"A Life Without You" by Shari Low

An audio book.

2016: Jen (her 1st person PoV at first) and Dee met when they were 5. Now 30, they own a Glasgow shop (selling holiday accessories) together. Dee's husband is Luke. Jen's partner is Pete. Jen and Luke are quiet. Dee and Pete are risk-takers. Dee dies trying to stop kids getting run over by druggies in a getaway car.

Jen's mother died when Jen was 12. Her father (Bob Collins) was a bit useless so Val (a friend of her mother's) helped. Pete leave Jen on the night of the funeral.

We switch to Val's PoV. She's 57. Husband Don doesn't want to say how he feels. Jen takes over the booked holidays of Dee so the commercially important blog can be continued. Mark (Dee's dishy nearly 40 y.o. brother, now resident in Australia) offers to look after the shop. He's split with Tara, who was also a diver.

Josie's 60+, a force of nature. She cleans the shop and is Val's friend. Jen confronts Pete, who says sorry, then she goes to New York, where she finds Dee had a friend of sorts - a lover?

Val discovers that the killer, 24, is on bail. She waits outside his mother's house, where he's staying. Josie goes with her to keep her out of trouble.

Luke and Mark start drinking together. Jen secretly moves in with Luke - just friends - then goes to Barcelona, where she sees a man she saw in New York. She talks to him. He's been Dee's lover since her honeymoon. He's a suave, confident businessman. Jen has to re-evaluate Dee as well as Pete.

It's been 6 months since Dee's death. Val and Luke have their first heart to heart. Jen tells Josie everything. Luke sleeps with a colleague. Val talks to the mother of the accused. The mother doesn't like her son. She has lung cancer.

In court, the murderer surprisingly pleads guilty (thank to his mother). Jen learns from Pete that he and Dee has been planning an affair, though there'd been nothing physical. Pete and Dee had been talking on the phone just before her death. Tara turns up, with a baby. Mark's happy.

Jen keeps the news about Dee's unfaithfulness quiet, except for telling Pete (but won't he tell others?). She wonders if she and Luke could become more than friends. She asks Val's permission. Don and Val pay for the killer's mother's gravestone.

We don't see much of Luke's grief. Jen seems surprisingly forgiving about Dee. Rather than using flashbacks, characters recall old scene with word-perfect accuracy.