was just another reminder that you never knew what was round a corner or through a door, or when your life could change or end. All you could do was move forward and make the best of every day. So that was what I was doing. Nate and I were making an effort and it was working. We were happy. We’d even decided to buy a new house, a slightly tatty cottage down by the river in Weirbridge, a gorgeous old village about fifteen miles from the city centre. It felt like a very grown-up thing to do and the renovation was keeping us both busy, giving us a purpose again. It almost felt like we were back in the days when we first set up house together, only this time around there was definitely less nudity. Not that we were still in the sexual wilderness. We were back up to a pretty solid once a week and it was fine. Good. Please someone stop me before I say ‘nice’.
Sasha and Justin must have seen us coming, because they materialised at the door to greet us. There was a couple who definitely had sex more than once a week. The sexual chemistry sparked between them and they had the raunchiest relationship of anyone I knew. Sasha had offered details, but I’d declined, citing privacy laws and a desire to avoid mental images I might never forget.
Justin and Nate did that handshake, pat-on-the-back man thing, while I hugged her close, then handed over a gift-wrapped present. Hammered silver earrings that were so long they would skim her shoulders.
‘Happy birthday, Sasha. You’re old now. Really, really old.’
‘I know. First one to thirty. Ancient.’ The irony was that, thanks to a comprehensive moisturising schedule, disciplined nutrition and an unshakable gym routine, she looked like the youngest of us all.
‘You look stunning,’ I told her. ‘I really don’t think I can be your friend anymore. It’s giving me a complex. If you have a mid-life crisis, can I tag along when you get everything rejuvenated and get all your high street cast-offs?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said, ‘but I won’t be hanging out with you anymore because I’ll have new friends that I’ll meet in the changing rooms at Prada. And the rest of the time I’ll be busy with my new toy – a six foot four Chippendale who’ll succumb to my every whim.’
‘You’ve got one of those already,’ Justin deadpanned, slowly rising on his toes to conceal the reality that he’d have to stand on a shoebox to hit 6ft 4.
Aware that a bit of banter could turn to bickering in seconds with these two, I diplomatically changed the subject. ‘Chloe rang. She’s going to be late,’ I reported. ‘She got held up at work, but she’s on her way.’
Sasha steered us to a table and we slid into a curved, red leather banquette seat. She immediately stopped a passing waiter. ‘Can we have two vodka tonics, two beers, and four Sambuca shots for medicinal purposes.’ One gutter coming right up.
Nate sat on Justin’s outside, while I sat on Sasha’s, putting us at opposite ends of the banquette. We made general small talk until the drinks came, then split into separate conversations.
‘So….’ Sasha started, speaking in hushed tones so the guys couldn’t overhear. I braced myself. ‘Are we still in Delusion Town? Still trying to convince yourself that staying with him was the right thing to do?’
‘Sasha, how many times?’
Really, how many? We must be going into triple figures on some variation of this conversation since New Year, all of them starting and ending with Sasha telling me I was doing the wrong thing.
‘Loads. Until you see sense and realise you’re wasting your time with a guy that you’re not actually in love with anymore.’
‘I am! We bought a gorgeous sideboard from Habitat this week. It’ll look great once we’ve wallpapered the hall.’
My nonchalance pressed so many buttons she was going to need all four shots of Sambuca to get her blood pressure back down to normal.
‘Right, that’s it. I give up. I’m saying nothing else. You’re on your own,’ she spat.
‘Good,’ I replied, keeping the nonchalance going.
‘But don’t come crying to me when you’re forty, still miserable, and you finally leave him only to discover that no one else wants you because you’re bitter and twisted and your face is one big map of misery wrinkles.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed, pointedly. ‘First, I won’t have misery wrinkles because I’ll be happy. They’ll be laughter lines. And either way, if I need help ironing out my face creases, I’ll go to Chloe instead. She’s the kind of non-judgmental friend who would help me without blasting me with her opinion.’
‘You don’t need non-judgmental friends. They’re completely overrated. You need someone to tell you the truth and stop you living a life of delusion and regret. I’m not taking you to the bingo when you’re eighty and alone and can’t even remember your last shag because you’ve completely fucked up your life.’
‘When I’m eighty I won’t need you to take me to the bingo, because Nate and I will be travelling the world, celebrating our lives together, one zimmer stroll at a time. However, your views are noted, appreciated, and duly ignored. Haven’t you got guests to greet? Or people to socialise with?’
With a dramatic eye roll any fifteen-year-old would be proud of, Sasha slid out of the seat and went off to find new victims to torture.
I refuse
d to give her opinions any significant consideration.
Were Nate and I in a windswept bubble of devoted bliss? No. But that didn’t mean that we weren’t doing great. Brilliant even. And did I mention that we were having sex once a week?
‘Right you, come dance with me. Don’t say no, because then I’ll have to ask Sasha and she always wants to lead,’ Nate said, laughing. He got up and was waiting for me by the time I did an arse shuffle out of the banquette. Whoever invented this form of seating had a twisted mind. They were the dining equivalent of a siege situation, relying on the people at the ends not to hold you against your will.
The music shifted up a gear and NSYNC said ‘Bye Bye Bye’. I bloody hated dancing, but I gave it a shot, telling myself that I was Madonna on the inside, even if I was more Elderly Grandmother Line Dancing on the outside.
Nate sidled up close to me and kissed me on the lips. ‘You okay?’
I nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘You and Sasha looked like you were deep in conversation there,’ he said.
‘Och, you know – talking about work stuff. She’s on a mission to get her fifth years to picket the common room for a microwave and unlimited free condoms.’
That was actually true, but just not what we’d been discussing at that point. I figured a white lie was better than the truthful alternative. She thinks I should leave you before I’m a dried-up old husk that couldn’t buy a bloke on that new internet thingy.
He laughed. ‘If Sasha ever moves to the same school as me I’m putting in for early retirement. Or emigrating.’
‘We can’t leave the country…’
‘Because we’ve a new sideboard?’ he joked, getting to the punchline a second before me.
‘Exactly!’ See that was the thing with Nate. We had simultaneous thoughts. We found the same things funny. It was just… easy.
He resumed dancing and I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s seriously good. His hips move at the right time, he’s got a cute shoulder shuffle action, and if I were sitting at the side of the dance floor right now, I’d definitely be watching him. In the early years, it used to make me want to sidle between his thighs for a bit of Dirty Dancing. Now, well, I still thought it was sexy. Definitely enough to make me wait another five minutes before going to the buffet for a mini steak pie or a chicken goujon.