The Broken Read online

  Hannah came through the living-room door bearing two empty mugs, clearly destined for the kitchen. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’

  Josh’s heart sank. He’d had a tricky day at work. One of the Year Elevens, Kelly Kavanagh, had clearly copied her answers to a test from the girl who sat in front of her and he’d had to get quite tough, which hadn’t been pleasant. Then there’d been an awkward departmental meeting where he and Pat had disagreed. It was only a trivial thing – whether to set coursework based on a production of Macbeth the Year Tens were going to see. Josh was in favour, but Pat thought they should encourage the kids to regard theatre as a pleasure rather than a chore. The issue had been resolved with minimum fuss, with Pat’s view eventually winning over the majority, but it had left a sour taste in Josh’s mouth. All afternoon he’d been looking forward to getting home and shaking off the stress of the day, but here was yet more stress and his wife greeting him with a half-hearted ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘That’s nice. You could sound a little happier to see me. I’ve had a shit day at work, in case you’re interested.’

  Hannah was banging around unnecessarily in the kitchen. ‘Yes, well, at least you’ve done some work. I’ve done absolutely nothing, and I’ve a feature due on Monday.’ She was hissing under her breath. The noise joined with the metallic whistle of their old kettle and the clanking of crockery in an unpleasant cacophony that irritated Josh’s ears.

  ‘You’re just going to have to tell her you need a bit of time to yourself.’

  ‘I can’t! You can see the state she’s in.’

  As if on cue, Sasha appeared in the doorway. She seemed even thinner than when Josh had seen her the day before, and her small, hollowed-out face bore an expression of nervous anticipation which drained instantly when she saw him.

  ‘Oh, hello Josh,’ she said, turning away. ‘I thought you might be Dan.’

  In the living room, over what appeared to be yet another in a long line of cups of tea, Sasha once again returned to her favourite subject – Dan’s apparently aberrant behaviour and how it was clearly symptomatic of some kind of psychological crisis he was going through, didn’t Josh think? Well, Josh didn’t bloody well think, actually. Josh was too exhausted to think. All he wanted was to sit down and have half an hour of silence to read the paper or listen to music, or just offload to Hannah about his crappy day.

  ‘Why don’t you just ask Dan?’ Josh said.

  If Sasha noticed his slightly snappish tone, she didn’t let on. ‘You know he’s insisting we don’t talk to each other until the weekend. “We need to give each other time to breathe.”’ Sasha’s imitation of her husband’s laid-back drawl with its slight inflection at the end of the sentence was uncannily accurate.

  ‘What do you think, Josh?’ Sasha’s hazel eyes had an unnerving yellow glint to them, like a cat’s. ‘Is he starting to come round yet? Does he miss us, do you think? You’re his friend. He must have talked to you about it.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well, how does he seem then? Is he down? Subdued? Does he give you the impression he’s having regrets?’

  Josh had a flashback to the night before, when Dan had been entertaining them with stories of that day’s shoot which had involved a particularly flatulent Great Dane and its anorak-wearing trainer. Dan was not giving the impression of a man riven by doubt. He shrugged uncomfortably. ‘You know what Dan’s like. He plays things pretty close to his chest.’

  ‘Mummy!’ The shout going up from Lily’s room was so piercing it could only belong to one person. ‘Mummy! Come here. I need you.’

  Sasha stayed on the sofa, with her hands wrapped around her mug, still frowning at what Josh had just said.

  ‘Mummy!’

  ‘I think September might be calling you.’

  Sasha didn’t respond.

  ‘September. She’s yelling for you.’

  ‘Oh, right. It’s OK, sweetie. I’m coming.’

  But still Sasha made no attempt to move off the sofa.

  Josh waited for a moment and then, knowing how Lily hated raised voices, he went to investigate.

  Lily’s normally neat bedroom looked post-apocalyptic. Boxes of toys had been emptied out over the floor, the wardrobe door was open and clothes were spilling out in a tidal wave of pink and flowers (they’d tried to get Lily interested in less stereotypical, more androgynous clothing, but to no avail). Someone had obviously been trying to make a den out of Lily’s bedcovers, which were pulled off the bed and draped haphazardly between a chair and table. Lily’s prized collection of kitten stickers lay scattered like confetti over every surface.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Josh frowned, taking in the carnage.

  Lily took after him in feeling more comfortable when things were calm and orderly. Though her little round face lit up in a smile when she saw him, he could tell by her eyes that she was worried. Something in Josh constricted at the sight of her and her transparent conviction that he would make everything all right.

  ‘I wanted Mummy,’ said September, who was kneeling on the floor wearing Lily’s treasured Snow White dress with lipstick smeared all over her mouth.

  ‘Mummy’s a bit busy. Won’t I do?’

  ‘No. I need her to do my hair special. You can’t do that.’

  Josh agreed that doing hair special probably fell outside of his area of expertise.

  ‘I’ll ask Sasha to come in when she’s finished talking to Lily’s mummy, shall I?’

  September eyed him coolly. ‘Are you coming to live with me?’

  Josh was used to Lily’s non-sequiturs, but this one from September caught him unawares.

  ‘Well, my daddy has come to live with Lily, so Lily’s daddy must come to live with us.’

  From the corner of his eye, Josh saw Lily’s eyes widen and her chin start to tremble. ‘I’m sorry, September. That’s not how things work, I’m afraid. I live here, with Hannah and Lily.’

  ‘But that means Lily gets two daddies and that’s not fair.’

  Now both little girls looked as if they were on the edge of tears.

  ‘This is only for a few days, September, while your mummy and daddy sort things out.’

  ‘Then he’s coming home?’

  ‘You’d better talk to him about that, sweetheart.’

  The endearment came out clumsily. While Josh had no problem being lovey dovey with Lily, he always felt awkward around other people’s children, sure he sounded phoney and, even worse, creepy.

  Now September started crying in earnest, her brown eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘I want my daddy,’ she wailed. ‘I want my daddy!’

  Finally Sasha appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh poor baby. Come here, my baby.’ Throwing herself to the floor, she swept September up into a hug, crushing the little girl’s head to her bony ribcage. ‘You want your daddy. I know you miss your daddy.’

  As she stroked her daughter’s curls, Sasha gazed up at Josh, all the time keeping up a stream of whispered endearments into her daughter’s shuddering ear, and he was shocked when he finally put a name to the expression on her face.

  Triumph.

  ‘Tell me again what he said.’

  It was the third time Josh had been through it. He was tired. He just wanted to have dinner and slump on the sofa, but instead he was being quizzed about every single conversation he’d had with Dan, and every single conceivable nuance of every single word.

  ‘He just said he felt like he’d been sleepwalking through the last few years of his life, and now he’s waking up.’

  ‘Yes, but that could be a good thing, couldn’t it? It could mean that he’s finally learning what’s important to him, couldn’t it?’

  ‘It could . . .’

  Josh didn’t tell her about the excitement in Dan’s voice when he’d talked about feeling alive for the first time in years. What would be the point?

  ‘I love him so much,’ Sasha said now, apropos of nothing. ‘I think it took something like thi
s to really realize it. I know it will all turn out OK in the end. You know how some things are just meant to be. Dan would never break up our family – he knows what it would do to me after everything I went through as a child. You know, I feel almost relaxed about it now, because I’m so certain he’s coming back.’

  Josh didn’t even want to think about all the different levels on which that bothered him. The karmic everything happens for a reason bullshit-o-meter, the fact that for someone claiming to be so relaxed Sasha was doing a very good impression of being totally the opposite. Sitting in her usual spot on the end of the sofa with her feet tucked up underneath her, she was almost bouncing with excess energy like one of those nodding dogs people put in cars. Her eyes were like two dark glass marbles, boring into him as she waited impatiently for his response. Well, not so much a response as a confirmation.

  At least it was preferable to listening to her waxing lyrical about Dan and how wonderful he was. The guy had practically been canonized over the course of the last few days. If Josh ever tried to remind her of the little matter of Dan cheating on her, she dismissed it with hardly a second thought. ‘A moment of weakness’ was how she’d decided to classify it. ‘He was flattered. She was available. Oldest story in the book. Course I’ll make him get tested for every STD under the sun before I take him back, but it’d be crazy to throw away a fantastic marriage, with all that history, just because of some little slut who couldn’t keep her knickers on.’

  Josh would squirm with discomfort when she talked like this, glancing towards the doorway to make sure it was free of small figures with large flapping ears.

  A series of loud bleeps announced the arrival of a text message. Josh glanced at his phone, which sat on the coffee table between him and Sasha, aware that her eyes too were fixed on it. Both of them knew it was Dan, texting to see if Sasha was still there. This was the pattern they’d fallen into, with Dan resolutely refusing to talk to Sasha until their Dan-imposed ‘breathing time’ was up. He’d already threatened to move out to an undisclosed address if Sasha accidentally-on-purpose happened to be there when he got home.

  ‘We need to give each other this time,’ he stressed. ‘We owe it to each other.’

  ‘Well?’ Sasha wanted to know.

  ‘He says he’s going to be home around eleven.’

  ‘Because he thinks that’s too late for September to be out during the week. Silly man. He knows she doesn’t need a lot of sleep. She’s not that sort of child.’

  ‘Yes, but Lily does,’ broke in Hannah, much to Josh’s relief.

  Sasha frowned. ‘I do think it might be good for Lily not to be quite so regimented,’ she said. ‘Otherwise how is she ever going to learn to cope with change? She’s such a nervous little thing as it is.’

  Josh opened his mouth to speak, but Hannah glared at him and instead he counted to ten in his head, waiting for his irritation to subside.

  Only after Sasha had left did Josh give vent to his annoyance.

  ‘Just what was she implying by that “nervous little thing” comment?’ he asked, when Hannah finally surfaced from getting a completely shattered Lily to bed.

  ‘Take no notice. She’s just overwrought. She’s not thinking about what she’s saying.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s no excuse for—’

  The doorbell cut short what he had been about to say.

  ‘I thought Dan had a key?’ Josh said.

  ‘He must have lost it. Or maybe he’s just being discreet in case we’re making mad passionate love on the living-room table.’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

  An awkward pause.

  Hannah went to the door and Josh listened for Dan’s sing-song ‘I’m ho-ome.’ He was surprised to hear just Hannah, sounding fraught.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ she was saying. This was followed by an indistinct murmur of voices. Then, ‘OK, OK, but I still don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  She reappeared in the doorway with a shape slumped over her shoulder. A September-shaped shape.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ groaned Josh.

  Hannah raised her eyebrows warningly at him over the top of her charge, who was wrapped in a duvet and clearly pretending to be asleep, with just one slightly raised eyelid giving her away.

  ‘September, poppet, I’m just going to pop you down on our bed so you can have a nice sleep,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Wanna go Lily’s room.’ The little girl’s voice was loud, but her eyes stayed firmly shut.

  ‘No, sweetie. Lily is asleep. You snuggle up in Auntie Hannah and Uncle Josh’s bed. There’s a good girl.’

  ‘I want my mummy!’

  ‘September, honey . . .’

  ‘I WANT MY MUMMY!’

  Hannah locked eyes with Josh over September’s head and shrugged as best she could with a recumbent four-year-old on her shoulder, then she turned and walked out of the room. Josh listened to her trying to soothe the fractious child as she made her way along the hallway to their bedroom.

  ‘I know you do, sweetie, but Mummy will be right back, just as soon as she does this important thing she has to do. And in the meantime, you’re having a sleepover here with us. Isn’t this fun?’

  Judging by the muffled protests coming from behind the now closed bedroom door, September clearly didn’t agree that this unlooked-for sleepover in any way constituted fun.

  Twenty fraught minutes later, the flat finally fell silent. Twenty-one minutes later, there was the noise of a door being stealthily nudged open and then Hannah reappeared.

  ‘Well?’ Josh was conscious that he was using his disapproving school-teachery voice, but he was too irritated to do anything about it. Just how much of their lives were going to be taken over by Dan and Sasha and their crisis? Of course he wanted to help – they were their best friends, after all – but surely there was a line to be drawn somewhere? Surely he and Hannah were entitled to some semblance of a life of their own?

  ‘Sasha’s gone to follow Dan.’

  Josh gave a questioning look.

  Hannah held up her hands. ‘I know, I know. I told her it was a bad idea, but she wouldn’t listen. Apparently one of her friends was out for a meal in Soho and called her to say she’d just seen Dan having dinner with a woman.’

  ‘Dan has dinner with lots of women. That’s part of his job.’

  ‘I know. I said that. Listen, you don’t need to get shirty with me!’

  Hannah glared at him. But rather than making him feel guilty, her defensiveness just added to Josh’s sense of grievance. It was all right for her. She was at home all day. She was probably enjoying having all these people around all the time, all this activity, all this drama. She ought to try working in a proper job where you went out and spent all day with hundreds of people and looked forward to getting home for a bit of peace and quiet.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘this friend had no idea Sasha and Dan were splitting up. If that’s what they’re doing. She only made a big thing about Dan and this other woman as a joke, apparently, but Sasha was straight round here to drop off September and now she’s off in hot pursuit.’

  ‘Do you think it’s her? Sienna?’

  ‘God knows. I’ll bloody murder Dan if it is, after all his promises. Sasha says she’s sure it isn’t, but she wants to put her mind at rest. She promises she’s just going to look through the window. She’s not going to make a scene or anything.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not as if Sasha’s the making-a-scene type, after all!’

  Hannah made a face. ‘She promised me she wasn’t going to anyway. She didn’t even seem that bothered, she just said she knew she was being stupid but she just wanted to see for herself, then she’d come straight back. She’ll probably be here any minute.’

  ‘Yeah, unless she’s stabbed him through the heart. You did frisk her for sharp implements, I take it?’

  ‘Look, like you said, Dan works with lots of women and does a lot of business over dinner. Sasha i
s just overreacting to everything at the moment. Bet you anything she comes through the door in the next half-hour absolutely mortified.’

  ‘Sasha doesn’t do mortified, Hannah. Sasha only does vindicated or Now I’ll make this into an amusing story to make myself look cute and quirky.’

  ‘Why are you so down on her suddenly? Don’t you think she’s having a hard enough time without her friends turning on her as well?’

  Hannah rarely raised her voice, and as Josh gazed at her in surprised reproach, he noticed for the first time how tired she looked. Her blue eyes appeared almost colourless against the dark mauve shadows underneath. This situation was taking its toll on her too.

  ‘I just wish things could go back to how they were before.’ He sighed, uncomfortably aware he was sounding a bit like his own four-year-old daughter.

  As if on cue, from the hallway came the sound of Lily’s panicked voice. ‘Mummy! Daddy!’

  Glad of the distraction, he strode off into her room. Nudging open the door with its pink gingham letter ‘L’ interwoven with yellow and white daisies, he was thrown off guard by finding September sitting perched on the top of Lily’s duvet, gazing at him impassively, while a just-woken Lily, eyes still wild and confused from sleep, cowered at the other end, rubbing her arm.

  ‘’Tember woke me up,’ she gulped. ‘She pinched me.’

  September continued gazing levelly at him. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘Don’t like your bedroom.’

  ‘But you shouldn’t have woken Lily up, should you, September? And you shouldn’t have pinched her. That wasn’t kind, was it?’

  ‘You’re not kind,’ said September, her voice rising dangerously. ‘You’re mean and I don’t like you!’ Her face crumpled in on itself and she started crying.

  ‘What the hell is going on in here?’

  Josh had no idea how Sasha could have got in so suddenly. He hadn’t been gone for more than a few seconds but here she was, appearing out of nowhere and sweeping past him into Lily’s room, kneeling by the bed so her sobbing child could throw herself into her arms.