The Broken (7 page)

It was getting to the stage where he was almost relieved to be at school, where even the giggling of the Year Eight girls and the rudeness of the Year Eleven boys felt reassuringly unchanged and familiar.

During lessons, there was little time to think about anything other than whatever set text he was attempting to drum into the largely unreceptive minds of his pupils. ‘Not being funny, Sir, but why do we have to read the book when we could just go and see the film?’

Only at break times or, like now, driving home in their thirteen-year-old Golf that shuddered alarmingly up the hill towards Crouch End did his mind swing back to what was going on at home, and he’d find himself frowning as an unexplained knot formed in his stomach and his heart beat slightly faster than normal. When he tried to analyse what was making him feel so on edge, he found he couldn’t put his finger on it. It wasn’t that Dan ever got in the way, he was so rarely around, so why was his presence, or rather his absence, so unnerving?

‘Maybe you’re just jealous because he’s out being single and having fun while you’re stuck at home with me and Lil,’ Hannah had teased him the night before.

Josh had made a joke of it, pressing his nose up against the front window as if desperate to escape, much to the delight of Lily, who insisted on climbing on to a chair to push her own plump cheeks up against the cold glass. Now, though, he was starting to wonder uncomfortably if Hannah might not have hit upon something. Not that he was jealous of Dan. Josh didn’t envy his friend the late nights in crowded bars or wherever it was he was hanging out when he wasn’t in their flat. No, it was more than that – something to do with the sight of that suitcase in the corner, so compact and portable, and the way Dan breezed in and out without having to give any account of himself, and the whiff of fresh starts that clung to him. It was that sense of the future opening up. Josh felt, by comparison, washed up and overburdened.

In private, Hannah griped about Dan’s presence. She hated not being able to wander into the living room if she woke up during the night to sit down at the dining-room table and work in the T-shirt she wore to bed, or scroll through Twitter catching up on people’s news, and she resented the pile of clumsily folded blankets on the end of the sofa whenever they sat down to watch telly. But as Josh waited by the temporary traffic lights, gently revving the accelerator and hoping against hope that this wouldn’t be the day the Golf’s dodgy clutch gave up the ghost altogether, he found himself trying to view Dan through Hannah’s eyes. Yes, his presence might be inconvenient, but might not his new-found singledom also give him a kind of cachet, a sense of danger and alpha-maleness that had been better concealed when he was a safely married man? Josh could see how a man like Dan, clearly desired by other women, successful at work and suddenly back on the market, might be very attractive, particularly when he and Hannah were so bogged down in debt themselves. More chokingly, might not this clear evidence of Dan’s healthy sex drive throw the recent deficiencies of their own into sharp relief?

This jealousy that had crept up from nowhere was like a slow-acting virus you’re not even conscious of until your throat closes up and,
wham
, you find it’s overtaken your entire system. It’s not as if Hannah had ever expressed the slightest interest in Dan. In fact, it tended to be Josh who would leap to his friend’s defence in the face of Hannah’s disapproval. She’d once said, ‘Dan is like cheap paint. Looks great to begin with, but give him a rub with a damp cloth and he’ll come off on your hand.’ Josh had argued on Dan’s behalf, but inside he’d glowed with pleasure at the unspoken inference (or so he liked to imagine) that he, by contrast, was a man of substance.

Turning into their road with its mishmash of Victorian and 1920s houses, many of them converted (badly) into flats, Josh’s heart sank when he noted the lack of parking places. Cruising past his house, he felt a twinge of anger when he saw Sasha’s SUV parked right outside in prime position. Couldn’t they have just one evening to themselves, free of drama? While Dan was the model house guest, hardly ever around and entertaining and largely discreet when he was, Sasha was the non-house guest from hell. In the ten days since she and Dan had split up, there’d hardly been a moment when Sasha hadn’t been there, either curled up on the sofa sobbing into whichever of Dan’s crumpled and frankly rank T-shirts she’d fished out of his suitcase, or else pacing the room on those tiny little legs that always looked to Josh as if they shouldn’t even be capable of supporting an adult body, ranting about mid-life crises and responsibilities (or lack thereof) while Hannah brought her cups of tea or glasses of wine, and Josh made endless rounds of fishfingers and pasta and pesto for the girls. It wasn’t that he begrudged her anything – it was just that he and Hannah and Lily had developed such an easy, pleasant routine and now everything was so . . .
unsettled
.

As soon as he walked through the door of the flat, he could tell it wasn’t one of Sasha’s good days. Or rather, not one of her less-bad days. The tension rose up to meet him as he lingered in the hallway, taking far longer than he needed to hang his jacket on the hook and fuss over an ecstatic Toby. He could hear September’s shrill voice coming from behind Lily’s closed bedroom door. ‘No, no. Not like that, Lileee,’ she said, stretching out the last syllable of his daughter’s name so that it hung gratingly in the air.

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 this 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.