The Fallout (26 page)

He didn't know how long he watched her. Nor could he have said why. Only that something was drawing him here to lurk in the darkness. While his own wife and child waited at home, he drew some sort of perverse satisfaction from watching someone else's family like a Peeping Tom, feeling something inside him crystallizing, becoming hard and blade-sharp. He had no idea what it was, but was content to bide his time until it all became clearer. After all, time was one thing he had plenty of.

Chapter 26

Could Josh be having an affair?

The idea had never crossed Hannah's mind before. Not because she felt their relationship to be inviolable but because she'd always felt she held the balance of power in their marriage. He had so often told her he was lucky to have her that she had long since accepted it as fact. Not that she'd ever put it into so many words, but if it came right down to it, which thankfully it never had, she felt sure she was the beloved in the relationship and Josh the one who loved. Or rather, she always had felt sure of it—up until now.

Suddenly, nothing felt certain anymore. Josh, a man who normally relished routine to an almost autistic degree, was acting inconsistently. Since that afternoon when he'd come home early from school with a headache—unusual in itself—there'd been a couple of occasions where he'd arrived back from work late without real reason. Another time he'd been there when she got home from picking Lily up from school, claiming classes had been canceled because of a broken boiler. Then there were the nights where she'd wake to find him staring glassily at the ceiling, or else vanished altogether. “I couldn't sleep,” he'd whisper, sliding back into bed later. “I took the dog out for a walk.”

Often after these disruptions, she'd fall back into a light, fitful sleep and find herself back there, as a teenager, standing in the hospital and looking down on Gemma's grotesquely swollen face, trying not to see the large white pad on her forehead that Hannah knew hid a gaping hole, a horrible, black oozing space where there used to be bone, tissue and skin. And always playing in the background on an endless loop, the image of her mother, her features at first distorted by anger, then later by self-reproach. “What have I done?” this dream mother wailed, clutching the metal rail that ran along the side of Gemma's bed, so her knuckles pressed up white through her skin like teeth through babies' gums.

Occasionally, in these dreams, Gemma wouldn't be in the bed. Instead she'd be climbing out of the passenger seat of the car and limping down the road toward Hannah, her bleeding head dangling from her neck like a flower on a broken stalk. “I'm sorry,” Hannah would call to her. “I couldn't stop it. It wasn't my fault.” But she knew she was lying and would wake up bathed in sweat that, in her panicked, bleary state, she mistook for blood.

She stopped working. Or rather she continued sitting at her desk attempting to work, but she stopped producing anything worthwhile. Instead she doodled spirals on the lined paper of her notebook and wrote her name in jagged writing over and over again until the pen tore clear through the paper. She made so many excuses to so many people she stopped recognizing what was true and what was fiction.

The baby expanded inside her like a balloon. Sometimes she felt it might never stop growing, until one or the other of them popped like a piñata.

The disrupted sleep and the ongoing worry about unmet deadlines and unpaid bills that buzzed in her head like white noise on a radio made Hannah feel increasingly like her mind was detaching from her body and floating formlessly above it. Strange memories of her mother's depressive illness and the devastating effect on their childhood began to surface in her mind for the first time in years.

Even Lily didn't provide the usual comfort. Now when Hannah looked at her she felt weighted down by the inadequacy of her parenting and by the many ways she failed her daughter daily. She looked at other children at the school being whisked off to ballet and gymnastics and private French lessons—all the things she'd always insisted her tight work schedule wouldn't allow. She knew other mothers who picked up their children, handbags bulging with magazines and books to fill the long hours ahead that would have to be spent loitering outside piano teachers' houses and church halls given over twice a week to the teaching of Kumon math. Hannah used to eye those mothers laden down with half-size guitars and trumpets with amusement, but now the sight of those same misshapen black cases was like a reproach. When she walked past open windows on Saturday mornings and listened to the tortuous sounds of a child practicing scales, sawing away on a violin, she no longer felt relief, but a stabbing kind of guilt. If only she'd been a more attentive mother, would Lily now be less reticent, more confident about social situations? That was something no one ever told you about being a parent. How you were constantly getting glimpses of your children's alternate selves—the idealized selves they could have achieved if only you'd been happier, more consistent, less prone to doubt.

For the hundredth time in the last few days, Hannah found herself longing to speak to Sasha. From the little she knew, Sasha had had the very worst example in her own mother, and could herself hardly qualify for Mother of the Year, but still she had a way of minimizing Hannah's maternal neuroses without dismissing them or trivializing them. She had issues with control when it came to how she parented September, but she was always generous with her praise about how Hannah managed to earn a living as well as look after a young child. In the end you just had to do your best, didn't you?

Well, didn't you?

Hannah had covered every inch of her open notebook in ink doodles, so that the scant writing she'd done was all but lost. She pushed it away in disgust and desultorily clicked her laptop into life. Her Twitter account popped up on screen. As usual, she automatically went first to her notifications—to find out if anyone had tweeted her directly. She did this more out of habit and hope than for any other reason. She hardly ever seemed to get any direct interactions these days. Perhaps that was due to her own patchy online attendance, her tendency to lurk rather than to post. She'd originally set up her account for work reasons, because everyone else was doing it, and as a way to publicize pieces she'd written and promote herself as a freelancer, but some days Twitter made her feel like the loneliest person in the world. So many busy, productive people leading busy, productive lives, going to parties, to book clubs, climbing mountains for charity, winning awards even, while she sat at home mired in inactivity, drawing spirals on a pad.

But when she clicked on the notifications button, incredibly there was a whole long list of recent tweets. Immediately she felt better. But as she began scrolling down, her momentary good humor dissolved, replaced by a growing sense of horror. All of the messages were from accounts she didn't recognize. And every one was abusive, pouring vitriol on pieces she'd written and on Hannah herself.

The stalking piece in the Mail by @HHfreelance was the most shoddy piece of journalism I've ever read.

Hope @HHfreelance is an intern and isn't being PAID to turn out the drivel she writes.

And the one that made the blood in her veins ice over:

@HHfreelance wrecks people's lives.

An internet troll, surely, making a random guess? The thought didn't make her feel any better. The list went on and on. Someone had been very busy on her account. Someone hated her enough to do all that.

Hannah sat back in her chair staring at the screen, her hand held up to her mouth as if to stop the scream she could feel building in her throat. Her heart thudded so painfully against her rib cage she felt convinced, for one awful moment, that it might dislodge the baby inside her.

Someone hated her.

Someone really hated her.

For Hannah, who had spent her entire life in the pursuit of being liked, it was a sickening realization. All through her childhood, while Gemma would go barging into situations acting on feeling and impulse and not caring what people thought, Hannah had loitered behind, brokering and negotiating her way through life. It limited what you could get done, and it tended to dilute the passion out of life like the overwatered squash their mother would make them, but at least she could go to bed knowing she hadn't made an enemy that day—and for her that was the most important thing.

“Because of an accident that wasn't even your fault you feel like you have to be nice to everyone for the rest of your life,” Gemma had once said, accusingly, angered because Hannah had insisted on inviting a couple of girls no one liked, and who clearly didn't like them, either, along on a night out, just so they couldn't accuse her of leaving them out. Hannah knew she was right but she still couldn't help it. Teachers, cashiers at the supermarket till, neighbors, other dog walkers, people who had nothing to do with her life and who she'd never see again: she wanted them all to like her. It was a compunction. She forced herself to go back through the list of notifications. They were all from brand-new accounts with few followers, and when she clicked to see who those followers were, they turned out to be carpet-cleaning companies and loan agencies—faceless computer-run accounts on the whole. Those were the only people who'd see these malicious tweets, she told herself, trying to logic herself back to calmness. Hannah put her hand to her stomach, aware she was still trembling.

Someone had spent a long time doing this. Setting up new accounts wasn't hard, but it was time-consuming—selecting backgrounds, choosing monikers.

She was still staring at her screen when the doorbell sounded, startling her and causing Toby to erupt in a frenzy of barking.

The intercom was on the blink (again) so she left the door to her flat open while she crossed the communal hallway and drew back the heavy cast-iron catch for the main front door. Her eyes widened in shock when she saw the slight, hunched figure standing there.

Sasha looked terrible. In just a few days she seemed to have shrunk to nothing. The skin of her face had a curious yellowish tinge and molded itself like wax over her nose and forehead. Though it was briskly cold, Sasha didn't wear a coat, just a gunmetal grey top with long sleeves that flared slightly at the wrists. Hannah had been with her when she bought that top—the two of them on a rare shopping trip together, finishing off laden with bags (well, Sasha anyway) and sipping mojitos in a Regent Street hotel bar, crying with laughter just because they were out and child-free and feeling young. Could that really have been just a year ago? Now the top was at least two sizes too big, hanging off Sasha's tiny frame like a scarecrow's clothes. Without even thinking, Hannah stepped forward and folded her arms around her friend.

After a while, she pulled away and half walked, half carried Sasha through to her flat. She was still too shocked to speak as she deposited her on the sofa.

“I look revolting, don't I?” Sasha's voice was gravelly, as if it hadn't been used for a while.

Hannah couldn't respond.

“What's happening to me? I feel I've gone completely mad. Sometimes I imagine people are outside the house watching me, waiting for me to spin totally off the edge. Everything I thought I knew about my life has turned out to be not true, or not there. Like it was built out of sand. Oh, you can't understand what I mean.”

“I think I probably can,” Hannah said gently.

Sasha glanced at her and Hannah saw a flash of the old Sasha—amusement and scorn mixed together.

“You have Josh, Lily, your home, your job, your new baby.” Was she imagining it or did Sasha's voice wobble on that last word? “Everything is secure in your life, Hannah. It's not going anywhere, whereas my whole world has disintegrated. You know Dan is trying to force me out of my home, don't you? He wants to live there with his slut and September and airbrush me out as if I never existed.”

Sasha was gesticulating in her anger, and the sleeve of her top shifted slightly back. Hannah felt her insides twist at the sight of the scratches scored into her arm. She might be wrong, but they looked strangely fresh. The dried blood was red rather than brown, and coagulated into raised mounds. Sasha pulled down on her sleeve and Hannah tore her eyes away.

“You know he introduced September to her—to that bitch. After all those promises he made.”

Hannah clapped her hand over her mouth. “But how? I thought you were only letting him see her with you there?”

Sasha's dull sunken eyes fixed on Hannah's. “My lawyer convinced me to do it. She said it would show a judge that I've tried to be reasonable. He said he'd take her swimming. He didn't tell me that
she'd
be there, too. So now September thinks the sun shines out of her fucking ass. Says she looks like a princess with lovely long hair and why don't I try to grow my hair long and then maybe Daddy will love me again.”

Hannah felt her own eyes filming over with tears.

“Oh, Sasha, that must be so hard. But surely a court won't let him get his way? He can't just take your house and your daughter away from you.”

“My solicitor says there's a very good chance he'll get what he wants, thanks to Josh's email.”

“I'm so sorry.”

Sasha shrugged, then she shot Hannah another look that Hannah found hard to gauge.

“Actually it was quite interesting. Caroline, my solicitor, sent me the
whole
email that Josh's so-called testimony had been taken from.”

There was something about the way she stressed the word
whole
that Hannah didn't like.

“Turns out it wasn't just my parenting skills Josh slammed. He said some pretty choice things about your sex life, too. Or lack of it.”

“He wouldn't...”

The words came out before Hannah had even thought about them, but immediately she realized that, of course, he would. And he obviously had. She felt sick.

“Don't worry, I know he was exaggerating. If you'd been that frigid you wouldn't be knocked up right now!”

Hannah felt her face burning.

“Oh, Hans, I didn't mean to upset you. I guess I want everyone to be as miserable as me. I'm a horrible person. My mother always used to say so when she... Hannah, please, forget I said anything.”

Hannah nodded, but they both knew there were some things that couldn't be forgotten.