The Broken (12 page)

‘It doesn’t look
too
bad, not from a distance anyway.’

Dan turned to face him, incredulous. ‘What the hell are you talking about? There’s a fucking great crater running around the whole car where she’s scratched it with her keys. How can you say it doesn’t look too bad?’

‘Come on, Dan. You can’t be sure it was Sasha. How could she have known where your car was in the first place?’

‘Didn’t she follow me the other night and practically assault me in a restaurant? How hard would it have been to find out where I’ve been staying? All she’d need to do is ring the agency and pretend to be biking something over to Sienna.’

Josh’s eyes swung to face Dan. ‘I don’t believe it. You really have been staying at Sienna’s? Bloody hell, Dan. You’re supposed to be trying to make this transition as smooth as possible.’

Dan looked shifty. ‘Where else was I supposed to stay? You and Hannah threw me out, and I can’t afford to go shelling out on a hotel now I’ve got two households to support. Anyway, it’s traumatic not seeing September. I hate it and obviously I feel guilty as fuck. Sienna’s been helping me through it. I don’t think I could have survived the last few days without her.’

Josh shook his head slowly, as if trying to dislodge what he’d just heard. Couldn’t Dan see what an idiot he was being?

For a few seconds, the two men stood side by side in silence, studying the mutilated car.

‘So where does she live then, Sienna? Don’t tell me, Notting Hill?’

Dan looked surprised. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Because every aspiring model, creative type or newly separated man trying to run away from his mid-life crisis heads for Notting Hill.’

Dan grimaced at the phrase ‘mid-life crisis’, as if Josh had said something offensive. ‘Yeah, well, don’t make too many assumptions. It’s only a stopgap. Anyway, Sienna’s flat is tiny. It’s not like we’re shacked up in some swanky Hugh Grant-style townhouse or anything. As soon as my house is sold I’ll get something around here, big enough for September to have her own room when she stays with me.’

‘
Your
house?’

‘OK, our house, although I did pay for the whole thing practically single-handed.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘I know, I know. Look, I’ve already said I’m going to be fair, haven’t I? Although after what she’s done to my car, I feel like taking the whole fucking lot.’

They sat down again, Josh in the armchair and Dan on the sofa. Josh couldn’t help eyeing up the pile of exercise books on the coffee table that he’d been in the middle of marking when Dan turned up out of the blue. It was Sunday afternoon, and his Monday-morning GCSE class would be expecting their essays back the next day. He hoped Dan wasn’t planning on staying too long.

‘I went round to pick up September,’ Dan had explained when he arrived. ‘I left Sasha a long voicemail explaining exactly what time I’d be getting there, and she was fucking well out. Can you believe that? I didn’t even say anything about the car in the message – I was going to bring that up in person so I could see her reaction. I can read Sasha like a book. I can’t believe she’d just go out like that.’

‘She’s out with Hannah. They’ve taken Lily and September to one of those soft-play places.’

‘Brilliant. I spend forty minutes sitting in traffic in my banged-up car just to see our daughter, and Sasha is out having fun with her mates.’

‘I wouldn’t exactly call it fun. Have you ever been to one of those places?’

‘That’s not the fucking point, Josh.’

‘No, I know, but I was very relieved to give it a miss. Especially as I’ve got so much marking to do.’

If Dan had noticed Josh’s pointed tone, he hadn’t let on, and an hour later he still showed no sign of moving. Josh had sudden inspiration.

‘It might not be a bad idea if you kind of weren’t here when Hannah gets back,’ he said awkwardly. ‘She’s still pretty angry about you breaking your promise about seeing Sienna. And obviously she feels very loyal to Sasha.’

This was the perfect opportunity to throw in a mention of Sasha’s wild allegation. Josh could feel the words on his tongue, sitting there like lumps of meat. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to say them. Josh was certainly no expert in communication, but even he knew that there are some things that, once said, cannot ever be unsaid. Dan was his friend. Josh knew there was no way he would ever have hit his wife, so why risk inflaming things by passing on what Sasha had said?

‘Yeah, well, that’s exactly why I’m going to stick around for a bit – so I can show Hannah the damage to my car. She needs to realize there are two sides to this story. I know I’m the one who walked out, but Sasha is not the innocent you think she is, believe me. Shit, do you know it’s only since I’ve been with Sienna that I’ve realized just how fucked up Sasha really is? You have no idea how good it feels to be with someone who isn’t testing me the whole time, and who actually treats me with a bit of respect and wants to hear how my day’s been and genuinely cares how I’m feeling.’

Josh felt a twinge of resentment. When was the last time Hannah had asked him how he was in a way that made him feel she was really interested? These days she seemed so impatient with him, as if everything he said irritated her.

He wondered again whether Hannah might be making unfavourable comparisons between him and Dan. Wasn’t he always hearing that women are attracted to bastards, not nice guys who take out the rubbish without being asked? And if anyone was acting like a bastard at the moment, it was Dan.

At school and university, Josh had always been the quiet one who girls spoke to if they wanted to know why their boyfriends were acting like dickheads, or whether Nick or Jason or Finn was seeing anyone at the moment. The role of Friend to Someone More Dynamic was one he’d been playing all his life, it seemed to him. Why should things be any different now, just because he was older and the person he was playing that role to was his own wife?

‘What if Sasha comes back here with Hannah?’

‘Good. That’s absolutely fine with me. I’ve got a couple of questions I’d like to put to my
ex-
wife.’

‘Ex? Last time I checked, you’re married until you’re divorced.’

‘Not married. Separated. Sasha and I are separated.’

Josh felt another jolt of unease at how quickly it was possible to pass from couple to single, from lover to enemy.

When Hannah walked in with Lily an hour and a half later, Josh couldn’t help feeling relieved at the cool reception she gave Dan.

‘Hi, Dan. Thought it was your car outside.’

‘Oh, you noticed it, did you? Did you also notice the fucking great scratch all around it, courtesy of my darling ex-wife?’

Hannah gave him a look of exasperated disbelief. Josh noticed she seemed strained. There was that little patch of eczema again, up near her hairline, the skin pink and raised with tiny flakes like grains of sand.

‘Oh, really. And you know that for a fact, do you? You know it was Sasha who crept out in the middle of the night, leaving her four-year-old daughter behind, and somehow tracked down your car and risked being arrested in order to scratch it with her keys? You know it was her, not some mindless vandal? Where was it, anyway?’

‘What does it matter where it was?’

‘It matters because how would she have known where to find your sodding car?’

‘He was at Sienna’s.’

Josh couldn’t help himself. But as soon as he’d spoken he wished he hadn’t. He sounded so eager – as if he couldn’t wait to dob in his mate. He saw Dan shaking his head silently and felt a stab of shame.

‘Oh, Dan. You can’t seriously be staying with that woman?’

Dan looked as if he was about to protest.

‘I know how it must look to you, Hannah,’ he said eventually.

‘Do you? I don’t think so. I think if you had the first idea how shitty this looks to me, you’d never have done it in the first place.’

‘I didn’t have much choice. I had nowhere to go after you threw me out, and I just wanted to be with someone who doesn’t treat me like the devil incarnate just because I’m finally being honest for the first time in years.’

‘Oh I see, so now it’s us who drove you to it, is that it?’

The patch of dry skin on Hannah’s face looked red and angry now against her pale forehead, clashing with the burgundy sweatshirt she was wearing. The sweatshirt was an old one of Josh’s, faded and shapeless, and he secretly wished she wouldn’t wear it. She had such a beautiful body, he couldn’t understand her need to cover it up all the time. Not that he’d say as much to her. He’d tried that at the start of their relationship but she’d become defensive, sure he was either being controlling or trying to flatter her, so he’d given up.

‘I’m not saying that, Hannah.’

Josh turned his attention sharply to Dan. Surely there wasn’t a catch in his voice just now? The prospect of Dan being overcome with emotion was vaguely horrifying.

‘I’m just trying to explain things to you.’ His voice was definitely wobbling. ‘I know what I’m doing seems really brutal, and you have no idea how much I hate hurting my family. But I was dying in that relationship. That’s how it felt. Sasha has such fixed ideas about how she thinks a couple should be, and what image of us she wanted to present to the world. Sienna allows me to be
me
. Do you know how amazing that feels after ten years of trying to fit into someone else’s picture of me?’

Josh felt strangely embarrassed. Dan and he didn’t talk about this kind of stuff. That was part of the reason Josh felt so comfortable with him. He’d heard him open up to other people about emotional stuff at the dreg-end of a dinner party. How a cousin he was really close to had dropped dead at a football match when they were teenagers, something about an irregular heartbeat, and how ever since then he’d felt a spiritual connection, as if part of his cousin was always with him. Freaky stuff like that. But as if by unspoken agreement, when they were on their own they never strayed into emotional territory.

If Hannah was moved by Dan’s display of vulnerability, she wasn’t showing it.

‘Look, no one disputes your right to leave if you’re unhappy. But not like this – dumping your wife for a model ten years younger. It’s so tacky, so demeaning.’

‘I didn’t dump her for Sienna. Sienna might have been the catalyst, but I’d been looking for a way out for years. Sasha just wasn’t listening to me. Nothing I said got through to her.’

‘Is that why you hit her?’

There was a pause.

Josh had heard the expression
the colour drained from his face
, but this was the first time he’d ever seen it happen. Dan’s head whipped backwards as if he’d been struck and he stared at Hannah, wide-eyed. ‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about? Hang on, is that what she’s saying? The crazy bitch is saying I hit her? You have got to be kidding me.’

Hannah was the first to drop her gaze, looking down at the fingers of her right hand, which were worrying at the skin around her thumb. Josh could tell she was regretting bringing the subject up. A bit late for regrets now!

‘She says it’s in her medical notes.’

Dan was on his feet now, pacing around with both hands clasped over his head. ‘This has got to be a joke. Please tell me you’re joking.’

Hannah glanced at Josh.

‘She is crazier than I thought. Oh, fuck. Why would she say something like that? You don’t believe her, right? You don’t think I would actually do that, do you?’ Dan’s eyes flicked from Hannah to Josh and then back again, under the cradle of his clasped hands.

‘Course we don’t think you’d do that. We’re your friends.’

Josh felt compelled to jump in with his support, to stave off whatever scene Dan was heading towards. Anyway, it was the truth. He didn’t think Dan would do that.

‘Jesus!’ Dan dropped back heavily on to the sofa, his face grey and suddenly saggy, like someone decades older. ‘When did it come to this? We loved each other. We had a beautiful little girl together, and now she’s claiming I’m a
wife-beater
? How does that happen?’

‘It was just something she said on the spur of the moment when she was really angry and really hurt,’ said Josh. ‘She probably doesn’t even remember saying it now.’

‘I hope so. I really hope so. It’s all so fucked up.’

Dan’s voice cracked, and Josh shut his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch the single tear trickling down his friend’s face.

Opening his eyes just a fraction, he saw Hannah, pinkly overheated now in the thick sweatshirt she still hadn’t taken off, dropping down next to Dan, all the fight now gone, and resting a hand on his leg.

‘You’re right there, Dan. Totally fucked up.’

Lucie, aged eight

I am going away to school. Daddy says I must be brave and not mind and Mummy just needs a rest, but I know it’s really because of the bad thing I did. Sometimes I talk to myself in French and say really bad words. I know they’re really bad because one time when Mummy was well and not resting I said them to her and she was shocked and she said a dirty mouth is a dirty mind. But she didn’t go all cold and stare at me and make her eyes like little daggers to stab me with, so I didn’t really mind. I’m scared of going to school, but sometimes I’m scared of Mummy, too. I hope I will have some friends there and we can have midnight feasts under the covers and maybe it will be like a holiday camp, Daddy says.

10

‘You can’t keep doing this.’

‘Doing what? I’m not doing anything, Hannah.’

‘You know what I mean. You have to let Dan see September. Whatever you think of him, she needs her daddy.’

‘I’m not stopping him seeing her. It’s not my fault things keep getting in the way.’

Sasha took a swig from her plastic cup of vending-machine coffee, spilling some on to the Formica table top as she replaced it. The sludge-brown liquid pooled on the white surface, which was already littered with empty cups and juice cartons, their straws sucked virtually flat, the detritus of ninety minutes in the hell that was the soft-play area at the local leisure centre. To their left, behind a curtain of netting, throngs of small children frolicked in a sea of brightly coloured balls, or clambered up netting or crawled on hands and knees through giant plastic pipes. Everywhere you looked there were children, hyped up on E-numbers from the vending machine, crying in corners or hitting each other over the head or pushing each other down slides. There were children shrieking with laughter or shouting to each other or to their parents, insisting they witness some death-defying feat. The noise level in the huge room was almost unbearable. Shell-shocked parents and dead-eyed au pairs sat at tables that were bolted to the floor, or else stood by the netting, dutifully calling out encouragement to their less adventurous charges. It was Hannah’s third visit in ten days and she felt as if the place was slowly sucking the soul out of her. She’d only come because Sasha had begged her. Now they were here, she found herself growing more and more frustrated with her friend.