The Broken

by Tamar Cohen

  ‘Did you have a lovely day?’ she whispered into Lily’s soft ear, brushing her lips against the wispy, silk-fine hair that, to her daughter’s heartbreak, refused to grow more than a couple of centimetres a year.

  Lily nodded. ‘Me and ’Tember were angels.’

  Hannah glanced up at Mrs Mackenzie, who was watching them intently. For a moment it looked as if she was going to say something, then she changed her mind.

  ‘I’ll see you and Mummy tomorrow,’ she said.

  Lucie/Eloise, aged eight and a half

  I like school. It is called Archminster and I have three best friends and one of them is called Juliette and she has long hair down to her waist and I am going to have hair just like hers. I am absolutely determined! When I came here, Juliette asked me if I had a nickname and I told her it was Eloise and now everyone calls me Eloise and I am nice and funny and very, very kind and I am not the person who did that Bad Thing. A leopard can change its spots! Mummy will be proud of me and call me Purty Cushion, which is her special name for me. Purty is how she says Pretty, I think, but I don’t know why she calls me a cushion.

  13

  ‘Look! Just look!’

  Dan’s phone was thrust so close to Josh’s face that he could hardly make out the letters looming up from the screen.

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘I’ll read it to you. “Bet you think you are a big stud, lounging round half naked in your shabby-chic shag pad with that slut. Just ’cos there are shutters on the windows doesn’t mean no one can see you.”’

  Dan glared at Josh expectantly, with the air of someone awaiting vindication.

  ‘What am I supposed to say?’

  ‘Don’t you get it? She’s fucking stalking me, Josh. I could have her arrested.’

  Josh shrugged. ‘Or it could be just a lucky guess. I mean, how many people who live in Notting Hill have shutters on their windows? It’s got to be about ninety per cent. I think there might even be a law about it.’

  ‘And the shabby-chic bit?’ Dan wasn’t in the mood for joking.

  Josh held his hands up. ‘Find me a house in that neighbourhood that isn’t done out in shabby chic.’

  Dan shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Why the fuck are you defending her? You know this is bang out of order.’

  ‘I’m not defending her.’

  But in reality, Josh supposed, that was exactly what he was doing. There was an outside chance Sasha could be guessing about Sienna’s apartment, but he had to admit it wasn’t likely. And there was something a little creepy about the idea of her sneaking around outside Sienna’s window spying on them. But then, Dan wasn’t exactly trying to smooth things over between them – cutting off Sasha’s bank cards without warning had been seriously underhand. And even though he’d unfrozen the current account soon after, Sasha swore most of the money that had been in there had already disappeared. Siphoned off into a secret offshore account, Sasha had insisted in her usual hyperbolic way. It had only been weeks since Dan had sat down opposite him in this very same pub, at this very same table, and told him that he was leaving his wife. Now everything had changed. Sasha and Dan were at each other’s throats. Hannah walked around the flat sighing heavily and whenever he asked her what was wrong she gave him that are you a complete idiot? look and said ‘Nothing’ in a very pointed way. She complained about Sasha monopolizing her time, but then she’d agreed to accompany her clubbing next week. When was the last time she went out clubbing? Even Lily seemed subdued. Hannah had told him what Mrs Mackenzie had said, and while she was clearly exaggerating the sinister aspect, Josh couldn’t help agreeing that maybe it would be a good thing for Lily and September to spend some time apart. And overshadowing it all was that horrible thing that had happened at school, which he still couldn’t bear to think about, let alone share with Hannah.

  If only Sasha wasn’t round there all the time they might have a chance of getting back to normal. But he could hardly ban her from coming to see them. Even this regular post-match drink with Dan wasn’t like it used to be. On the surface, everything was normal. They’d sat in their usual seats at the match, surrounded by the same characters they saw week after week. There was the middle-aged couple to their right, the normally softly spoken woman with her pearl earrings and pastel-coloured cashmere cardigan, yelling streams of expletives throughout the game, and the two brothers behind them who never spoke to each other, just watched side by side in companionable silence. Josh’s particular favourite was the old guy who came with his young granddaughter. He’d hear them chatting at half-time about formations and goal point averages. ‘Life doesn’t get much better than this,’ the old man had once beamed at Josh, his arm around his granddaughter, after Arsenal had just snatched a last-minute victory at the tail end of a nail-biting game. Josh remembered it because for once the sun was out, and they weren’t all shivering in their scarves and hats and layers of T-shirts and jumpers (The secret of staying warm is layering, his mother had always told him). And it had struck Josh that he was absolutely right. Life didn’t get much better than that.

  But already those were coming to seem like halcyon days, when everything was simple, straightforward. Now that there was this undercurrent with Dan, this misalignment in the natural order of things, Josh couldn’t seem to find his way back to that easy mateyness he and Dan had enjoyed.

  Dan was still fiddling with his phone, and Josh found himself staring at Dan’s hands with their long, slightly feminine fingers. Could those hands have inflicted damage on his own wife, so much so that she’d had bruises worthy of measuring? It was impossible, of course. And yet, and yet . . . Wasn’t the news full of people saying, ‘He was the last person you’d suspect,’ after yet another father went crazy and strangled his wife, or gassed his kids?

  Dan looked up and caught Josh staring. Suddenly his expression changed, a bright smile playing out across his rugged face. ‘Do you want to see her?’

  Josh felt himself floundering. ‘Who?’

  ‘Sienna, of course. I’ve got a photo of her here on my phone.’

  Dan’s eyes had taken on the rapt fervour you sometimes saw in fundamentalists on the television talking about their faith. Josh felt a disagreeable prickling sensation in the pit of his stomach and realized suddenly that he really, really didn’t want to see a photograph of the famous Sienna. At the same time, he acknowledged that on a completely different level he had a desperate hunger to see what she looked like.

  Maybe she wouldn’t be as gorgeous as Dan had made out. Maybe he’d look at her and think, Really? You left your family for that? And feel relieved to think of what he still had: his intact, safe domestic life.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. Before he’d even finished the sentence, Dan had thrust the phone in front of him, eyes fixed on his face, waiting for his reaction.

  Josh looked down reluctantly and, oh, such a visceral reaction, that blow to the lower abdomen, that punch of jealousy. A lightly tanned, heart-shaped face with a neat, pointy chin, wide-set green eyes with thick dark eyelashes, silky, sun-streaked, honey-coloured hair hooked over one shoulder and hanging loosely down over the front of her white T-shirt. Faded denim shorts revealing coltish brown legs that went on for ever. Bare feet, one rubbing the top of the other endearingly as though she was finding the experience of being photographed something of an ordeal. Smiling shyly up at the camera, the sun reflecting amber in her eyes.

  Beautiful.

  ‘Well?’ Eagerness lit up Dan’s face as he scoured Josh’s expression, looking for clues. ‘What do you think?’

  Josh swallowed, giving himself time to corral his feelings. ‘Yeah, nice enough. Too young for me, though. Reminds me too much of the girls at school.’

  That was a lie. Most of the girls at Josh’s school either had spots and braces and refused to meet his eye, or were hard-faced and confrontational, their hair scraped up into ponytails that pulled the skin of their faces taut over their cheekbones, taki
ng every off-the-cuff comment as a personal attack, always on the lookout for imagined slights.

  He was gratified to notice Dan’s smile dimming a notch.

  ‘She’s twenty-four. Hardly a child.’ Dan snatched his phone back as if to protect the picture from Josh’s critical appraisal and gazed at it again. ‘I gotta tell you, mate, she’s so soft and gentle, but she’s got a steely side to her, too. People think that because of how she looks they can get away with being somehow patronizing, but she won’t take shit from anyone.’

  ‘Steady on, Dan. You’ll be declaring undying love next.’

  Dan stared at him. ‘I do love her. Of course I love her. What’s wrong with that?’

  Josh felt another terrible punch to his stomach. He waited for it to pass. ‘It’s just so quick. You’ve only been apart from Sasha for a few weeks. It’s too soon to go falling in love again.’

  ‘Come on, Josh. You can’t timetable love. It comes along whenever it wants to.’

  Josh’s insides were churning. People like him tried and tried to do the right thing. They honoured their commitments, they stuck with their marriages, even through the tough times. Dan walked out on his wife and child and not only was he unscathed, he was ecstatic. If it was that easy, what was to stop everyone giving up the minute things got a bit difficult?

  Dan, not normally the most intuitive of men, seemed nevertheless to guess something of what was going on in Josh’s head because he said, ‘Don’t get me wrong. It’s not all perfect, I know that. It kills me to think of September missing me and not being able to see me, with only that crazy bitch for comfort.’

  Josh frowned. ‘Steady on.’

  ‘No, I’m serious. I’m not saying Sasha hasn’t got a right to be angry, but sneaking around outside my house, spying on me and freaking out my girlfriend? Listen, can’t you talk to her for me, about letting me have access to September? You must admit it’s wrong, what she’s doing.’

  ‘Yes, but whenever you talk to Sasha, she’s always got some reason why she can’t let you see her.’

  Dan snorted. ‘Yeah, the reason is she’s a vindictive cow.’

  He registered Josh’s disapproval.

  ‘OK, OK, I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . . you have no idea how much it kills me not to know what September had for her tea, or who her friends are at the moment, or what bedtime story she’s reading at night.’

  Josh stared at his friend. Dan had always been so wrapped up in his own career, he’d never been around for the day-to-day domestic stuff. As far as Josh knew, he’d never once picked September up from nursery, and Sasha always used to complain that on the rare occasions when he was ever home in time to read September a story, he’d fall asleep before she did! But Dan seemed really to believe this image of himself as the devoted hands-on father torn apart from the child he’d single-handedly raised. His eyes were full of hurt.

  ‘I’ll talk to her. I don’t think it’ll make that much difference, but I’ll try. And . . .’ Josh paused, knowing Hannah would go mad if he finished what he was about to say. ‘September is coming to spend the afternoon at ours tomorrow while Sasha . . . well, while she does something. Maybe you could drop by again.’

  He was expecting Dan to break into one of his warm smiles. Instead, he looked suddenly shifty, glancing around the pub, not meeting Josh’s eyes. Immediately Josh regretted his generous gesture.

  ‘Oh, that’s really good of you, Josh. I appreciate it, I really do. And I’d give anything to spend some time with September, you know that, only Sienna and I are going to Rome tomorrow for a couple of days.’

  Before Josh could stop it, there burst into his head an image of Dan and the beautiful Sienna, who now had a face and a body and was real, in a rumpled bed in a hotel with French doors thrown wide open to the faraway buzzing of scooters in busy Italian streets. Naked in the middle of the afternoon, with no small child clamouring to be let in, no need to go out and eat in child-friendly places where you could ask for ketchup without being frowned upon, no need to spend the afternoon in garishly lit rooms painted in primary colours where the sound of children screaming bounced off the walls and the only thing to do was eat orange artificially flavoured crisps from the vending machine and keep checking the clock until it was the time you’d said you’d leave, knowing there’d be a scene and hot tears when you tried to call it a day.

  It wasn’t fair.

  ‘Right.’ He didn’t care how huffy he sounded. ‘Never mind, then. Wouldn’t want you to miss out on a shagfest just to see your daughter.’

  Dan looked shocked. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just it’s already booked. Sienna has taken time off.’

  ‘Oh well, then that definitely takes priority over your four-year-old.’

  ‘Why are you being so judgemental all of a sudden?’

  Josh couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t tell Dan about the image that was now seared across his brain of the naked couple in the messed-up sheets. Couldn’t let on how Hannah hadn’t let him go near her in weeks, how dirty it made him feel to even try to initiate something. Couldn’t confess that jealousy was burning a path through his gut.

  He looked at Dan and forced himself to smile. ‘Your round,’ he said.

  14

  ‘Told you this would be fun, didn’t I? Well? Didn’t I?’

  Sasha was standing so close that every time she spoke, Hannah felt a fine spray of spittle on her cheek that she had to refrain from wiping off. Sasha was swaying while she talked, and her hazel eyes were hard and bright and glinted under the overhead lights. At first, Hannah had wondered if Sasha could be on something. That is, something more than the four or five vodka tonics she’d already downed. Then she’d remembered the antidepressants. Weren’t you supposed to avoid alcohol when you were taking those?

  The evening hadn’t started well when Sasha had turned up at the flat, dressed for their night out in a black, skin-tight bodycon dress with soaring heels and more make-up than Hannah had ever seen her wear. Josh had been noticeably taken aback when she arrived. He’d started talking really loudly and fast, which he always did when he was nervous. Normally, Hannah found it endearing, but this evening it just irritated her. ‘No need to shout,’ she’d said. ‘We’re not deaf.’

  Sasha looked incredible. She made Hannah, in jeans and boots and a newish, loose white top with no egg stains down it – which had seemed charmingly boho chic when she’d put it on, standing with her back to the full-length mirror in their bedroom, craning her neck over her shoulder to check how it looked from the back – feel frumpy and middle-aged by comparison. ‘You look nice,’ Josh had told her when she came out of the bedroom, and she’d instantly deflated. Nice? Really?

  Hannah hadn’t been able to stop staring at Sasha. Yes, she was wearing more make-up than usual, but there was something else as well. She seemed luminous.

  ‘Have you done something to your hair?’ she asked, head cocked to the side. ‘Eyebrows?’

  In the end Sasha cracked. ‘Botox,’ she squealed delightedly. ‘I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but isn’t it fab?’

  Hannah felt a sharp pang then, which she’d put down to concern for Sasha and for the heartbreaking insecurity that would make a beautiful thirty-four-year-old woman pay to have bacteria injected into her own face. Only much later would she admit to herself that the concern was tinged with resentment. Not that she’d ever put herself through that kind of invasive cosmetic procedure, but it seemed so unfair that she’d been working ever since she left uni and still couldn’t afford to get her legs waxed. Yet Sasha, who’d earned no money of her own for years, could splash out hundreds on making herself look better without even thinking about it. Hannah felt like Sasha’s frumpier older sister, even though Sasha would turn thirty-five six months before she did. It was not a comfortable feeling. She was going to be left behind, she suddenly realized. She would be the drab, tired-looking woman wearing yesterday’s fashions, while women like Sasha with their fortnightly hairdresser appointments and weekly faci
als would stay just the same.

  Sasha had insisted on a drink before they set off, and the change in her behaviour had been marked. Her voice had become loud and strident, her laugh piercing and false. She had put on the dance playlist Hannah had made for a party the year before, and immediately started undulating suggestively in front of Josh.

  ‘Come on, big guy, let’s see you throw some shapes,’ she said, attempting to haul him to his feet.

  Josh looked so appalled, Hannah couldn’t help laughing. Even his ears were blushing.

  When they eventually called a cab, he didn’t even bother to hide his relief.

  ‘Have fun,’ he said gamely as they left, and she wished suddenly, desperately, that she wasn’t going out at all, but was settling down with him on the sofa with a glass of wine and the Breaking Bad box set. At the very same time, the thought of yet another Saturday night in, watching Josh marking his interminable pile of exercise books, and listening to other people, people with lives, walking past the window on their way out to wherever it was people with lives went on a Saturday, made her want to scream.

  Sasha had been in a bizarre mood in the taxi, flirting with the Somalian cab driver, then nearly causing him to crash by leaning through the gap in the front seats to crank up the volume on the tinny car radio when a song came on that she liked. And ever since they’d arrived at the club, her behaviour had become increasingly erratic. She and Hannah had found themselves a table near the bar, but Sasha couldn’t sit for more than a few minutes before she was up, throwing herself around the dance floor, or just standing next to the table, drumming her fingers and swaying, while her eyes darted around the room looking for available men.

  And it seemed there were plenty of available men.

  Practically from the second they arrived, they’d been attracting male attention. By they, of course, Hannah actually meant Sasha. Flicking back her silky black hair and rubbing one brown foot in her unfeasibly high shoes up the calf of the other brown leg, Sasha was like a man magnet.