The Broken (13 page)

‘Yes, but the things that keep getting in the way are things mostly manufactured by you.’

‘That’s not true. It’s not my fault September was invited to Molly’s for tea yesterday. It’s really important for her to maintain a normal routine at a time like this, that’s what all the books say. September needs her friends around her at the moment, she needs continuity. God knows she hasn’t got much of that at home.’

‘Oh, come off it, Sash. You could have rearranged that playdate. You’re punishing Dan, that’s all. I know he flew off the handle about that ridiculous car thing – as if you’re petty enough to go around vandalizing people’s things! I don’t blame you for being furious with him. But you’re also punishing September, who’s done nothing wrong.’

Looking furious, Sasha tried to push herself back from the table, clearly forgetting that the bench she was sitting on was firmly bolted to the floor. For a second she appeared confused, then, to Hannah’s consternation, her face crumpled and she began to cry.

‘Sash, I’m sorry. I know how hard this is for you.’

These days Hannah felt she was trapped in some endless groundhog day, repeating the same routines over and over – the soft-play centre, coffee, Sasha’s tears, her apologies, more coffee, wine, more wine, more tears. Over and over. She couldn’t remember the last time she had got any proper work done. There always seemed to be some emergency – could she pick up September and bring her home, because Sasha was meeting her lawyer? Could she drop everything and come round, because Sasha couldn’t bear to be on her own? She wanted to support Sasha, but worry about the money she wasn’t earning was starting to eat away at her. At night she lay awake counting up her debts. She and Josh had already remortgaged once to release equity for a new boiler plus a foolishly extravagant holiday in Majorca a couple of years before. Their monthly outgoings on the flat now topped £1,500, and with half of Josh’s salary going on their credit-card debt they needed her earnings just to break even.

‘Want to see something funny?’

The sudden brisk tone, coming hard on the tears of a moment ago, left Hannah nonplussed. She’d barely replied before Sasha had whipped her iPhone out of her bag and was jabbing at it with her delicate fingers so savagely Hannah worried they might break.

‘Here. Look.’

She thrust the handset under Hannah’s nose abruptly, so that it took a moment for Hannah’s eyes to focus on the screen. It was a Facebook page. But the people on it all seemed very young.

‘What exactly am I looking at?’

‘Her. It’s her. The Child Bitch from Hell.’

Hannah scrolled up to the profile photograph.
Sienna Sinclair.
Oh shit. Well, at least now she knew what Dan saw in her. The picture was black and white and looked professionally done. It was a close-up of a natural-looking girl wearing a cowboy hat and smiling into the camera as if sharing an intimate joke with the photographer. There was a dimple in one of her cheeks, just by the corner of her mouth, and a strand of her long darkish hair was blowing across her face. She looked like someone you wanted to be with, someone you might see with a group of friends at a neighbouring table in a restaurant and wish you could join, someone fun.

‘Have you seen?’ Sasha wanted to know. ‘
In a relationship
. That’s what she’s put. No prizes who with. And look at this.’ She snatched the phone from Hannah and began jabbing at it again before pushing it back across the table with a tight smile of triumph. ‘It’s them. Together. Her and my husband.’

Sasha had called up a photograph which showed a couple at a party, clearly taken by surprise, spontaneously mugging for the camera, the girl (her hair toffee-coloured in this photo, with some lighter sun-kissed streaks) turned towards Dan and holding on to his arm, with one leg bent up behind her at the knee, her face raised to his in a gesture of mock adoration, while he pretended to look bored without quite managing to wipe the pleasure from his face. A golden couple. If she’d seen them herself on the other side of the room, she’d have envied them.

‘I don’t understand,’ Hannah said now. ‘How come you have access to her photos?’

Sasha’s eyes lit up as if she’d been waiting for Hannah to ask this very question. ‘Because the stupid bitch has no privacy settings, that’s why. She
wants
me to see. She’s taunting me.’

‘Oh, come off it, Sasha. If she was taunting you she’d have made it much more obvious than that, surely. She probably just doesn’t know that everyone can see her pictures.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Hannah.’ Sasha grabbed the phone back as if Hannah had failed some sort of test and had lost the right to look at it any more. ‘Everyone knows about privacy nowadays. They have it practically drummed into them at school, which, don’t forget, she’s barely out of. She’s done it deliberately. She writes things too. On her friends’ walls. Things like
D and I absolutely loved that film
.’ Sasha had put on a high-pitched, girlish voice. ‘Or
Will pop into the launch with D later
. She practically lists every boring shitty detail of their life.’

‘Then don’t look at it, Sasha. I mean it. It’s going to really mess with your head. Please tell me you don’t sit at home obsessively checking that woman’s Facebook page.’

‘Course I don’t.’

Sasha’s shoulders slumped.

‘That’s a lie. I check it all the time. Wouldn’t you? It’s like an addiction. Last night I was up till four, going through photo after photo. I even looked up the friends who were tagged in her photos and started checking through their albums. Complete fucking strangers, and I was looking at their parents’ silver-wedding anniversary parties and their boyfriends and their cats.’

‘Sasha, you’re going to drive yourself mad.’

‘I know, but I just can’t help it. I just can’t bear that he’s with her, Hannah. I can’t bear thinking that September will grow up in a broken home. I can’t bear that I’ll have to wear that
divorced
label for the rest of my life, like there was something wrong with me, like I’ve been returned to the shop.’ Sasha’s hand in Hannah’s felt like a nub of bone, something impossibly small and unyielding. ‘I get what you said before about September needing to see her dad. But Dan has got to see there are consequences to what he’s done. If he’s allowed to have free access to her whenever he wants, he’s won, hasn’t he? He’s got everything he wants. And what have I got? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

Hannah thought about reminding Sasha that it wasn’t a contest, that nobody could win, but decided against it. She was so tired of the drama now. She longed to go back to the routine they’d had before. At the time she’d complained about it, about there not being enough hours in the day, but now she looked back on her life before Sasha and Dan’s split as a golden age, a comforting and orderly progression of hours, one after the other, all organized and calmly executed. She hadn’t wasted time she didn’t have in overheated soft-play areas, going over and over the same ground with a woman who seemed incapable of hearing anything other than what she wanted to hear. Even when she got home, it was impossible to escape the whole thing. Dan had taken to calling all the time to complain about Sasha keeping him from September and to plead with Hannah to intervene, and Josh seemed constantly to be in a weird mood.

Increasingly her sleep was plagued with flashbacks to
that night
, which always happened when she got stressed. In her dreams she once again felt fear thudding against her ribcage as her mother’s face swam in front of her, contorted in fury, her beloved features twisted into something unrecognizable. Hannah’s heart was racing, her mouth sandpaper dry as she stared down at the hole in her sister’s head, magnified by her subconscious to crater-like proportions.

‘I couldn’t stop it,’ she’d plead with her sister in her dream while the blood oozed from the hole, thick and tarry. ‘I’m so sorry, I couldn’t stop it.’

Once, she woke up to find Josh gently shaking her shoulder. ‘What couldn’t you stop?’ he asked. But her blood was pounding in her ears and she didn’t reply.

At least Gemma was coming to stay for the weekend. With her demonstrably alive-and-well sister right there in front of her, maybe she’d finally get a break from it all.

‘Listen, Sash.’ She leaned across the table, realizing too late that the ends of her hair were trailing in the puddle of coffee. ‘Why don’t you go away for a couple of days this weekend? If you don’t want Dan to look after September, you could take her with you.’

‘Where would I go?’

Sasha’s eyes were suddenly pebble-hard and Hannah felt uncomfortable, wishing she wasn’t still holding Sasha’s hand in hers, not sure how to take it away without seeming awkward.

‘I don’t know – a friend, maybe? You need a break, and I’m not going to be around much because Gemma will be here.’

Abruptly Sasha withdrew her hand, sitting back so that Hannah was left leaning into empty space.

‘I didn’t realize your sister being here would rule out you spending time with me.’ Sasha’s voice was thin and reedy. ‘Doesn’t she like me or something?’

Hannah felt herself blushing. The one time they’d met, Gemma hadn’t much taken to Sasha, pronouncing her the spoilt-princess type. Her heart sank when she saw tears welling up once more in Sasha’s eyes.

‘I understand. It must be so wonderful to have a supportive family. You’re so lucky, Hannah. Don’t worry about me. I know I’ve been a burden these last few weeks. I’m sure you can’t wait to spend some time away from me.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s not like that.’

‘I just don’t know what I’d have done without you. Sometimes I feel I’m going completely crazy. You’re the only one I can talk to.’

Hannah watched, stricken, as a fat tear made its way down Sasha’s gaunt face, until she couldn’t stand it any more.

‘Of course you can still come round when Gemma’s here. She’d love to see you,’ she lied. ‘The three of us will have a laugh together. She’s great fun.’

‘It just came out. I felt so sorry for her.’

‘Hans, how many times have we been through this? There’s a little word you need to learn. It starts with
n
and ends with
o
and it’s got two letters. Can you think what it might be?’

‘I know, I know. But with any luck she won’t take me up on it. She could tell I wasn’t that keen.’

‘That woman is so self-obsessed she wouldn’t notice if you’re keen or not.’

‘Give her a break, Gem. You only met her once. She’s had a really hard time.’

‘Ah, bless. Tell you what though, if her husband’s back on the market, send him my way. He was fit.’

‘He’s already got another woman. Anyway, where’s your solidarity?’

‘Same place as my desire to spend my weekend listening to your friend crying into her designer handbag about how hard done by she is.’

Hannah sighed, tilting her phone so the noise didn’t carry down the line. Gemma could be very judgemental sometimes, taking against people for no better reason than a limp handshake or a single questionable joke. It had taken years for Josh to overcome the unfavourable first impression he’d created when, seized by nerves at meeting Hannah’s family, he’d drunk too much and ended up droning on loudly and (though she wouldn’t admit it at the time) boringly about the perilous state of secondary education. And Gemma had been even more scathing about Sasha. Hannah could hardly bear to think how hurt Sasha would be if she could hear their conversation. She knew she ought to mount a more vigorous defence of her friend, but as always she found herself swaying in the wind of her sister’s forceful opinion. Though Gemma was a year younger, Hannah couldn’t remember a time when her judgements hadn’t coloured her own. It had been like that even before the thing that happened when they were teenagers, from which none of them – Gemma, Hannah nor their mother – had ever quite recovered. But there was a small part of Hannah that was enjoying not having to be understanding and sympathetic for once. She seemed to spend her entire life tiptoeing around other people at the moment. It felt good to be having a normal conversation – even if it was on the phone to her sister, sixty miles away in Oxford – without having to worry about saying the wrong thing, or upsetting someone by mistake.

‘I still don’t understand how you’re managing to stay friends with both of them,’ Gemma continued. ‘I’m surprised Sasha hasn’t issued an ultimatum yet – him or me. I know I would have.’

Gemma’s own divorce had been finalized four years earlier, and she’d made no secret of the fact that she didn’t want any of her family or friends to keep in touch with her ex, or ‘that wanker I married’, as she insisted on calling Sam at the time.

‘It’s different though, because Josh and Dan are such good mates. And Sasha says she feels better knowing we’re in touch with Dan. At least she knows what’s going on in his life.’

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

‘Hans,’ Gemma said eventually, and her voice was suddenly serious, ‘you need to be careful. Divorces are toxic things. You don’t want to be pulled into someone else’s mess. Be nice, but keep your distance. Understand?’

11

‘She’s here.’

‘What? I can’t hear you.’

‘She’s here!’

‘What? Now?’

‘Yes. Look, Dan, I really don’t feel comfortable about this.’

‘I know. It’s a fucking shit situation to put you in, but I’ve been going so crazy. I owe you. I really owe you.’

‘I’ve got to go. Remember, not a word of this to Hannah.’ After clicking off the phone, Josh flushed the toilet, just for authenticity. Something was twanging sharply in his chest, making him doubt whether he’d done the right thing. Not that he didn’t believe Dan had the right to see his daughter, whatever he’d done. And September had the right to see her father. Fathers were important. Still, Hannah would be furious if she knew he’d called Dan. They had to make it look like a coincidence – that Dan had just happened to turn up at their house unexpectedly while September was round playing with Lily.

Emerging from the bathroom, Josh heard the increasingly unfamiliar sound of Hannah shrieking with laughter. Good, he thought. She’d been so stressed recently, restlessly shifting position in bed throughout the night, moving her pillow forward, backwards, to the side, over her head, until they were both wide awake.