With or Without You (3 page)

‘I know. You don’t sound great yourself. Anyway, look, I’m really, really sorry but I feel like shit. I’m not going to be able to come this morning.’

‘What’s this morning?’ Charlie closed his eyes again and rested his throbbing head against the headboard. He had drunk way too much last night, but he couldn’t remember
why or what the occasion had been.

‘It’s the first interview with Martha Lamont. You know, the one I’ve lined up to ghost your memoirs?’

‘Oh, right.’ Charlie tried to recall whether Louisa had told him about this and he had forgotten, or whether she hadn’t told him in the first place. He must have forgotten, he
decided. Louisa was a brilliant PR and ruthlessly efficient. There was no way she wouldn’t have told him about the interview, and equally there was no way she would miss it unless she was
feeling really ill.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it myself,’ he said. ‘What time, and is there anything I should or shouldn’t do?’

‘Eleven o’clock. Don’t sleep with her,’ Louisa managed to croak, before descending into a coughing fit that sounded as if she was about to die right there on the end of
the phone. Eventually the cough receded and Louisa came back on the line. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped. ‘Got to go.’

‘Get well, sweetie,’ Charlie replied, before hanging up.

He sat in the gloom of the blacked-out hotel room, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the darkness. He wondered what time it was and pressed the home key on his mobile. 09:34. Immediately
he calculated eight hours back, to work out what time it would be in Los Angeles, just as he always did whenever he looked at a clock. It would be 01:34 and his son, Felix, would be asleep in his
vast bedroom at the home he and his mother shared with her boyfriend.

The ache Charlie felt whenever he thought about Felix had not lessened in the four years since his mother had taken him to live on the other side of the world, and Charlie had realised long ago
that it never would. Losing his beautiful, angelic boy, who looked so much like him, was a pain more devastating than any other heartache he had ever experienced – even that of losing his
wife to another man.

He flew to LA as often as he could and he spoke to Felix most days on Skype, but it wasn’t the same as spending day after day with him, doing all the normal things a dad does with his son.
Charlie had spent the first two years of Felix’s life looking after him full-time, so the bond they had was closer than most and made the wrench of losing him that much worse.

He groped for the lamp switch and clicked it on. The room was bathed in a soft tangerine glow and Charlie sighed heavily as he looked around indifferently at the splendour of his
surroundings.

He was living in the hotel at the moment, having finally sold the little cottage in Surrey he had shared with Felix’s mother. He hadn’t got round to buying anywhere new yet, as he
had resigned himself to the fact that his next home would need to be in Hollywood if he wanted to be closer to Felix. And he
did
want to be closer to him. He had had enough of being a
long-distance dad and had started to investigate the possibility of applying for custody. He knew he wouldn’t have a hope if he stayed in the UK, but if he lived in Los Angeles, he
couldn’t see any reason why Felix shouldn’t live with him. His mother had had it her own way for long enough.

He had several meetings lined up in LA the following week, which would confirm his next role, and with it his permanent move to the US. He very much hoped his days of being an occasional father
were finally coming to an end.

Charlie swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, his feet sinking into the plush pile of the carpet as he did so. Stretching and yawning, he walked to the window and pulled back the
heavy blackout drapes, flinching as the bright morning sunshine seared his eyes. From his vantage point overlooking Hyde Park, he could see people already out enjoying the warm weather. Mothers and
nannies pushed achingly trendy prams between the over-flowing flowerbeds, while joggers and skaters did their best to dodge them. Usually, Charlie liked to go for a run first thing, but with this
journalist due to arrive soon, he didn’t have enough time today. Giving himself a shake, he picked up the phone and dialled the number for the hotel kitchen.

‘Good morning, Mr Simmons,’ said the voice of Sara, one of the girls who worked there.

‘Call me Charlie, I keep telling you,’ he smiled despite his inexplicable feelings of irritation.

‘OK, then, Charlie,’ Sara began, and Charlie could detect the note of amusement and mischief in her voice. ‘What can I do for you? Are you going to be joining us again this
morning?’

Recently, Charlie had begun to cook for himself in the hotel kitchen, much to the bemusement of the staff. He wanted to explain to them that he missed preparing meals for himself, that living in
the hotel made him feel rootless and he yearned for a real home again. But there was no point. He would only sound spoilt and ungrateful. So instead, he just let them think he was an eccentric
control freak.

‘Not this morning,’ he said. ‘More’s the pity.’ Instead he ordered a room service breakfast of porridge and toast and lay back down on the eight-foot bed, staring
up at the ornate ceiling.

He was dreading the arrival of this wretched journalist, Martha Lamont, and was regretting that he had ever let himself be persuaded to do his memoirs at all. He knew that Louisa wouldn’t
have lined the woman up if she didn’t trust her implicitly, but Charlie still had an innate mistrust of all journalists, having been badly bruised by some of the things that had been written
about him in the past.

Louisa had convinced him that it would be a chance to tell his side of the story and rectify some of the lies that had been printed about him. But the clincher for Charlie had been when she
suggested that all proceeds could go to charity. His grandfather had died of Alzheimer’s the previous year and, ever since, Charlie had done anything he could to raise money for research.

So here he was . . . and he would have to open himself up entirely to this woman if she was to have any chance of doing his memoirs properly, meaning he would have to relive the pain of losing
Liv and Felix all over again.

He wanted to hate Liv, but not only could he not do that, he couldn’t stop loving her either; he had never met anyone he felt as connected to as he had with her. Before their split they
had been everything to each other, and he still missed hearing her girlish laugh or watching her sleeping with her thumb resting on her lower lip like a child.

He had had plenty of offers and even a few brief relationships but, for him, no other woman had ever come close to her, and he had resigned himself to being single for the rest of his life. He
would devote himself to his son instead.

Taking a deep breath, he thought about cancelling the interview, saying he wasn’t feeling well. But Louisa would be furious with him if he did and he didn’t want to upset her when
she was feeling so ill. He got up and headed for the shower, his shoulders hunched with a feeling of impending doom. But maybe, he told himself, this Martha Lamont would be different to all the
other journalists he had met. Maybe she would be the one to prove him wrong about her profession.

As usual, the train into London arrived late, so Martha ended up racing to the hotel where she was supposed to be meeting Charlie Simmons. By the time she got there, she was
sweating profusely, out of breath and desperate for a wee. She wasn’t overly concerned though; she knew from long experience that celebrities were rarely ready on time. She would have a
chance to visit the ladies and sort herself out before being called to his room.

But to her dismay, the receptionist greeted her with a dazzling smile and told her that ‘Mr Simmons is ready for you now,’ directing her to a room on the eighth floor. Martha
hesitated. Should she risk incurring Charlie Simmons’ wrath by being late, or should she use the loo? By now she was really desperate and worried that she might actually wet herself. She took
a deep breath and decided that she couldn’t be late. She would get to the room and immediately excuse herself to use the bathroom.

The lift chugged listlessly to the eighth floor. When the doors opened, Martha was surprised by the old-fashioned chintziness of the décor. She knew that this particular hotel charged in
the region of £5,000 per night, so she would have expected it to look a lot more glitzy. But then, she reasoned, walking along the corridor towards the room number she had been given, maybe
the people who could afford it liked this type of faded English splendour.

As she arrived at room 802, she knocked on the door and pasted on her brightest smile, despite the fact that she was now having to hop up and down on the spot to distract herself from her
insistent bladder.

Then the door swung open and to Martha’s intense shock, there stood Charlie Simmons himself. She had been expecting Charlie’s PR, who had booked her. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed,
her heart hammering at the sight of him and her desperation to use the loo momentarily forgotten. Martha was used to meeting handsome film stars and she rarely found them attractive, but Charlie
Simmons really was breathtaking in the flesh. He was well over six foot, with unruly dark curls that framed his slightly stubbled square jaw and eyes that seemed to her like deep pools of dark
chocolate.

‘Hello! I was, er, expecting Louisa . . .?’ she tailed off, feeling herself redden as the desperate urge to use the loo returned.

‘Louisa’s sick,’ Charlie said, proffering his hand, which Martha took and shook as firmly as she could, to compensate for what she knew would be horribly sweaty palms.
‘So I’m afraid you’ve just got me.’

Martha blanched slightly at his tone. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, ‘I should have introduced myself. I’m Martha . . .’

‘. . . Lamont,’ he finished the sentence for her, standing aside to allow her into the room. ‘Great name,’ he added. ‘Sounds like you should be an actress
yourself.’

Martha beamed despite herself. She had always loved her name and hadn’t changed it when she got married, protesting that Jamie’s surname, Smith, was far too boring. Their children
had subsequently taken both names in what her mother always referred to witheringly as a ‘trendy double-barrelled surname’.

Charlie closed the door behind him and followed Martha into the suite, which was as big as Martha’s entire house. In the reception room there were several pale blue over-stuffed sofas
arranged around a heavy stone coffee table. On the table sat two silver pots, some china cups and a plate of freshly baked croissants. The smell of the fresh flowers that were stuffed artfully into
over-sized vases on every spare surface combined with the aroma of coffee to make Martha feel light-headed.

She turned to face Charlie. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she began, feeling herself turn a deeper shade of red as she looked up at him with what she knew must be a pleading expression,
‘but can I use your loo before we start?’

‘Er, I guess so,’ he said, his eyes moving down her body and settling somewhere around her midriff.

Oh shit,
thought Martha, realising with a dull horror that Charlie now suspected her of being a cokehead. He couldn’t even meet her eye. ‘It’s not to go and snort
coke!’ she blurted, acutely aware that her sweaty appearance and red-faced breathlessness must look like she was about to do
exactly
that.

Charlie bit his lip, as if he was making an effort not to laugh. His gaze was still fixed on her stomach for some reason. ‘I should hope not,’ he murmured in his deep, velvety voice
that contained the merest hint of a Welsh accent. ‘It’s the second door on the left.’

Martha frowned, then dashed gratefully towards the door, suddenly concerned she might not make it. She slammed the door shut behind her and sank down onto the seat, exhaling with relief as she
was finally able to let go.

Standing up to wash her hands afterwards, she gazed at her reflection in the mirror. She looked flushed and there was a faint sheen of sweat on her face. She splashed cold water over her cheeks
and patted them dry before running her fingers through her hair to straighten it out. As she did so, her dress rode up slightly and she could finally see why Charlie had been staring at her midriff
and why she had been getting so many ‘admiring’ glances all morning. There, outlined in glorious burnt technicolour against the pale beige of her dress, was a perfect iron-shaped hole,
through which the top of her red lacy knickers was clearly visible.

‘Oh shit!’ she wailed, suddenly wanting to cry. How could she possibly go out there and interview the most famous film star in the world right now with a hole in her dress and her
knickers visible? There was nothing for it. She would have to stay in the bathroom. She dropped the lid and sat back down to think through her options.

After a while there was a tentative knock at the door. ‘Er, hello?’ said Charlie’s unmistakably gravelly voice. ‘Are you OK in there?’

‘No!’ Martha shouted back. ‘I’ve got a massive iron-shaped hole in my dress!’

There was a snort of laughter from outside the door, followed by a long pause, as Charlie apparently composed himself. ‘Sorry,’ he said in a slightly strangled tone. ‘I
won’t laugh again. It’s hardly noticeable . . .’ His words were swallowed up by another bout of laughter.

Sitting on the loo, staring down at the gaping hole in her dress, Martha felt the beginnings of a smile tugging at her lips. It was quite funny, she supposed. She would probably laugh about it
herself one day. But not yet. It was just too bloody embarrassing.

‘Look, do you want to borrow something of mine?’ came Charlie’s voice from the other side of the door after another couple of minutes had elapsed. ‘Maybe some sweatpants
and a t-shirt?’

Martha took a deep breath and looked down again at her exposed midriff. ‘That would be great,’ she admitted meekly.

After another pause she heard a swish as something was dropped at the door. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait in the bedroom. Let me know when you’re
ready.’