Have you ever made a life-changing decision and then wondered if you made the right one...?
When Liv and Nate walked up the aisle, Liv knew she was marrying the one, her soul mate and her best friend.
Six years later, it feels like routine and friendship is all they have left in common. What happened to the fun, the excitement, the lust, the love?
In the closing moments of 1999, Liv and Nate decide to go their separate ways, but at the last minute, Liv wavers. Should she stay or should she go?
Over the next twenty years we follow the parallel stories to discover if Liv's life, heart and future have been better with Nate... Or without him?
Extract:
Ah, so she had full facts. She was, in truth, surprisingly alert and sharp for
someone who had brain surgery three days ago. ‘Yep, I did that too,’ I said, returning
her smile.
‘That’s amazing.’
‘You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d seen me. Did they
mention that I did it in
my extra large knick
-
knacks because I couldn’t climb over in my fishtail frock?’
Her chuckle interrupted the conversation between the two elderly dears in the next
beds, who were now listening intently... as was a new arrival to the
scene.
‘Well, there’s a mental picture that may stay with me for the rest of the day.’
A man’s voice. My face
-
flush was instant, and deepened when I turned to see a
doctor, standing directly behind me. I’ve always maintained that real
-
life doctors
don’t lo
ok like the strapping hunks on medical dramas, and generally that’s true.
Richard didn’t have the chiselled jawline or the piercing blue eyes that would make
patients and staff melt at his surgical shoes, but he did have slightly unkempt black
wavy hair th
at curled over the stethoscope that was slung around his neck, somewhat
tired, potentially intoxicating green eyes, and a cheeky grin.
If this guy was in
Grey’s Anatomy
, he’d be the tall, medium
-
attractive one who
played the heart
-
throb’s sidekick, but who
always got the girl because he had a
twinkling eye, a great smile and the kind of charm that could take a patient’s mind off
most non
-
life
-
threatening ailments.
His comment was perfectly delivered, more amused than leery, bringing much
hilarity to everyon
e in earshot, and much mortification to me.
‘Richard Campbell, neurosurgeon,’ he said.
‘Liv Jamieson,’ I replied. ‘Palliative care. Late for work and about to dash off,’ I
added, before turning back to Francine. ‘I’m so glad you’re okay
–
and that I got to
meet you.’
Her infectious smile was back. ‘You too.’
Over the next few weeks, Francine made it back to full health and was discharged.
Meanwhile, the good doctor and I would bump into each other with slightly
suspicious regularity, until Chloe confessed t
hat she was trying to set me up with him
because I ‘needed a happy distraction to stop me moping about Nate’. She was right.
After Francine had been taken to hospital in the early hours of New Year’s Day, I’d
told him I definitely wanted to go through with
the split. It was the right thing to do.
We’d agreed not to call each other for the first couple of weeks and we’d both stuck
to that. So far. The seventy
-
five per cent certainty about my decision had dropped to
sixty per cent, and if it went below fifty
I was calling him.
Richard called me before that happened, at the beginning of May, when I was five
months into life as a singleton. In a stunning pivot of hypocrisy about the whole
doctor/nurse relationship disapproval, I’d accepted his suggestion of a d
ate. It had
taken a while, but I’d eventually relaxed and realised that the best thing to get over the
end of a relationship was the distraction of a cute doctor with a cheeky sense of
humour. I loved that he was a charmer and took nothing, except his work
, seriously. I
loved that it was easy and it hadn’t strayed into deep and demanding. Most of all I
loved that he was the complete opposite of Nate in every way.
Our shifts clashed, so we didn’t see each other more than twice a week, but it was
enough. It w
as uncomplicated. Fun. And not to be crude about it, but the sex...
‘Chloe, he talks the whole way through,’ I blurted, in the kitchen after the first
time he spent the night.
‘In that case, I’m so glad I was working. I’d have had to play a bit of Vengaboys
at
full blast to block the sound. Did it freak you out?’ she went on.
‘A bit.’ Okay, so here’s the thing. I could add up the total of my sexual partners on
one hand. Two of them were short
-
term things when I was a teenager. Another was an
unfortunate one
-
n
ight stand, thanks to vodka overload during Freshers Week. I spent
the next four years at uni avoiding some guy called Jeremy who’d been intimate with
my anatomy.
Then there was Nate, for eight years.
All in all, I wasn’t exactly widely experienced in such
things.
‘But did you like it?’
‘More than a bit,’ I replied, as she roared with laughter.
‘Who’d have known you had an inner slapper?’ she’d teased, before she headed
off, clutching a cream cheese bagel.
That seemed like so long ago now. Five months, thre
e days to be exact. Not that I
was counting. Okay, I was, but only to take my mind off the fact that nerves were
twisting my stomach into a knot the size of a melon.
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