With or Without You
Carole Matthews
With or Without You
First U.S. edition August 2005
WITH OR WITHOUT YOU
A Red Dress Ink novel
ISBN 1-55254-347-1
© 2004 by Carole Matthews.
All rights reserved. The reproduction, transmission or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission. For permission please contact Red Dress Ink, Editorial Office, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the author’s imaginaton, and are not to be construed as real. While the author was inspired in part by actual events, none of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.
® and TM are trademarks. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and/or other countries.
To everyone who made my visit to Nepal so memorable:
The beautiful, humble people of Nepal. Our charming guide, Sanjiv Thakuri, and his team of Sherpas—Captain Dendi, Tek, Dorge, Jangbu, Nawang (the cross dresser) and Mr. Bom, the chief cook.
Plus all the wonderful porters who made our lives so easy.
To my easy-going travelling companions, especially Jacqueline, Rosemary, Gail and the white-water rafting team Peter and Val, Peter II and Kev’s dad, John.
And to Lovely Kev for carrying my rucksack and letting me have most of the sleeping bag.
Namaste!
Carole Matthews
Carole Matthews is the internationally bestselling author of nine novels. Her unique sense of humor has won her legions of fans and acclaim all over the world. Her first novel in the U.S.A, For Better, For Worse, was a “Reading with [Kelly] Ripa” book club pick, sending it straight onto the USA Today bestseller list.
When she’s not writing novels and film scripts, Carole manages to find time to trek in the Himalayas, in-line skate in Central Park, take tea in China and snooze in her garden shed. Carole lives near London, England, with her Mr. Right.
Contents
About the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Chapter Sixty-eight
Chapter Sixty-nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-one
Chapter Seventy-two
Chapter Seventy-three
Chapter Seventy-four
Chapter Seventy-five
Chapter Seventy-six
Chapter Seventy-seven
Chapter Seventy-eight
Chapter Seventy-nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-one
Chapter Eighty-two
Chapter Eighty-three
Chapter Eighty-four
COMING NEXT MONTH
Chapter one
Chapter one
‘This isn’t working, is it?’
For one mad moment I thought Jake was talking about the toaster. It had been on the blink for a while. But then so had we.
Two perfect golden-brown slices of wholemeal toast pop up with a cheerful ping and my heart sags a little.
I glance up from my own bowl of dubiously named ‘luxury’ muesli and try to look as if every dry, claggy, unluxurious spoonful isn’t choking me.
Jake grabs his toast, wincing as it burns his fingers. He tosses it onto a plate before he returns my gaze. ‘You know what I’m talking about, Lyssa.’
Yes. I do. Our fourth and most gruelling attempt at IVF has just ended in a watery red blob in the toilet bowl and misery. My misery. Our misery. I give up with my spoon. ‘Of course I do.’ I’m trying not to cry and I guess I should go over to comfort him, but I haven’t got enough emotional energy for myself let alone any to spare. I force a rigid smile. ‘But we can try again.’
Jake hasn’t made any attempt to butter his toast and it must be getting cold. In a pan on the cooker, two eggs are knocking around in our only All-Clad pan, the bubbling water tossing them to and fro. My boyfriend, or whatever we’re supposed to call them these days, sounds irritable. ‘Not the IVF.’
I mentally trawl through a list of all our other domestic appliances that might be dodgy.
‘Us,’ he says starkly. ‘Us. We’re not working.’
I nearly laugh. I was just wondering if he meant the fridge—which frosts up far too quickly for my liking. I’m sure it never used to—but then you really never pay that much attention to your fridge, do you? Or your partner in life, it seems. And then I realise that Jake is deadly serious. The skin round his eyes is more drawn than I’ve ever seen it before and his mouth is pulled down at the corners.
‘It’s a difficult time for us,’ I say calmly when I really want to scream, You’re not the one that’s bleeding here, Jake! Instead, I turn to him and quietly say, ‘All couples have them. We’ll get through it.’
Jake comes and sits down. He takes my hand and turns it over, examining it as if he’s never seen it before. ‘And what if I don’t want to get through it? What if I’ve suddenly woken up to the fact that there’s more to life than getting through it?’
I open my mouth to answer with some platitude about how life can’t always be a bed of roses, but he rushes on before I can speak. ‘What if I don’t want a baby? What if I don’t want to spend any more time alone in cold cubicles with crumpled wank mags?’
My eyes widen. I thought that was the bit he liked best. Sometimes he specifically chose his own porny material to take with him.
‘What if I don’t want our sex life littered with charts and thermometers and injections?’
‘I…’
‘When did we last go wild and have a purely recreational shag?’
‘I…’
‘When?’ he says with the triumphant note of the just in his voice.
‘What are you saying? I don’t mark notches on the headboard, like some old Lothario.’ I do, however, mark notches on my heart after every failed coupling. Failed in the sense that it didn’t produce a pink, bouncing baby at the end of it. ‘I thought you enjoyed our sex life.’
‘Then you are truly delusional,’ Jake says.
I’m stunned. I had hoped that in the face of another disappointment, another thwarted dream, he’d take me in his arms, shush my tears—even though that isn’t politically correct these days—and tell me that it would all be fine, we would find another wad of our hard-earned cash to blow on hormones for Jake to inject into my bum, and that next time Sammy Sperm would get it together with Esme Egg and we would no longer be the complete failures we are with our inability to succeed in the most basic of human tasks.
How difficult can it be to make a baby? These days our teenagers are popping them out all the time. Britain has the highest rate of child mothers in Europe. Aren’t a mobile phone and a baby at the top of the ‘must have’ list for every schoolgirl? Go anywhere near Miss Sixty in any high street, on any Saturday and it’s like a teen mums’ convention. Okay, so I’m a little past the acne stage, but at thirty-four it does seem a bit unfair that all my eggs, like the ones in Jake’s unattended saucepan, appear to be turning hard-boiled.
‘I need space,’ Jake says into my self-pity.
‘You’re not an astronaut,’ I say. ‘You don’t need space.’
Jake looks unconvinced, whereas I remain resolute. Only astronauts and Sigourney Weaver need space to function in. The rest of mankind have to operate in confined quarters—offices, homes, relationships—that’s what it’s all about. No man is an island. And no man whose sperm has been called ‘sluggish’ has a right to lay all this at my feet.
‘I need time to myself,’ he continues.
This is a man who every weekend plays some sort of sport—football and cricket in the appropriate seasons, golf and squash when he can fit them in. This is a man who I think has plenty of time to himself, and before we used to argue about our lack of babies, we used to argue about how much time he had to himself. I wonder why all this is going round in my head, but none of it is coming out of my mouth.
Jake takes a deep breath. He puts my hand down. Right into some milk I hadn’t realised I’d spilled on the kitchen table. ‘I think we should have a trial separation,’ he says. ‘For a few days. A few weeks.’
‘Have you met someone else?’
‘No.’ He looks at me as if I’m insane to even entertain the thought. ‘This isn’t about anyone else. It’s about me—and you. And your obsession.’
‘Wanting a baby is not an obsession. It’s a…’
Jake waits.
‘…a preoccupation.’ That sometimes borders on slightly obsessive. Very slightly. ‘I just want a baby. Is that too much to ask?’
Jake stands up. Patently, it is. ‘I’ve packed a few things. I’m going to Pip’s place for a couple of days. I need to get my head round this. I need to decide what I want.’
‘And what I want doesn’t come into it anymore?’
Jake looks very tired of me. ‘Suppose we can never have a baby, Lyssa? What then? How long would it be until you stopped hoping that one day modern science will no longer be baffled by our inability to conceive?’
‘I don’t know.’ I shrug lightly. ‘Three weeks? Four?’ This fails to add levity to our desperate situation.
‘I’ll phone you tonight,’ Jake says. ‘To make sure you’re all right.’
I won’t be all right, I want to say. I’m not all right now. I may never be all right again. ‘You can’t just go.’
‘I’ll phone you.’
‘Jake. Don’t go. Not like this.’ I can feel panic rising in me. Begging words are rushing up to my throat, but I won’t let them out. I can’t let them out. Why is he doing this? He can’t be thinking straight. I’m the one who’s supposed to have raging hormones and mood swings. He never behaves like this. We’ve been together for years. How many years? Four. That’s twice my usual quota for long-term relationships. He is The One. My heart’s desire. I thought I was his. We are joint owners of this rather nice terraced house in a rather desirable area of deepest, darkest St Albans, a pleasantly leafy city on the outskirts of London. Although we haven’t actually tied the knot, we’ve discussed marriage on several occasions. Usually after a couple of bottles of vino blanco, admittedly. We’re trying to have a baby together. You don’t just leave someone at eight o’clock on a Friday morning before you go to work, do you? You wait until Friday night or the weekend or Christmas or their birthday—a catastrophic date they’ll always remember. Friday morning is such an insignificant time to do something so momentous. He’s nearly at the door. Anxiously, I cast a look at the bubbling pan. ‘Your eggs. They’re drying up.’
He looks as if he’s about to say something and then changes his mind. ‘They’ll be too tough now.’
Like mine. ‘What will I do?’
‘You’ll be fine,’ he says, and it seems he’s already managed to convince himself that I will. But I’m not sure how I’ll cope at all.
My lover, my life, the father of my as-yet-unfertilised foetus, is walking, strolling, out of my life. He picks up his holdall at the front door, the one I thought contained his squash gear. He gives me a distant little smile—one that doesn’t even begin to reflect what he’s doing to me. And with that he closes the door behind him.
Chapter two
Chapter two
I can’t go into work. I have to go into work. I am blessed with great colleagues who will be hugely sympathetic and will call Jake all manner of obscene names including ‘fuckwit’. That will make me feel heaps better. They won’t mind that I’ll be horribly late and will spend the entire day crying into cups of manky machine coffee.
Boiled eggs and toast strips are supposed to be comfort food, but somehow it’s just not happening. I bash in the top of Jake’s abandoned eggs with the back of my spoon, using rather more force than is necessary, and stare at their rubbery white skins and dried-up yolks without enthusiasm and with a stomach that’s decided eating isn’t on the agenda. The toast has gone all floppy and wouldn’t even make a dent on them anyway—you can draw your own metaphorical conclusions on that one.
Jake is in advertising. I don’t really know what he does other than wear sharp suits and make up slogans. His latest project is to convince a sceptical general public that eggs are good for you again. Now they’re no longer stuffed full of salmonella and they’re a safe and wholesome foodstuff once again. So Jake says. One of the very few benefits of this is that we’ve been getting free eggs. But it’s not the type of egg donation that’s any use to me.
Work for me is as an assistant editor at Global Magazine Publishing—a bit of a misnomer because none of our magazines ever venture out of the British Isles. This sounds very glamorous to people until I say that our main magazines are called My Baby and My Divorce. I can never decide whether these are extremely dull titles or marketing masterpieces. Certainly the circulation is steadily climbing—well, of My Divorce anyway.
After an uneventful schooling, I thought very seriously about becoming a teacher with a view to watching my eager charges blossom under my tender tutelage in the manner of Miss Jean Brodie. But after one terrifying work-experience stint at a North London comprehensive, I decided that it was far too hideous and desperately underpaid. And that even the formidable Ms Brodie would have cracked under the strain of trying to control a room full of shaven-headed, pierced twelve-year-olds. So, instead, I joined the world of publishing, which, several years later, I still now inhabit—marginally less hideous, but still desperately underpaid. Plus all the shaven-headed and pierced people are over thirty.
My day consists mainly of compiling the letters page for My Baby—which means I’m constantly knee deep in tearful epistles from cooing mothers or tirades from childless harpies, not unlike myself, who feel that the world has dealt them a lousy hand. I also commission and edit articles that are given whizzy titles by Monica, my editor, such as—‘Make Your Fallopian Tubes Your Friends’, ‘The Greatest-Ever Guide to Baby Poo’, ‘Feeling the Strain—All You Ever Need to Know about Constipation and Pregnancy’. There are also far too many titled ‘Great Expectations!’ Occasionally, when there’s no one else available and my desk isn’t swamped under a deluge of urgent copy, I’m allowed out with my trusty Dictaphone to interview ‘C’ list celebrities about their joyful, and often alternative, birth experience or their long and painful struggle with polycystic ovaries or similar.
Jake has, on one or two occasions, voiced the opinion that my current employment is doing little to quell my ‘obsession’ with babies. I just feel that when the time comes I’ll be fully equipped—mainly with toddler-type freebies—and confident in my knowledge of the wonderful adventure that is pregnancy.
I do admit that every now and again I tear up or toss a letter from some whining, sleep-deprived mother who is writing in saying she’s permanently tired from disturbed nights. Some women don’t know how lucky they are. I’m permanently tired from disturbed nights trying to bloody conceive!
I give the eggs another whack for good luck and toss the spoon onto the table. With my loved one gone, it looks as if that’s going to be a thing of the past.
Chapter three
Chapter three
Monica and Charlotte are smokers. I can see them as I stomp up the road from the Tube, scarf wound around my neck in an effort to keep warm. It’s only November and the temperature is barely above freezing already, but that doesn’t deter them from pursuing their chosen vice. I join them in their shivering huddle outside the front door of our offices.
‘Afternoon,’ Monica says. It’s not even eleven o’clock yet. Sometimes I wish I smoked and then I could join the select band of lepers who come out here on the hour, every hour, to damage their lungs despite what the elements can throw at them. Sometimes I come out just for the hell of it because I’m sure they gossip about the rest of us when we aren’t there. But we all know that cigarettes lower the birth weight of babies so I’ve resisted temptation. Next they’ll be telling us that trying to conceive by having sex is bad for unborn babies and we’ll all be in a dreadful mess.
‘Nice of you to join us,’ she adds, but I’m not sure that she’s being sincere. Monica is a relocated Liverpudlian and I’ve always found that they tend towards aggression when riled. In theory, Monica is my boss, but she very rarely chooses to exert any authority over me and is generally one of the girls—albeit a rather short-tempered one.
‘You look dreadful,’ Charlotte says through her low-tar lungful. ‘Are you okay?’
I move away so that I won’t be damaged by inadvertent, passive inhalation. I shake my head. ‘Jake’s gone,’ I say.
‘Gone!’ they chorus in unison. ‘Jake?’
‘The latest IVF’s ended in a big fat zip,’ I explain with a wobbly lip. ‘I don’t think he could take it. He’s gone to stay with Pip for a few days.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a few days with Pip,’ Charlotte confides.
‘Get in the queue.’ I’m never quite sure what women see in Pip, but a lot of them do see it. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Come on.’ My friends have one last hefty drag on their cigarettes and then stub them out on the pavement—recklessly risking a fifty-quid fine. Charlotte takes my arm. ‘Let’s get you some of that vile brew they call coffee and you can tell us all about it.’
The offices of My Baby and My Divorce are wonderful. We’re housed on the eleventh floor of a huge chrome-and-glass monolith on the South Bank, overlooking the murky expanse of the Thames. For all my lowly position, I’ve managed to bag myself a desk right near the vast window and can spend hours watching the river rippling by. Nothing on this earth would persuade me to give up this coveted space. In the summer I fry, but we have so few hot days, who cares? Today the low, reluctant winter sun is playing hide-and-seek behind the white iron skeleton of the London Eye and encouraging the water to look grey and glum. I’d like to think it’s coming out in sympathy with me.
‘So.’ Monica plonks a plastic cup in front of me. She and Charlotte sit on my desk. ‘Tell all.’
And I recount my story while casting occasional wistful looks out over the Embankment. Even as I’m filling in the gory details and slagging off my partner in life with much gusto, I know that in my heart when I get home tonight Jake will be there. He’ll have realised that it was all a terrible mistake and will be waiting for me full of remorse, hopefully clutching a bunch of suitably expensive and nicely arranged flowers and wearing a mortified expression. In all, he will have come to his senses the minute he realised what he was about to lose.
‘Well.’ Monica scratches her chin as I finish. She and Charlotte exchange a worried look. ‘It’s not good, is it?’
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