The Broken

by Tamar Cohen

  Hannah carried on her way, her hand curled tightly around her mobile phone, the sound of her own blood deafening in her ears.

  15

  ‘No way. Absolutely not.’

  ‘I didn’t say we were doing it, I just said maybe we should think about it.’

  ‘OK. I’ve thought about it, and the answer is no way.’

  Josh frowned, his hands gripping the steering wheel in the way Hannah seemed to find irrationally offensive (‘the ten-to-two position is for learners, Josh,’ she’d once berated him during an argument, ‘not for proper grown-ups’). Had Hannah always been so dogmatic? He tried to remember. But as so often these days, he found it next to impossible to think back to a time when things were uncomplicated and his relationship with Hannah wasn’t refracted through the prism of Dan and Sasha’s separation.

  ‘Look, I don’t like the way Dan has behaved any more than you. But what’s done is done. He’s obviously not going to change his mind about this woman, so either we accept that, or we tell him to piss off altogether.’

  ‘We can accept it without having to become best friends with them.’

  ‘He just asked if he could bring her round for a coffee or if we’d pop round there. Why must you always overreact?’

  They continued in silence, both gazing out fixedly through the windscreen, the weight of their resentment causing the little car to feel like a pressure cooker. One wrong word and the whole thing could explode.

  ‘Look,’ Josh tried again, ‘we’re in a really difficult position here. We’re not only friends of Sasha and Dan, we’re also very fond of September, and we’ve got to think of what’s best for her. Sasha has still only let Dan see her a couple of times, in return for unfreezing the bank card, and even then it was only on the condition that they stayed at their house. I mean, how easy can it be to repair bridges with your daughter when your ex-wife is standing right there rolling her eyes at everything you say? September needs to spend time on her own with her father, especially since, as you’ve said yourself, you’re concerned about how Sasha is behaving towards her.’

  ‘That isn’t what I said.’

  ‘Yes, you did, you said you were worried Sasha might have gone out and left her without a babysitter.’

  ‘I was tired. I wasn’t thinking properly. Of course she wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Yeah, but the fact that it even crossed your mind means there’s something not right. Sasha is not prioritizing September at the moment.’

  Hannah swung her head towards him, mouth open. ‘Prioritizing? This is not some business strategy meeting, Josh. These are our friends’ lives we’re talking about. God, sometimes you sound just like someone off The Apprentice.’

  ‘Failure is not an option.’ Josh meant to lighten the atmosphere by quoting a line from the TV show, but it fell flat, like practically everything he said to his wife at the moment. Of course, it didn’t help that they were on their way to visit his parents, which always made Hannah tense. Not that they were ever anything less than lovely to her. And of course they adored Lily – currently fast asleep in the back with Toby the dachshund’s head cradled on her lap. But he knew Hannah found the neat, quiet suburban house near Leicester oppressive, and was secretly convinced she found his parents, with their fixed habits and their felt-pen-ticked copy of the Radio Times, depressingly dull.

  Hannah sighed loudly, setting Josh’s teeth on edge.

  ‘OK,’ she said, her tone more conciliatory. ‘I know Sasha has been distracted recently. Who wouldn’t be? But I take your point about September needing a bit of continuity and stability. She needs to see her father. Which doesn’t mean to say she needs to meet his new girlfriend as well. But I suppose we will have to meet her at some stage, if he’s really serious about her.’

  Josh felt a curious mixture of vindication and fear. He was glad that she’d seen things his way (for once!). But at the same time, the thought that they might actually get to meet the woman he’d seen in the photo on Dan’s phone, with her carelessly tousled hair and her endless brown legs, made him feel strangely anxious.

  At his parents’ house, everything was much the same as it had been the last time they’d visited, and the time before that. The hedge at the front was kept trimmed to the same height at all times, its corners as sharp as if they’d been drawn with a ruler; the beige furnishings never altered. There was nothing to mark the passage of time: no new ornaments, because his mother couldn’t stand clutter; no birthday cards stacked up on the mantelpiece; no post sitting on the perfectly clear kitchen worktop; no postcards tucked under the mirror. Instead there were three silver-framed photographs in the living room – his parents on their wedding day, Josh’s own graduation photograph, and a picture of Lily as a baby – each displayed on the deep windowsill at exactly the same angle, so as to be perfectly parallel to its companions.

  ‘You’ll be hungry,’ said his mother. And though that was just her way when she was tense, to phrase a question as if it was a statement of fact, in the way German and Dutch people sometimes do when speaking English, Josh knew it would wind Hannah up. ‘I wish she’d ask me how I feel, instead of telling me,’ she’d complained to him in the past.

  And once they were installed in the semi-detached house he’d grown up in, with its neatly shelved box-room and its pink-tiled bathroom and all its unspoken rules – dinner at six-thirty; a glass of wine with dinner, but rarely more and never taken with you to the living room or, God forbid, upstairs; no television before seven o’clock – it was as if he’d never left it. The smell of home – Flash cleaner underlaid with stale, unstirred air. The memory of interminable Sunday afternoons spent gazing at the road through the pristine net curtains, wondering when life would begin. Sandwich suppers before bed, card games on the dining-room table, long hours spent lying on his bed listening to Radio One and dreaming of a different kind of future.

  ‘Is Lily OK?’ asked his mother that first evening, as they sat down in the immaculate living room with its cream-coloured sofa stuffed so tightly it was like sitting on a bus seat.

  ‘Of course.’ Hannah gave a tight-lipped smile. ‘She’s absolutely fine, Judy. Why do you ask?’

  Josh was always surprised when he heard his mother’s name used. Growing up, she’d always been ‘love’ (his dad) or ‘Mum’ (him), or ‘Mrs Hetherington’ (callers on the phone) and they’d so rarely had friends round, he must have been at least ten before it occurred to him that she even had a first name.

  ‘Oh, nothing. It’s just she seems a little quieter than usual.’

  ‘She’s just a bit shy until she gets used to people, that’s all.’

  ‘Shy! She’s never been shy around us, has she, love?’ Josh’s mum turned to his father for back-up.

  ‘No, never,’ came the dutiful reply.

  ‘See, dear? She’s normally a little chatterbox the minute she gets here. We can’t shut her up, can we, love? It’s Grandma this and Grandpa that. That’s why I thought something must be up.’

  Hannah’s little patch of eczema was flaring up again. Josh watched the angry red rash as if it were something alive that might move at any second.

  ‘Lily was just tired, Mum. It’s a long journey when you’re only four.’

  ‘Course it is, love. Wish it wasn’t sometimes.’

  Her words hung in the stuffy living-room air, their subtext obvious. Josh felt Hannah stiffen on the sofa beside him.

  ‘And how are those friends of yours, the ones with the child with that strange name. November, was it?’

  ‘September, actually,’ Hannah said. ‘And when you think about it, it’s no stranger than calling a child June or May, which I’m sure you’d consider perfectly normal.’

  Josh felt a tinge of impatience. Why did Hannah have to be so contrary? She’d often expressed doubts about September’s name in private, worrying that it was a lot to saddle a small child with. Yet here she was defending it, just because his mother had dared to criticize.

  ‘Sasha an
d Dan? They’re not doing too well actually, Mum. They’re splitting up.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  Josh’s mum had on her pained expression. Josh knew that if she started on the People don’t work hard enough at marriage speech, Hannah was liable to explode. Luckily she kept quiet.

  ‘Mind you, I did think she was a little bit . . . what’s the expression? . . . high-maintenance. He was very charming though, and the little girl was very . . . lively.’

  His parents had met Dan and Sasha the last time they made the trip down to London, which was mercifully, as far as Hannah was concerned, a rare occurrence. Josh’s dad hated leaving the house unattended, convinced it became a Mecca for thieves for miles around as soon as they’d driven off. And his mum claimed the pollution in London made her allergies worse. ‘I don’t know how you breathe here,’ she said. Sasha had been hungover and irritable, unwilling to be drawn out by his mother’s nervous chatter. Dan, to make up for it, had gone straight into charm offensive, questioning Josh’s father about the journey and the route they’d taken, and listening to his mother hold forth about the parlous state of the NHS and how they were all paying the price for decades of unchecked immigration.

  ‘It’s always sad though, isn’t it, when marriages don’t work out?’ his mother said now. ‘It’s so hard on the children.’

  Was he imagining things, or did Hannah just glance sideways at him? He felt a cold hand suddenly grip his insides and squeeze tightly. That was the problem when your friends split up, you started seeing divorce and separation everywhere you looked.

  As they settled down to watch Masterchef on catch-up, Hannah’s ringtone sounded, a quirky birdsong alert she had uploaded. Instantly Josh’s father shot out of his seat.

  ‘What the . . .!’

  ‘Relax, Dad, it’s just a mobile.’

  Josh was constantly amazed at his parents’ wilful ignorance where technology was concerned. They seemed so determined to resist change, so content to confine their world to this house. He found himself glancing again at Hannah as she left the room to answer her phone, wondering whether she ever looked at his father and secretly despaired that this was what was in store for her – waking up one day to find herself married to a man who held strong views on garden trellising.

  ‘Hannah seems a bit stressed,’ his mother remarked as soon as she was out of earshot, tucking her feet underneath her as she had since she was a coy young newlywed. ‘Is she OK, love?’

  ‘She’s taking it quite hard, I think, this split,’ Josh replied, feeling disloyal as he always did when he discussed his wife with his parents. ‘Sasha’s one of her best friends and she’s been very needy recently. It’s not easy to be around someone who is falling apart.’

  His mother, who regarded psychological illness as something of a lifestyle choice, frowned. ‘I’m sure we’d all like to fall apart sometimes,’ she said briskly. ‘But you can’t afford to be indulgent like that, not when you’ve a young child to look after.’

  Josh made a face. ‘You’re all heart, Mum,’ he smiled. Inside though, he couldn’t help feeling his mother had a point. It would be easy for him to lose it, with that awful business going on at school, but you just had to get through it. Instantly he wished he hadn’t thought about school. He closed his eyes as a wave of nausea swept over him.

  Toby waddled in from the kitchen on his unfeasibly short legs and Josh’s mother sighed. These days, after numerous heated discussions, she forbore from saying anything about the dog, but her antipathy towards having a four-legged creature shedding hair in her house was so tangible it was like an extra person in the room. The first time they’d brought Toby with them, his mother had followed the dog around the house with a hand-held vacuum cleaner. ‘I’m afraid I just don’t see the point of pets,’ she’d said, leading Hannah to hiss, when they were alone, that never mind women being from Venus and men from Mars, it was dog people and non-dog people that really split the population.

  There was silence then in the square, low-ceilinged living room – not awkward, but familiar, the calm hush of Josh’s childhood, and for a wild moment he thought he might open up to his parents about what had been happening at school – the unthinkable thing he’d been accused of, and the way he felt guilty even though he knew he hadn’t done anything. The words sat on the end of his tongue like boiled sweets, but he just couldn’t find a way to let them out.

  ‘I’ll just go and see what Hannah’s up to,’ he said finally, heading off to the kitchen. Through the window, next to the small white table on which were laid the placemats his father had cut out of the remnants of beige lino from when they had the floor done, he could just about make out the outline of Hannah striding about in the dark back garden. He wondered if she was cold. The autumn nights had started to carry a definite chill. There would soon be frost on the ground. Then he reflected that this was precisely the sort of thing his father would worry about, and this made him feel anxious again. Whoever she was on the phone to, Hannah seemed to be having an animated conversation. Josh couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had had one of those – apart from when they were snapping at each other. He felt a twinge of jealousy towards the unidentified caller.

  When she finally came in, he was still waiting for her in the kitchen.

  ‘Sasha,’ she said, holding up the phone and shaking her head.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘She’s in a right state. She says things have gone missing from the house. That weird little limestone statue they had on the windowsill, a painting from the bedroom, a couple of rings that Dan’s mother gave her.’

  ‘So they’ve been robbed?’

  ‘Well, no. Or rather, yes, but . . . Well, she thinks Dan is responsible.’

  Josh stared at her. ‘Dan? But he wouldn’t . . .’

  Or would he? It was still technically Dan’s house. He was still paying for it. His stuff was still all over the place. Presumably he still had keys. Why shouldn’t he let himself in while the place was empty and help himself to a few things?

  ‘Anyway, could you really blame him?’ he asked out loud.

  Now it was Hannah’s turn to stare. ‘You’re joking, right? Dan left Sasha and September. He chose to go. No one forced him. He should have thought about money before he walked out on his family. And to sneak into the house while Sasha was out, stealing stuff . . . It’s just creepy.’

  ‘Come on. It’s hardly stealing if it was his in the first place.’

  ‘Josh! It was a complete invasion of her privacy. Surely you’re not trying to defend him? Sasha is in pieces. She says she doesn’t feel safe in the house any more, thinking he could just let himself in at any time. She’s had all the locks changed – and that wasn’t cheap, let me tell you – but she still says she feels violated.’

  ‘Is she going to report it to the police?’

  ‘Too right. Apparently her lawyer said it would be great for her case because—’ Hannah stopped short. ‘I shouldn’t tell you. It’ll get straight back to Dan.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘No. Forget it. I’m not saying anything more.’

  A sense of injustice flared within him. Just where did Hannah’s loyalties lie these days? It was supposed to be the two of them who were the team, who didn’t have secrets from each other, yet increasingly he found himself locked out from what was going on in her head. The other night when she’d come home from that club with Sasha, he’d got the definite sense that something had happened, something bad, but she hadn’t wanted to talk about it and had fobbed off his enquiries with vague answers. Anyway, he soon stopped quizzing her when she made it obvious that she was in the mood for sex for the first time in months. He’d been so surprised, so pathetically grateful, he hadn’t attempted to find out what lay behind this sudden and, it turned out, short-lived change of heart, and after that the moment had passed. And now she wouldn’t even talk to him about this legal stuff.

  ‘Right, if you’re going to hold out on me, I
’m going to ring Dan right now to find out what’s going on.’

  Hannah glared at him, calling his bluff. ‘Fine. Call him. Just don’t mention lawyers.’

  He had expected her to back down and open up about what Sasha had told her, so they could discuss things between them the way they used to, but now he was left in the position of having to follow through and put in a call to Dan, right there and then, which he had no inclination at all to do.

  ‘Mate! How you doing?’

  Shit. He hadn’t imagined Dan would pick up, not on a Friday evening. Oughtn’t he to be lying in bed drinking champagne with his hot new girlfriend? Wasn’t that the whole point of having left his wife and child?

  ‘Fine. Listen, I’m at my parents’ and Hannah just got a call from Sasha to say someone’s been in the house and taken stuff. I know it’s your house and everything, but it’s not clever to—’

  ‘What? They’ve been robbed? Why didn’t she tell me? Are they both OK?’

  Josh was wrong-footed. Dan sounded genuinely concerned. Either he was doing some very convincing acting, or he truly didn’t know anything about it.

  ‘Yeah, they’re fine. I don’t think much went missing – a bit of art, some jewellery. It’s just that – well, she thinks it was you.’

  Dan went silent.

  ‘She thinks you let yourself into the house when she was out and nicked a load of stuff.’

  Dan’s exclamation was so loud Hannah looked up, eyebrows raised, from the kitchen table, where she’d been digging grooves with a fingernail in one of the lino placemats.