With or Without You (11 page)

When all the photos had gone, he took a deep breath and logged into the mail account he had set up especially for contacting her. He had never given her his real name or his phone number, just
in case. So they had contacted each other via email instead. Sure enough, there was an email from her. He clicked on it. She had attached a link to a hard-core porn site and added the message:
this is what you will be doing to me next time!

The bile rose from Jamie’s stomach and he put his hand over his mouth, suddenly afraid he might throw up. He deleted the message and then deleted his email account. Debra wouldn’t
care that she would never hear from him again. He suspected she picked up men all the time.

Once he had deleted everything, Jamie closed his computer and thought about what to do next. He wondered where Martha had gone and whether she would be back that night. He had a cold fear in the
pit of his stomach that she might have gone to stay with her mother in Surrey.

Jamie was terrified of Martha’s mother. If Martha was to tell Jane what had happened, there was no telling how she might react. Jane had always been pleasant towards Jamie, but she had
made it clear that she thought he wasn’t good enough for her daughter.

Jane had also made it clear that she thought it was wrong that Jamie ‘sat at home all day’ while Martha took on the role of breadwinner. Her own husband had died several years
previously, and until his sudden death he had been a very successful editor of a national newspaper. Jane had had her own career as a garden designer, but it was always more of a hobby than a
necessity and she thought it wrong that Jamie was happy to see Martha bear the burden of supporting the family financially.

If she discovered what Jamie had been up to while Martha was working so hard, he knew for certain that Jane would tell Martha to kick him out immediately and find someone who was worthy of
her.

Again, Jamie opened his laptop. He would send Martha an email. It might be easier to get through to her in writing, if she was refusing to speak to him. It took a long time before he could think
of the right words. What the hell could you say when you had betrayed someone so badly?

When he had finished, Jamie re-read the words several times. She would get it on her phone, wherever she was. He hoped desperately that it would make her think twice before ending their
marriage. Losing her for ever was unthinkable. He pressed ‘Send’.

Four thousand miles away, Liv was also lying awake, trying to figure out how to save her relationship. She looked at the clock beside her bed. It was exactly three a.m. She had
come to bed at around eleven but had slept fitfully, her dreams unsettling and vivid. She felt groggy and tired, as if her hangover had already kicked in, yet her heart was racing. Something was
going on with Danny. She knew she was being neurotic when she had no proof that he had done anything untoward, but her instinct was strong and she always trusted her instinct.
Plus
, said a
little voice inside her head,
you cheated on Charlie, so you know the signs
.

She felt a sudden, desperate urge to talk to Charlie. Maybe he could come to LA earlier and she could fly to Hawaii and surprise Danny? She turned over in bed, pulling the duvet around her to
prevent the chill that was spreading through her body. Did she
really
want to do that? Catch him red-handed, with all the humiliation that would entail? Maybe. If she was prepared for it,
maybe she would be able to handle it more easily.

And what would she do if Danny
was
cheating on her? Would she leave him? She loved him so much and he was so good with Felix. Felix would take it very hard if he lost Danny as well as
Charlie. The tears swam behind her closed lids. It was no good, she decided, sitting up irritably. She wouldn’t be sleeping again tonight.

She leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp, looking around her palatial bedroom, now bathed in a soft pink glow, her eyes coming to rest on Danny’s side of their vast bed. She felt
so alone and there was no-one she could talk to who wouldn’t say, ‘I told you so.’ Well, maybe her mother, but Mariella wasn’t exactly the best example to follow, or very
good at giving advice for that matter. She would probably tell Liv to ignore the infidelity and make herself feel better by taking a lover of her own.

Liv thought for a moment before picking up her phone and dialling Charlie’s number. It would be around eleven a.m. in the UK, so she hoped he would be able to talk. She listened to the
ringing tone nervously. She never, ever called him when she didn’t have Felix with her to speak to him, so he would know something was up.

After six rings, his voicemail clicked in. ‘
Hi, leave me a message and I’ll do my best to get back to you . . .’
he said in his deep, resonant voice. Liv stared at her
phone in disappointment. Should she leave a message? No, she decided, ending the call, she would try again later.

She lay back down, feeling lonely and lost. She had been so cruel to Charlie and now she was reaping what she had sowed. It was inevitable and she deserved it. She thought back to that awful
time four years previously, when Charlie had returned to Los Angeles after his trip to Britain, expecting to find his wife and son waiting for him. Instead, he had found their rented house empty,
with a letter from Liv telling him that she needed some ‘time out’ from the marriage.

She remembered Charlie’s anguished phone call as he begged her not to leave him, not to take his son away. Looking back now she couldn’t believe how cruel she had been, but she had
already moved on. Danny and Hollywood were her life. Charlie was history.

Charlie had returned to the UK, broken and humiliated. He had thought about staying in LA to be near to Felix but was worried he wouldn’t be able get work there, whereas he knew he could
get numerous roles in the UK.

And sure enough, over time, he started to rebuild his shattered life and reputation by throwing himself into acting. As far as Liv was aware, he hadn’t had any other serious relationships.
Charlie was loyal and a one-woman man. He wouldn’t have been interested in playing the field or exploiting his fame.

And as for Liv, she seemed to have made the right choice. Everyone had warned her away from Danny. Warned her that he was a womaniser who would move on to his next leading lady when their movie
finished shooting. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d moved Liv and Felix into his multi-million dollar home and lavished them both with love and affection. He told her that he had hated the
emptiness of his old life and had been looking for something more meaningful when he met her. ‘I didn’t even know what I was looking for until I found you and Felix,’ he would
say, making Liv sigh with happiness.

Felix was young enough not to understand his father’s hurt and heartbreak and, to Charlie’s credit, he had always behaved impeccably towards both Danny and Liv. As far as she knew,
he had never said anything horrible about her to Felix and, as a result, the little boy was as balanced and happy as he could be, with two fathers who loved him deeply.

On the bed beside her, Liv’s phone rang, the sudden noise jarring her already jangling nerves. The ringing echoed loudly around the room and she snatched it up, suddenly worried that the
reverberations might wake Felix, asleep in the next room.

‘Yes?’ she snapped.

‘It’s Charlie.’ His voice sounded slightly irritable. ‘I just saw I had a missed call from you . . .’

‘Oh, yes!’ She tried to breathe slowly, to stop her heart pounding. ‘Thanks for calling back. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time?’

There was a pause. ‘Um, well, it’s not great,’ he said, and she could tell he was mouthing something to someone. ‘But I can spare a minute.’

Liv wondered who he was with. ‘Well, you know you said that you were coming next week?’

‘Yes.’ He was definitely keen to get her off the phone.

‘Well, I wondered if you might think about coming a little earlier?’

‘How early?’

‘As soon as possible.’

There was another pause. ‘I’ll think about it. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get everything sorted here.’

‘OK,’ she said, knowing that it was the best she could hope for.

‘Just out of interest,’ he added, taking her by surprise. ‘Why do you want me to come earlier?’

Now it was her turn to hesitate. ‘I just thought that maybe . . . maybe I would go and see Danny . . .’ She tailed off as she finished speaking. Charlie knew her too well. He would
know that wasn’t the whole story.

‘You want to surprise him?’ he prompted.

Again, Liv hesitated. ‘Something like that,’ she said at last.

On the other end of the line, Charlie let out a breath. ‘Well, it’s none of my business but I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

‘Why?’ Liv snapped, her defences immediately up.

‘In case you find something you don’t like.’ She thought she could detect a trace of bitterness in his tone. She almost expected him to add, ‘Like I did.’

‘Well, as you say, it’s none of your business, but thank you for your concern,’ she said in a clipped voice. She knew she was being unfair. She had no right to expect anything
at all from Charlie, least of all compassion or sympathy.

She heard a noise on the other end of the line that sounded like a woman crying, and she sat up straighter, straining to hear. ‘Is everything all right there?’

‘I’d better go,’ Charlie said, not answering her question. She heard the noise again. It
was
a woman crying. ‘I’ll see what I can do about coming over a
bit earlier. Goodbye,’ he said, in the usual curt tone he reserved for her.

The line went dead and Liv frowned. Why would a woman be crying in Charlie’s hotel room, and who was she anyway? Was it the one from the photo in the paper?

She got out of bed and padded to her bathroom where she retrieved her silk robe and pulled it tightly around her, tucking her phone into the pocket. She felt agitated, as if she was standing on
some kind of precipice.

She headed out into the hallway and crossed to Felix’s room. It was a child’s utopia, expensively decorated with all the paraphernalia of his favourite American football team, and
big enough to house a basketball net, an air hockey table and, in a nod to his British roots, a full-size snooker table.

She made her way over to his car-shaped bed and looked down at his sleeping form. His dark curls, so like his father’s, were spread out on the pillow. His duvet was bunched by his feet,
leaving his pyjama-clad body exposed. He was getting so tall that he almost filled the length of his child’s bed, and she wondered as she gazed at him where her baby boy had gone. His long
lashes rested on the top of his cheeks and his full lips trembled slightly with each outward breath. She bent to kiss him, savouring the warm touch of his skin on her lips, soothing her aching
heart and filling the empty space inside her with love for her only child.

After watching him for a while longer, she left Felix’s room and headed for the vast steel and gloss-white kitchen. She stood for a moment by the glass wall, looking out onto the
glimmering turquoise pool and terrace that overlooked the dusty green Hollywood hills and, further down, the bright white lights of LA.

She opened the fridge and looked in at the bottle of white wine that she had started last night. It was only around a quarter full, so she picked it up and drank greedily from the bottle,
closing her eyes with pleasure at the deliciously cold, sharp tang. She deposited the bottle at the back of the cupboard under the sink, then made herself an espresso. Definitely no more sleep
tonight. In her pocket, she felt the phone vibrate against her thigh, the signal that it was about to ring, and she snatched it up quickly, before it could chime through the house again.
‘Yes!’ she said, wondering who the hell would be calling at this time.

‘It’s me, Charlie. You sound a bit odd again.’

‘Oh! Hi, sorry, it’s just it’s the middle of the night and—’

‘Well you called me just a short while ago,’ Charlie cut in, pre-empting any rebuke from her. ‘So I thought it would be ok . . .’

‘It is,’ Liv said quickly. ‘It is. Sorry.’

‘OK,’ Charlie replied, failing to mask the note of irritation. ‘Well, I just called to say that I am going to be able to come over a bit earlier . . .’

‘Oh that’s great.’ Liv took a sip of her espresso and wondered if it
was
great. It might mean she got to find out once and for all whether Danny was cheating on
her.

‘But there’s just one thing . . .’ Charlie continued, suddenly sounding slightly nervous.

‘Hmmm, what’s that?’

‘I think I might be bringing someone with me after all.’

Martha couldn’t remember anything of the train journey to London. She had sat in a daze, staring blankly out of the window over the undulating countryside, as images of
Jamie and that woman flashed before her eyes.

It had been just a few short hours since her whole life had fallen apart. This time yesterday, she had felt happy and content. As if things couldn’t get any better. She loved her job, she
loved her children and she loved her husband. But he didn’t love her. He couldn’t have done. Not only had he cheated on her, he had done it so casually. So easily. And he had almost got
away with it. Almost.

The bile rose in Martha’s throat and she put her hand over her mouth, suddenly terrified that she might be about to throw up again. She glanced towards the toilets, praying that the
engaged
sign wasn’t illuminated.

She wondered why she had agreed to meet Charlie. On the worst day of her life, when she so desperately needed someone to talk to, she was heading up to London to meet with a man – a film
star at that – who she didn’t really know at all. And yet it felt like the right thing to do. They had got on so well yesterday and he had been so sweet about the embarrassing hole in
her dress that she already felt as though she could trust him.

She headed for the tube in a daze, barely aware of where she was going, and yet she managed to get on the right train and before she knew it she was standing in front of the hotel once more.
Suddenly, she felt conspicuous in what she was wearing. Her t-shirt and jeans felt scruffy in such opulent surroundings, but just as she was thinking about turning around and leaving, her phone
buzzed. She fished in her large leather bag, and as she retrieved it she could see immediately that she had a message from Charlie.
I can see you! Come on up. Room 802.