The Broken

by Tamar Cohen

  ‘What if Sasha comes back here with Hannah?’

  ‘Good. That’s absolutely fine with me. I’ve got a couple of questions I’d like to put to my ex-wife.’

  ‘Ex? Last time I checked, you’re married until you’re divorced.’

  ‘Not married. Separated. Sasha and I are separated.’

  Josh felt another jolt of unease at how quickly it was possible to pass from couple to single, from lover to enemy.

  When Hannah walked in with Lily an hour and a half later, Josh couldn’t help feeling relieved at the cool reception she gave Dan.

  ‘Hi, Dan. Thought it was your car outside.’

  ‘Oh, you noticed it, did you? Did you also notice the fucking great scratch all around it, courtesy of my darling ex-wife?’

  Hannah gave him a look of exasperated disbelief. Josh noticed she seemed strained. There was that little patch of eczema again, up near her hairline, the skin pink and raised with tiny flakes like grains of sand.

  ‘Oh, really. And you know that for a fact, do you? You know it was Sasha who crept out in the middle of the night, leaving her four-year-old daughter behind, and somehow tracked down your car and risked being arrested in order to scratch it with her keys? You know it was her, not some mindless vandal? Where was it, anyway?’

  ‘What does it matter where it was?’

  ‘It matters because how would she have known where to find your sodding car?’

  ‘He was at Sienna’s.’

  Josh couldn’t help himself. But as soon as he’d spoken he wished he hadn’t. He sounded so eager – as if he couldn’t wait to dob in his mate. He saw Dan shaking his head silently and felt a stab of shame.

  ‘Oh, Dan. You can’t seriously be staying with that woman?’

  Dan looked as if he was about to protest.

  ‘I know how it must look to you, Hannah,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Do you? I don’t think so. I think if you had the first idea how shitty this looks to me, you’d never have done it in the first place.’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice. I had nowhere to go after you threw me out, and I just wanted to be with someone who doesn’t treat me like the devil incarnate just because I’m finally being honest for the first time in years.’

  ‘Oh I see, so now it’s us who drove you to it, is that it?’

  The patch of dry skin on Hannah’s face looked red and angry now against her pale forehead, clashing with the burgundy sweatshirt she was wearing. The sweatshirt was an old one of Josh’s, faded and shapeless, and he secretly wished she wouldn’t wear it. She had such a beautiful body, he couldn’t understand her need to cover it up all the time. Not that he’d say as much to her. He’d tried that at the start of their relationship but she’d become defensive, sure he was either being controlling or trying to flatter her, so he’d given up.

  ‘I’m not saying that, Hannah.’

  Josh turned his attention sharply to Dan. Surely there wasn’t a catch in his voice just now? The prospect of Dan being overcome with emotion was vaguely horrifying.

  ‘I’m just trying to explain things to you.’ His voice was definitely wobbling. ‘I know what I’m doing seems really brutal, and you have no idea how much I hate hurting my family. But I was dying in that relationship. That’s how it felt. Sasha has such fixed ideas about how she thinks a couple should be, and what image of us she wanted to present to the world. Sienna allows me to be me. Do you know how amazing that feels after ten years of trying to fit into someone else’s picture of me?’

  Josh felt strangely embarrassed. Dan and he didn’t talk about this kind of stuff. That was part of the reason Josh felt so comfortable with him. He’d heard him open up to other people about emotional stuff at the dreg-end of a dinner party. How a cousin he was really close to had dropped dead at a football match when they were teenagers, something about an irregular heartbeat, and how ever since then he’d felt a spiritual connection, as if part of his cousin was always with him. Freaky stuff like that. But as if by unspoken agreement, when they were on their own they never strayed into emotional territory.

  If Hannah was moved by Dan’s display of vulnerability, she wasn’t showing it.

  ‘Look, no one disputes your right to leave if you’re unhappy. But not like this – dumping your wife for a model ten years younger. It’s so tacky, so demeaning.’

  ‘I didn’t dump her for Sienna. Sienna might have been the catalyst, but I’d been looking for a way out for years. Sasha just wasn’t listening to me. Nothing I said got through to her.’

  ‘Is that why you hit her?’

  There was a pause.

  Josh had heard the expression the colour drained from his face, but this was the first time he’d ever seen it happen. Dan’s head whipped backwards as if he’d been struck and he stared at Hannah, wide-eyed. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Hang on, is that what she’s saying? The crazy bitch is saying I hit her? You have got to be kidding me.’

  Hannah was the first to drop her gaze, looking down at the fingers of her right hand, which were worrying at the skin around her thumb. Josh could tell she was regretting bringing the subject up. A bit late for regrets now!

  ‘She says it’s in her medical notes.’

  Dan was on his feet now, pacing around with both hands clasped over his head. ‘This has got to be a joke. Please tell me you’re joking.’

  Hannah glanced at Josh.

  ‘She is crazier than I thought. Oh, fuck. Why would she say something like that? You don’t believe her, right? You don’t think I would actually do that, do you?’ Dan’s eyes flicked from Hannah to Josh and then back again, under the cradle of his clasped hands.

  ‘Course we don’t think you’d do that. We’re your friends.’

  Josh felt compelled to jump in with his support, to stave off whatever scene Dan was heading towards. Anyway, it was the truth. He didn’t think Dan would do that.

  ‘Jesus!’ Dan dropped back heavily on to the sofa, his face grey and suddenly saggy, like someone decades older. ‘When did it come to this? We loved each other. We had a beautiful little girl together, and now she’s claiming I’m a wife-beater? How does that happen?’

  ‘It was just something she said on the spur of the moment when she was really angry and really hurt,’ said Josh. ‘She probably doesn’t even remember saying it now.’

  ‘I hope so. I really hope so. It’s all so fucked up.’

  Dan’s voice cracked, and Josh shut his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch the single tear trickling down his friend’s face.

  Opening his eyes just a fraction, he saw Hannah, pinkly overheated now in the thick sweatshirt she still hadn’t taken off, dropping down next to Dan, all the fight now gone, and resting a hand on his leg.

  ‘You’re right there, Dan. Totally fucked up.’

  Lucie, aged eight

  I am going away to school. Daddy says I must be brave and not mind and Mummy just needs a rest, but I know it’s really because of the bad thing I did. Sometimes I talk to myself in French and say really bad words. I know they’re really bad because one time when Mummy was well and not resting I said them to her and she was shocked and she said a dirty mouth is a dirty mind. But she didn’t go all cold and stare at me and make her eyes like little daggers to stab me with, so I didn’t really mind. I’m scared of going to school, but sometimes I’m scared of Mummy, too. I hope I will have some friends there and we can have midnight feasts under the covers and maybe it will be like a holiday camp, Daddy says.

  10

  ‘You can’t keep doing this.’

  ‘Doing what? I’m not doing anything, Hannah.’

  ‘You know what I mean. You have to let Dan see September. Whatever you think of him, she needs her daddy.’

  ‘I’m not stopping him seeing her. It’s not my fault things keep getting in the way.’

  Sasha took a swig from her plastic cup of vending-machine coffee, spilling some on
to the Formica table top as she replaced it. The sludge-brown liquid pooled on the white surface, which was already littered with empty cups and juice cartons, their straws sucked virtually flat, the detritus of ninety minutes in the hell that was the soft-play area at the local leisure centre. To their left, behind a curtain of netting, throngs of small children frolicked in a sea of brightly coloured balls, or clambered up netting or crawled on hands and knees through giant plastic pipes. Everywhere you looked there were children, hyped up on E-numbers from the vending machine, crying in corners or hitting each other over the head or pushing each other down slides. There were children shrieking with laughter or shouting to each other or to their parents, insisting they witness some death-defying feat. The noise level in the huge room was almost unbearable. Shell-shocked parents and dead-eyed au pairs sat at tables that were bolted to the floor, or else stood by the netting, dutifully calling out encouragement to their less adventurous charges. It was Hannah’s third visit in ten days and she felt as if the place was slowly sucking the soul out of her. She’d only come because Sasha had begged her. Now they were here, she found herself growing more and more frustrated with her friend.

  ‘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 s
he 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.