The Fallout (4 page)

“Hello, strangers,” she heard Hannah say in the loud, overbright voice she reserved for socially uncomfortable situations.

Josh was surprised by how nervous he felt suddenly, as if Dan and Sasha really were two strangers rather than their best friends.

By the time he and Lily made their way into the living room, the visitors were already installed on the sofa. Both Dan and Sasha had dark shadows under their eyes and were looking unnaturally pale, but Josh was shocked to see that they were holding hands. He shot Hannah a questioning look, but she was busy rearranging the magazines he knew for a fact she'd already straightened just minutes before.

“So this must be a bit weird for you—” Dan began.

“September, Lily, why don't you go off into Lily's room to play.”

It wasn't like Hannah to interrupt anyone, but Josh was glad she had. If they were going to have this chat, far better the girls were out of earshot. On her way out of the room, September paused and surveyed the sofa, with her hand on her hip and her head to one side.

“Daddy. I think this is too small to be your new bed. I think you'll have to come home and sleep in your proper bed.”

“It's not too small, princess. If I bend my knees a little it'll be nice and cozy.”

After the girls had gone, there was a silence that settled over the four of them like the dust that Hannah had been halfheartedly sweeping up earlier.

“Like I was saying,” Dan said eventually, “this must be pretty weird for you two.”

“It's pretty weird for me, too,” said Sasha. She was smiling a small, tired smile and Josh found it impossible to work out whether she was being sarcastic or just honest.

Dan smiled at her and squeezed her hand in a gesture that Josh couldn't help but find a bit creepy.

“Sasha has been brilliant these last few days. We've talked about everything and I know it hasn't been easy. Things haven't been right between us for a little while and I think both of us realize we need to spend a bit of time apart while we—while I—sort out what the fuck's going on in my head. I really can't thank you enough for agreeing to put me up.”

“Yeah, he's a horrible slob,” said Sasha. Josh felt a rush of sympathy for her suddenly. She was trying so hard to put a brave face on everything, even while her world was crumbling around her.

“Daddy!” The shout came up from the next room. There was a short silence then it came back twice as shrill. “
Daddy
, I need you!”

Dan got to his feet.

“Better go.”

Once he'd left the room, Sasha seemed to shrink back into the sofa cushions.

Hannah got up from the far side of the coffee table, where she'd been kneeling, and sat down next to her friend, putting her hand on her arm.

“Has it been hideous?”

Sasha nodded. She leaned her head on Hannah's shoulder.

“I'm just so glad he's coming here,” said Sasha. “I know you'll help him get things in perspective. He's been working so hard recently, doing such stupid hours. No wonder he's stressed. He just needs a bit of a break, that's all. He needs to realize just what he's got and how much he'd be losing.”

“He must be mad to even think about it,” said Josh, and he was rewarded by a flash of a smile from Sasha.

“Bat-shit crazy,” she said.

“Who's bat-shit crazy? I'm guessing it's probably me.”

Dan had reappeared in the doorway, where he stood running a hand through his long, dirty blond hair. At least he had the grace to look sheepish.

“How about a drink?”

Sasha seemed not to have noticed that it was barely past midday. Josh looked pointedly at his watch, but Hannah was already on her feet.

“Wine o'clock, is it?”

Josh followed her out to the kitchen on the pretext of helping her with the glasses.

“Bit early, isn't it?”

“I don't care,” she said, uncorking the bottle of white she'd unearthed from the back of the fridge. It was one of their many bones of contention since finances had gotten so tight. Josh felt they could economize by cutting down on drinking at home, while Hannah felt it was wine that would get them through the crisis.

“Dan is just doing my head in,” she hissed. “All this ‘I need to sort out my head' bollocks, when all he's after is a free pass to screw young models.”

“Come on, I don't think that's completely fair. Have you looked at him? The guy looks wrecked. I don't think this is easy for him.”

“Maybe not, but it's a million times worse for her.”

Hannah had a massive sense of female solidarity. Probably something to do with growing up in a female-dominated household. It was one of the things Josh loved most about her—her loyalty to her friends.

“Oi, stop talking about us and bring wine.”

Sasha's voice lacked its usual confidence, but at least she was trying to keep it together.

Back in the living room, Josh reclaimed the armchair he'd been sitting in before, while Hannah kneeled down at the coffee table to pour the wine.

“A toast. To you guys,” she said, raising her glass to Sasha and Dan. “I just want you to know, whatever happens we're here for you. Both of you.”

When Josh looked over at Sasha, he saw that her eyes had filled with tears.

“Thanks, Hannah,” she said. Her hand was clamped around Dan's thigh. “I really think we'll be okay. As long as we carry on being completely honest with each other, like we have been this week, I think we'll make it. Won't we, babes?”

“Mmm,” Dan concurred.

Leave it now
, Josh urged her telepathically.
Please.
But she clearly hadn't finished.

“You know, not many couples could have said the things we've said to each other this week and still be even talking to each other, let alone loving each other,” she went on. “But I think we've reached a new level of openness and that's what gives me the faith that we'll end up together once Dan's got past this little...blip. We've really laid ourselves bare, haven't we?”

Dan nodded. “We have. We really have.”

“Ha!”

The sound shot like a bullet across the coffee table from where Hannah was kneeling.

“Hannah!”

It was the voice Josh used in class when he was sending a clear warning to a pupil not to go any further. But it fell on deaf ears.

“No. I'm sorry. I've kept quiet up to now but I just can't listen to that. Sasha has a right to know the truth. She has a right to expect you to be
genuinely
honest with her, Dan.”

“What are you talking about?”

Sasha was looking from Hannah to Dan and back again as if waiting for a translation.

“I think you'd better shut up, Hannah.”

Dan's face was the color of liver. Josh didn't think he'd ever seen him look so angry.

“No, Dan. I love you dearly, you know that, but you're not being fair to anyone by not telling Sasha that you've been sleeping with someone else.”

Sasha moved her hand from where it had been resting in Dan's and turned to face him on the sofa.

“What's she talking about, Dan?”

“It's nothing.” The purple stain on his skin made him almost ugly. In other circumstances, Josh might have quite enjoyed the transformation. “A silly fling I had with someone at work. It was part of the process, Sash. Me trying to work out who I am and what I feel.”

Hannah, sitting back on her heels, exhaled loudly. Josh willed her not to say anything. “We'll leave you two to chat, shall we?”

He was getting to his feet as he spoke but Sasha stopped him in his tracks.

“Don't bother. You two obviously know more about my marriage than I do.”

Her voice was so sharp you might cut yourself on it.

“Did you fuck her? Did you? This
fling
of yours? Don't bother answering, I can see in your face that you did. Has it been going on for ages? Did you all have a bloody good laugh about it behind my back?”

Josh glanced at Hannah. Hannah loathed confrontation. But then, he reminded himself, she was the one who'd caused it.

“Sasha,” Hannah began, “I wanted to tell you. I...”

“Bitch!”

Sasha's normally delicate features were twisted into something almost demonic as she turned on Hannah and Josh felt suddenly cold.

“What?”

“You bloody bitch. You let me sit here sobbing in your arms last weekend and all the time you
knew
!
Did it make you feel powerful? Did it? Being here, all smug, in your nice safe marriage, knowing my husband was fucking someone else and I didn't know anything about it?”

“No! It wasn't like...”

“Spare me!” Sasha was slipping her feet into her silver flip-flops and gathering up the distressed-looking leather handbag.

“September!”

No chance of the girls not hearing that—the word was so shrill it almost set the wineglasses trembling.

“Sash, don't go.”

“Fuck off, Dan.”

Josh groaned as September and Lily appeared in the doorway, just in time to hear the last sentence.

“Say goodbye to Daddy, darling. You might not see him for a little while.”

There was just time for the little girl's eyes to grow wide with panic before Sasha snatched up her hand and was bundling her out the door.

“Daddy!”

The high-pitched wail was interrupted by the slamming of the communal front door, but still it continued outside, horrible and piercing, until finally the revving of Sasha's car engine cut it off completely.

In a sense, the silence that followed it within their ground-floor flat was even worse. Finally Josh could stand it no more.

“That went well, I thought.”

No one laughed.

Lucie, age six

Mummy loves me. This morning she let me brush her beautiful hair and my hair will be long like hers one day. It's almost at my shoulders. And she hasn't shouted at me for ages about the bad thing I did. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Eyes too big for my belly. She talks to me in French because I was born in France even though I don't remember it, and it's like music coming from her mouth. And we don't talk about Eloise. Not ever. But out of sight isn't out of mind! Daddy is happy because Mummy is happy and we are all happy. Sometimes I'm scared to breathe in case Mummy blows away.

Chapter 4

“So just call me back. Please? Even if it's just to tell me how much you hate and despise me.”

Hannah pressed end-call, put the phone down and sat staring into space. Her laptop was set up on the dining table and she was supposed to be working on a feature for a weekly women's magazine about overprotective celebrity mums. Instead she was fretting about Sasha. That was the ninth or tenth message she'd left for her. It had been two days since the horrible scene in their living room, but Hannah could still hear the venom dripping from her friend's voice when she'd called her a “bloody bitch,” and September's anguished “Daddy!” coming from outside as she was bundled into the car.

For a moment afterward there'd been a sickening silence that Josh tried to break with a stupid joke. Then Lily had started crying and suddenly everyone was talking at once. Dan apologizing to Hannah, Hannah apologizing to Dan, Josh apologizing to Lily.

“I shouldn't have said anything,” she'd sighed.

Hannah couldn't remember when she'd ever felt so wretched.

“No, it's my fault.” Dan had his head in his hands, his fingers digging deep into his hair. “I wish you hadn't told her, but I can't fucking blame you. I should never have done it. I should have had more respect for Sash.”

“Well, now it's out there, at least you can both deal with it. Set a few ground rules. That sort of thing.”

Trust Josh to come up with a practical solution. It was his default response any time things got overemotional. If Hannah was suddenly diagnosed with terminal cancer, Josh would probably present her with a ten-step “get well” plan. It was just how he was.

Afterward Dan had gone back to his house a couple of times but Sasha had locked the door from the inside and wouldn't let him in. And so the three of them had sat around and got quite drunk, while Lily watched
Frozen
over and over until Hannah finally had enough and took her to the park.

Later on they had indeed established ground rules. Dan wasn't going to be in touch with Sienna, and he was going to do everything he could to work things out with Sasha, and if they couldn't be worked out, to at least have the best breakup possible. Couples counseling if it came to it, even if, as he said, he'd rather pull out his own fingernails. Dan had done all the right things. He'd cried, he'd appeared racked with guilt. He'd gazed, agonized, at the photo of Sasha and September that he kept in his wallet. In short, he had not given the impression of someone who was taking the situation lightly.

After that first day, they'd hardly seen him. He had a big advertising job on this week, so he'd spent the whole of Sunday in his studio in Hoxton going over the brief, jotting down ideas and making sure he had the right equipment.

So Dan wasn't the problem. The problem was Sasha. She hadn't answered her phone the whole of yesterday, and September hadn't turned up for preschool this morning, leaving Lily inconsolable. Hannah sighed. Concentrate! She only had the three hours to work while Lily was at school, and this feature was due by the end of the week. Not that it was going to pay much, but they really needed the money and, as Josh was always saying, in a parody of a well-known supermarket advertising slogan, “every little helps.”

Money. The perennial problem. When Hannah and Josh had first gotten together they'd both had major credit-card debts—Josh because of borrowing to fund his teacher training course, and Hannah because, well, when you're in your twenties and living and working in London for the first time, you start to believe you've made it, and that things will only keep getting better. Then they'd bought this place. They could have gotten a whole house if they'd moved somewhere farther out, but Hannah had been sold on Crouch End, with its coffee shops and boutiques and huge redbrick houses with ornate stained-glass front doors. So they'd mortgaged themselves to the hilt for a flat they'd already grown out of. Hannah had been banking on Josh getting that promotion. She felt silly setting so much store by it, but she still found Josh's lack of confidence infuriating. He deserved to be department head far more than bland old Pat Hennessey. As always, thinking about money gave Hannah an acidic feeling in the pit of her stomach. She sat up straighter and refreshed her computer screen.
Sharon Osbourne
recently sprang to the defense of daughter Kelly
, she wrote. Then she stopped. Sharon Osbourne didn't have money worries, she supposed. Sharon Osbourne didn't lie awake mentally moving money around, or more accurately mentally moving
credit
from this place to that, borrowing from this source to pay off that bill and then from that source to pay off the first.

She wished she could talk to Sasha. She always had such a reassuringly blasé attitude toward money. Of course, Hannah knew it was easy to dismiss money worries when you'd never had any yourself, but it still made her feel better hearing Sasha say “Pah, it's only money.” Yes, she found herself thinking, that's all it is. Anyway, what little she knew about Sasha's past put it into perspective. Sasha found her childhood too painful to talk about, but from the odd comment she and Dan had made over the years, Hannah gathered it had been beyond awful, despite her family's wealth. You could have all the money in the world, she reminded herself primly, but it still didn't buy you happiness.

The doorbell roused her from her meandering thoughts.

“Hello?”

“It's me. Open the fucking door. I've totally miscalculated on the weather front and I'm absolutely freezing.”

She couldn't remember the last time she'd been so relieved to hear someone's voice. She flung open the front door and Sasha practically fell into her arms, almost tripping over Toby, who had come running at the sound of the bell. Hannah was shocked at how fragile her friend's shoulders felt under her fingers, as if her bones could snap like overdry twigs. She'd lost weight over two days, if that was even possible. It was like holding a ghost.

“I'm sorry.” Even Sasha's voice seemed to have lost weight, sounding fainter and less robust. “I shouldn't have turned on you.”

“No. It's my fault. I should have told you straightaway. I should never have promised Josh to keep quiet.”

The two women made their way into the living room and sat down curled up at opposite ends of the sofa.

“Feels weird knowing Dan was probably right here just a few hours ago,” said Sasha. Her face, Hannah now saw, was pinched like a pastry edge and there were greasy violet smudges under her eyes.

“I can't imagine.”

“I keep thinking it's all just a dream, you know, or some kind of misunderstanding and any minute I'm going to hear his key in the door.”

“Well, he has tried to come over a couple of times.”

“No, he hasn't.”

“Really? I'm sure he said he...”

“The thing is, though, I've been Googling this a lot and I do think this is just a phase Dan's going through.”

“You've
Googled
it?”

“Yes, you'd be amazed how many forums and chat rooms there are for people whose husbands or wives have suddenly left them out of the blue. They call it being ‘blindsided.' Anyway, they all seem to think this is a stupid phase he's going through. It's called ‘being in the fog.' That's why I'm feeling a bit better about it. So he had a fling with some bimbo? He's not the first person to have a midlife crisis. That isn't to say I couldn't wring his bloody neck. Sometimes I feel I'd like to just, I don't know, smash his smug face in.”

Sasha pounded her little fist into the sofa in demonstration and, despite herself, Hannah stifled a smile.

“But the thing is, I miss the bastard,” Sasha continued. “I miss him so much it's like a physical hurt. I always said I'd never forgive a man who cheated, but the truth is she probably threw herself at him. Girls always do with Dan. You must have noticed that? And he was weak. So I've decided to take him back.”

Hannah's face must have betrayed her confusion because Sasha went on.

“I know you probably think I'm mad. But I've seen firsthand what divorce does to families and I won't let it happen to my daughter.”

For a moment, Hannah thought Sasha was about to open up about what had happened to her as a child, after her parents split up, but instead her voice rose as she repeated, “I won't allow our family to break apart.”

By now Sasha's dainty features had taken on an unfamiliar intensity Hannah found quite unsettling. She felt nonplussed. As far as she knew it was Dan who'd left Sasha, and yet here Sasha was talking about forgiveness and taking him back. Had she perhaps missed something—a conversation between the two of them that neither had seen fit to disclose?

“Anyway,” said Sasha, her expression suddenly relaxing, “he doesn't know it yet but he's going to spend the rest of his life making it up to me with exotic holidays and extortionate jewelry!”

The laugh that followed came out more like a sob, and Hannah melted, realizing with a pang how strong her friend was having to be and how much it must be costing her to hold it together.

“You're doing so well, Sash. I'd be a basket case if it was me. Oh, shit...” She had a sudden realization. “What's the time? We're going to be late picking up the girls. September's at preschool, isn't she?”

Now it was Sasha who looked confused.

“September. You must have taken her in quite late. I waited ages to see if you'd come.”

“Oh, fuck!”

Sasha leaped up as if the sofa had suddenly burst into flames.

“September. She's in the car. I completely forgot. She was asleep when we left, so I carried her into the back of the car.”

Hannah held the door open while Sasha sprinted down the front path, reappearing a minute or so later carrying a very red-faced September.

“Mummy left me,” the little girl said, in the gulping voice of someone who'd been crying a long time.

“I'm so sorry, darling. I'm a naughty mummy, aren't I?”

Sasha had her head buried in her daughter's neck as if she was trying to tunnel into her.

“She's a very naughty mummy,” September told Hannah, gazing directly at her.

Only later on when Hannah was on the way home from the preschool (“Seven minutes late, Lily was getting anxious,” the teacher admonished her) did she start to think how very out-of-character the incident with September had been. Sasha was always so in control. That was her thing. How distraught must she be to forget her own child?

* * *

Later that evening, Hannah almost jumped with shock when she heard the key in the front door while she and Josh were settling down to watch
Question Time
.

“I forgot we had a house guest.”

Seconds later Dan appeared in the doorway carrying bottles of good French wine in each hand.

“I couldn't remember whether you preferred red or white, so I got both. Do I win the prize for being the best visitor or what?”

“Our best visitors always bring champagne and oysters,” said Josh, getting up to fetch glasses from the kitchen.

Hannah, who'd been thinking about going to bed, felt a pang of annoyance. Things had been so emotionally fraught recently, she'd been enjoying relaxing with Josh and forgetting about everything else for a bit. But then she remembered Sasha's gaunt face and September's red-rimmed eyes and felt ashamed. Trying to talk some sense into Dan was the least she could do.

“Have you spoken to Sasha?” she asked, when they were all sitting down around the coffee table, each with a glass of chilled Sancerre in front of them.

Dan frowned.

“I did go over there the day she found out about Sienna, but she wouldn't let me in,” he said, looking up as if seeking brownie points for his efforts.

“And since then I've been so busy, and I kind of thought she might need a bit of cooling-off time.”

“So you haven't bothered to contact her.”

“I'm going to. Of course I am. I was just waiting for the dust to settle before I talk to her about the next step.”

“Which is?”

“Well, me moving out on a more permanent basis.”

Dan said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Hannah felt the air going out of her as if someone had taken a pin and deflated her.

“So you haven't changed your mind, then?”

Dan looked startled.

“Changed my mind? No. If anything, the last few days have made me realize I'm definitely doing the right thing. I feel lighter, like a big weight has been taken off of me. Being married was suffocating, you know?”

Hannah didn't like the way he addressed that last comment to Josh, throwing up his hands like he was hoping for agreement. Something occurred to her then.

“You haven't been seeing Sienna, have you?”

Dan's big blue eyes widened, as if hurt.

“No. I gave you my word. Like I said, the thing with Sienna was completely separate. I'm focusing on my marriage right now, and what's best for Sasha.”

Since when did Dan start talking like a marital self-help book?

“If you really want what's best for her, you'll go back to her. She looks absolutely awful.”

“You've seen her?”

“Yes, she turned up here today.”

“And how was she?”

For a moment, Hannah thought of telling him about the shadows under Sasha's eyes and the look on September's face when she was finally rescued from the car. But something held her back. Incredible to think that less than a week ago Dan would have been the first person she'd have gone to with any concerns about Sasha's well-being, and now she just wasn't sure. It bothered her more than she could admit, this realization that you could go from being a couple, a unit, to two individuals in the same time it used to take her mother to marinate a good steak.