The Fallout (6 page)

“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 okay 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. I feel quite 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, 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 bobblehead dogs people put in cars. Her eyes were like two hard, dark marbles, boring into him as she waited impatiently for his response. Or maybe not so much a response as a confirmation.

At least it was preferable to listening to her waxing lyrical about Dan and how wonderful he was. The guy had practically been canonized over the course of the last few days. If Josh ever tried to remind her of the little matter of Dan cheating on her, she dismissed it with hardly a second thought. “A moment of weakness” was how she'd decided to classify it. “He was flattered. She was available. Happens to people all the time. Of course, I'll make him get tested for every STD under the sun before I take him back, but it'd be crazy to throw away a fantastic marriage with all that history, just because of some little slut who couldn't keep her knickers on.”

Josh would squirm with discomfort when she talked like this, glancing toward the doorway to make sure it was free of small figures who might be listening.

A series of loud bleeps announced the arrival of a text message. Josh glanced at his phone, which sat on the coffee table between him and Sasha, aware that her eyes, too, were fixed on it. Both of them knew it was Dan, texting to see if Sasha was still there. This was the pattern they'd fallen into, with Dan resolutely refusing to talk to Sasha until their Dan-imposed “breathing time” was up. He'd already threatened to move out to an undisclosed address if Sasha “accidentally on purpose” happened to be there when he got home.

“We need to give each other this time,” he'd stressed. “We owe it to each other.”

“Well?” Sasha asked, wanting to know about the text.

“He says he's going to be back around ten.”

“Because he thinks that's too late for September to be out during the week. Silly man. He knows she doesn't need a lot of sleep. She's not that sort of child.”

“Yes, but Lily does,” Hannah informed her, much to Josh's relief.

Sasha frowned.

“I do think it might be good for Lily not to be quite so regimented,” she said. “Otherwise how is she ever going to learn to cope with change? She's such a nervous little thing as it is.”

Josh opened his mouth to speak, but Hannah glared at him and instead he counted to ten in his head, waiting for his irritation to subside.

* * *

Only after Sasha had left did Josh give vent to his annoyance.

“Just what was she implying by that ‘nervous little thing' comment?” he asked, when Hannah finally surfaced from getting a completely exhausted Lily to bed.

“Take no notice. She's just overwrought. She's not thinking about what she's saying.”

“Yes, but that's no excuse for...”

The doorbell cut short what he had been about to say.

“I thought Dan had a key?”

“He must have lost it. Or maybe he's just being discreet in case we're making mad passionate love on the living room table.”

“If only!”

An awkward pause.

Hannah went to the door, closely followed by Toby, and Josh listened for Dan's singsong “I'm ho-ome.” He was surprised to hear just Hannah, sounding fraught.

“I don't think it's a good idea,” she was saying. This was followed by an indistinct murmur of voices. Then she said, “Okay, okay, but I still don't think it's a good idea.”

She reappeared in the doorway with a shape slumped over her shoulder. A suspiciously September-shaped shape.

“You've got to be kidding,” groaned Josh.

Hannah raised her eyebrows warningly at him over the top of her charge, who was wrapped in a blanket and clearly pretending to be asleep, with just one slightly raised eyelid giving her away.

“September, love, I'm just going to pop you down on our bed so you can have a nice sleep,” said Hannah.

“Wanna go Lily's room.” The little girl's voice was loud, but her eyes stayed firmly shut.

“No, sweetie. Lily is asleep. You snuggle up in Auntie Hannah and Uncle Josh's bed. There's a good girl.”

“I want my mummy!”

“September, honey...”

“I want my mummy!”

Hannah locked eyes with Josh over September's head and shrugged as best as she could with a recumbent four-year-old on her shoulder, then she turned and walked out of the room. Josh listened to her trying to soothe the fractious child as she made her way along the hallway to their bedroom.

“I know you do, sweetie, but Mummy will be right back, just as soon as she does this important thing she has to do. And in the meantime, you're having a sleepover here with us. Isn't this fun?”

Judging by the muffled protests coming from behind the now closed bedroom door, September clearly didn't agree that this unlooked-for sleepover in any way constituted fun.

Twenty anxious minutes later, the flat finally fell silent. Twenty-one minutes later, there was the sound of a door being stealthily nudged open and then Hannah reappeared.

“Well?”

Josh was conscious he was using his disapproving-schoolteacher voice, but he was too irritated to do anything about it. Just how much of their lives were going to be taken over by Dan and Sasha and their crisis? Of course he wanted to help, they were their best friends, after all, but surely there was a line to be drawn somewhere? Surely he and Hannah were entitled to some semblance of a life of their own?

“Sasha's gone to follow Dan.”

Josh gave a questioning look.

Hannah held up her hands.

“I know, I know. I told her it was a bad idea. But she wouldn't listen. Apparently one of her friends was out for a meal in Soho and called her to say she'd just seen Dan having dinner with a woman.”

“Dan has dinner with lots of women. That's part of his job.”

“I know. I said that. Listen, you don't need to get testy with me!”

Hannah glared at him. But rather than feeling guilty, her defensiveness just added to Josh's sense of grievance. It was all right for her. She was at home all day. She was probably enjoying having all these people around all the time, all this activity, all this
drama.
She ought to try working in a proper job, where you went out all day and looked forward to getting home for a bit of peace and quiet.

“Anyway,” she continued, “this friend had no idea Sasha and Dan were splitting up. If that's what they're doing. She only made a big thing about Dan and this other woman as a joke, apparently, but Sasha came straight here to drop off September and now she's off in hot pursuit.”

“Do you think it's her?
Sienna?
”

“God knows. I'd bloody murder Dan if it was, after all his promises. Sasha says she's sure it isn't but she wants to put her mind at rest. She promises she's just going to look through the window. She's not going to make a scene or anything.”

“Yeah, it's not as if Sasha's the making-a-scene type, after all!”

Hannah made a face.

“She promised me she wasn't going to, anyway. She didn't even seem that bothered, she just said she knew she was being stupid but she wanted to see for herself, then she'd come straight back. She'll probably be here any minute.”

“Yeah, unless she's stabbed him through the heart. You did frisk her for sharp objects, I hope?”

“Look, like you said, Dan works with lots of women and does a lot of business over dinner. Sasha is just overreacting to everything at the moment. I'll bet you anything she comes through the door in the next half hour absolutely mortified.”

“Sasha doesn't do mortified, Hannah. Sasha only does vindicated or ‘Now I'll make this into an amusing story to make myself look cute and quirky.'”

“Why are you so down on her suddenly? Don't you think she's having a hard enough time without her friends turning on her as well?”

Hannah rarely raised her voice, and as Josh gazed at her in surprised reproach, he noticed for the first time how tired she looked. Her blue eyes looked almost colorless against the dark mauve shadows underneath. This situation was taking its toll on her, too.

“I just wish things could go back to how they were before,” he sighed, uncomfortably aware he was sounding a bit like his own four-year-old daughter.

As if on cue, from the hallway came the sound of Lily's panicked voice.

“Mummy! Daddy!”

Glad of the distraction, he strode off into her room. Nudging open the door with its pink gingham letter
L
interwoven with yellow and white daisies, he was thrown off guard by finding September sitting perched on Lily's duvet, gazing at him impassively, while a just-woken Lily, eyes still wild and confused from sleep, cowered at the other end of the bed, rubbing her arm.

“Tember woke me up,” she whined. “She pinched me.”

September continued gazing levelly at him.

“Couldn't sleep,” she said, by way of explanation. “Don't like your bedroom.”

“But you shouldn't have woken Lily up, should you, September? And you shouldn't have pinched her. That wasn't kind, was it?”

“You're not kind,” said September, her voice rising dangerously. “You're mean and I don't like you!”

Her face crumpled in on itself and she started crying.

“What the hell is going on in here?”

Josh had no idea how Sasha could have got in so suddenly. He hadn't been gone for more than a few seconds but here she was, appearing out of nowhere and sweeping past him into Lily's room. She kneeled by the bed so her sobbing child could throw herself into her arms.

“It's all right, darling girl. Mummy's here now.”

For a second or two there was only the sound of September's noisy sobs, punctuated by soft sniffs from Lily. Then, still with her back to him, Sasha said, in a cold, hard voice Josh hadn't heard before, “I'd prefer you not bully my daughter when I'm not here, thank you very much, Josh. Can't you see how fragile she is?” Josh stopped himself just in time before saying something he might regret, remembering only after he'd stalked out of the room that he hadn't said good-night to Lily.

“I've bloody well had enough,” he growled at Hannah when he got back to the living room and saw her sitting at the table. “This has got to stop. Do you know what she just said? She said...”

“I'm sorry. Oh, God, Josh, I'm so sorry.”

Sasha had come up behind him and now flung her arms around his neck, draping herself over his back so he had the uncomfortable sensation of wearing her, like a coat. He felt her chest rising and falling rapidly and his heart sank as he realized she must be crying.

“What happened, Sasha?”

Hannah had gotten up from the chair and was gazing at her friend with a look of such concern that Josh felt immediately ashamed. That in turn made him irritated at having been made to feel bad, so he was relieved when Sasha finally slid away from him and into a heap on the floor.

“He was with
her
.”

The words sounded as if they'd been squeezed out of her.

Hannah gasped.

“No! With Sienna? But he promised us...”

Sasha's narrowed eyes flashed back pinpricks of reflected light.

“He promised you? What about me? What about what he promised me? I'm his fucking wife!”

“Oh, God, I know. Sorry. Sasha. That must have been so awful. Tell me what happened.”

Sasha put her head in her hands.

“It was a nightmare. I drove past where Shelly said she'd seen him, but there were too many people around for me to get a good look in the window, so I parked around the corner. Then I walked over and looked in the window, and there they were. The two of them. Oh, shit. Oh, fucking shit. This is all so fucked up.”

“But how did you know it was her?” Josh felt he ought to at least try to mount a defense of his absent friend. “I mean, it could have been any one of the women Dan works with every day.”

Sasha's head whipped up.

“Yes, it could...except that he was sticking his tongue down her throat.”

Hannah's hand flew to her mouth.

“I don't believe it. Not at the table!”

“Well, maybe not tongues, but they were all over each other. I almost threw up on the spot, I swear to God.”

Sasha had pulled her knees up to her bony chest and was rocking back and forth. All of a sudden, to Josh's great alarm, she started emitting a keening noise.

“Mummy?”

He'd forgotten about September and Lily. There they both were, two little figures standing in the doorway, eyes wide with shock as they stared at the rocking figure on the floor.

Instantly, Hannah was on her feet.

“It's okay, little ones. Mummy's just a little tired, that's all, September. We all sometimes need a good cry when we're tired, don't we? Come on, I'll snuggle you both up together in our bedroom. How about that?”

As she led them away, Josh felt a surge of panic, tinged with resentment. Great. So she got to go off and read stories while he was left to deal with Sasha having a full-fledged meltdown on the living room floor.