by Tamar Cohen
‘We’ll make it work. I’ll look for another job if you want, with more money. Come on, Hannah. We never wanted Lily to be an only child, and isn’t it better to do this now, while they can still play together and enjoy each other? Can you imagine how excited Lily is going to be?’
Hannah nodded slowly. Lily had been begging them for a little brother or sister practically from as soon as she learned to talk. She and September were always pretending to be sisters, desperate for entry into what they fondly imagined to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day sleepover-and-midnight-feast club. ‘We’re like you and Auntie Gemma,’ Lily would tell Hannah happily as she and September were tucked up into her single bed.
‘I just can’t help feeling it’s the wrong time though,’ Hannah said. ‘Not just the money, but also this thing with Sasha and Dan, which – thanks to you – has just got a lot worse!’
Josh sighed. They’d been through all this. He’d acknowledged he shouldn’t have told Dan about the happy pills. He’d tacked it on the end of an email when he’d been feeling particularly fed up with Sasha. He hadn’t thought it through. He didn’t know how many times he could say sorry.
‘We’ve become way too caught up in their shit, and it’s not been healthy,’ he said. ‘This is something that’s just about us – about our little family. It’ll help us get a little bit of distance, re-prioritize.’
Hannah nodded again, but still she didn’t seem convinced, and later that night when he snuggled up to her in bed and laid the flat of his hand on her gently rounded belly, he could have sworn that, just for a second, she flinched.
‘It’s the last fucking straw. I’m not kidding, Josh. This is it. I’m finished with being Mr Nice Guy.’
Dan’s face was so disfigured by his outrage that, for the first time, Josh wondered whether his friend might actually be quite ugly. They were, once more, at the odious gym café, but Dan was a long way from his normal relaxed self. His shoulder-length hair looked unwashed and slightly greasy in the bright downlighters, and the shadows under his eyes were the colour of red onion.
‘It’s got to be crossed wires, Dan. Sasha wouldn’t do that to September deliberately.’
‘Know what? I’m beginning to realize there’s nothing Sasha wouldn’t do. She told me seven o’clock. I wrote it down. I’ve been looking forward to it all week.’
‘Well, maybe she got her times mixed up.’
‘She did it on purpose, Josh. She deliberately got there an hour early, just to make me look bad, and then left before I arrived. How do you think it feels getting a voicemail from your daughter, crying hysterically because she thinks you stood her up? I was in the car, on my way to meet them. At the time we’d agreed.’
‘Didn’t you try to go round to sort it out?’
‘Course I did. Sasha refused to come to the door. I completely lost it, shouting through the letterbox. I think I even threatened to kill her. Then she sent me a text saying I’d upset our daughter enough for one day, and if I didn’t go away she’d call the police and tell them what I’d said.’
Indignation caused Dan’s voice to rise until he was almost shouting, and the woman sitting on the table behind him turned around to frown.
Josh felt his skin prickling with irritation. He’d only agreed to meet Dan here because he couldn’t wait to share his news, and now Dan had hijacked the whole thing with yet more vitriol about Sasha.
‘Well, like I said, it’s the last straw. I’ve already called my lawyers about this, and they’re going to take her to the fucking cleaners.’
‘Lawyers? What lawyers?’
Josh was sure he hadn’t heard Dan mention lawyers before. In fact, last thing he knew, Dan was still hoping Sasha would change her mind about mediation and there wouldn’t be any need for lawyers. Hadn’t he talked about the most amicable divorce in history?
‘Piers Butler. Sienna put me on to him. He’s a fucking Rottweiler.’
‘But do you really think—’
‘Look, I’ve tried to play fair, but now she’s started using September as a pawn, fairness has gone out of the window. I’ve got to do what’s best for my daughter.’
Dan had a glass of something green in front of him that looked like the stuff that came out of Toby’s mouth when he’d eaten too much grass. Josh took a sip of his coffee and tried not to look at it.
‘Anyway,’ Dan went on after a short silence, ‘that’s enough about me. What did you want to talk about? Your text said you had news.’
Josh hesitated.
‘Hannah’s pregnant,’ he said. ‘We’re having another baby!’
Dan’s mouth froze, his lips ringed with green sludge. Yes, thought Josh jubilantly. Gotcha. All that gut-twisting speculation about Dan’s sex life with Sienna, the feelings of inferiority. Well, now he had something better. A family. Stability.
Josh watched as the news sank in and a smile slowly spread over the other man’s face, until it looked as if it would burst clean off his cheeks.
‘That’s fantastic. So pleased for you both.’
Still that smile, stretching his skin clingfilm tight. No, thought Josh, before he’d even recognized what the smile meant. Don’t let him say it.
‘I’ve got to tell you something.’
No, no, no, no, no.
‘We weren’t going to say anything, but I can’t keep it secret now.’
No, no, no, no, no.
‘Sienna’s pregnant too! Isn’t that the weirdest thing? We’re going to be new dads together!’
‘Yeah, that is weird. But isn’t it a bit soon?’ Josh knew he should try to sound more enthusiastic, but he could hardly speak.
Dan was nodding, even before Josh had finished his question. ‘We didn’t plan it. It’s a total fluke. Sienna was on the pill, but she was doing these all-night shoots and someone gave her this stuff – you can only get it on prescription in the States, apparently – that makes you stay awake, and she took it for a few days. And only after she got pregnant did she find out it totally reacts with the pill. She’s going to make the most fantastic mum. I can’t wait. Just think, Josh, our babies can grow up together just like September and Lily.’
Josh struggled to find something to say. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh?’
Dan suddenly looked serious. ‘Listen, mate. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that I don’t want Sasha finding out. I’ll tell her and September when the time’s right. But now you can see how important it is that I push the divorce through as soon as possible, and sort out money and custody and all that.’
‘And you really intend to take the house and September? Don’t you know what that’ll do to Sasha?’
‘Just in the short term, until everything gets sorted and Sasha gets her head together. Of course I’m going to make sure she’s well looked after in the long term, but for now September needs stability, and it’ll be good for us all to get used to living together as a family, especially now there’s a baby on the way.’
Josh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. What kind of rock had Dan been living under that he really believed he could just slot Sienna into Sasha’s place without messing up his daughter for life?
‘Look.’ Dan leaned across the table to put a hand on Josh’s arm. Josh froze, muscles tensed, feeling his skin itch where Dan touched it. ‘I know Sasha is a good mum, or at least she has been up until now. But she’s not herself, and frankly I’m afraid of what she might do. Of course I feel guilty as fuck about what’s happened to her, but I need to look after my daughter. That has to be my priority.’
Dan was saying all this as though if he could just explain things properly, Josh would agree that he was right, that everything he was saying was reasonable. When Josh didn’t reply, he sat back, nodding to himself, clearly taking the silence as tacit endorsement.
‘You know,’ he said after a while, ‘I still can’t get over this joint pregnancy. Sometimes the world is in-fucking-sane.’
Josh stared long and hard at the disgusting green mulc
h in Dan’s glass.
In-fucking-sane.
Hannah had agreed to wait until Josh got home before they broke the news to Lily about the baby. They both knew it was still early days, but Hannah had sailed through the first pregnancy and Lily could really do with a lift. She’d seemed so down recently. All day at school, he’d been thinking about the look on Lily’s face when they told her and having to stifle a smile, but by the time he came through the door his pleasure had dissipated, leaving only a lingering, stale taste.
Trust Dan to ruin it. Did he have to compete on everything?
When he walked into the living room, Lily hurled herself at his legs.
‘Daddy! I made an angel in school and Mrs ’Kenzie said it was the best angel and can we get a puppy ’cos I think Toby is sad because he has nobody to play with?’
Hannah, sitting at the table with one of Lily’s reading books open in front of her, shrugged. She looked tired, Josh thought. Her lovely hair was scraped back and knotted on the top of her head with a rubber band, giving her face a vulnerable, exposed look. Her shoulders slumped as if weights were resting on them. If she’d just wear something other than that old black jumper all the time, she might not look so peaky.
‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ she said, in a voice that suggested she wasn’t fine at all. ‘You?’
‘Good. Well, I was until I stopped off for a coffee with a certain person at a certain gym not far from here.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘And?’
He sighed. ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’
Hannah had made pasta with tomato sauce again. Josh tried not to mind. It wasn’t as if Lily was the most adventurous eater in the world. They were both constrained in what they cooked by her conservative palate. But it would be so nice to have something different – just for a change.
Once the food had been served up and they were sitting down, Hannah took a deep breath. ‘Lily, Daddy and I have something very important to talk to you about.’
Lily’s round blue eyes flicked between the two of them and something jolted painfully in Josh when he recognized the fear in them.
‘I don’t want Daddy to move away,’ she said, her bottom lip trembling. ‘I don’t want you to be ’vorced like ’Tember’s mummy and daddy.’
‘Oh, darling,’ Hannah got up and threw her arms around their daughter. ‘Daddy and I aren’t getting divorced, I promise you. This is nice news. Exciting news.’
She glanced at Josh over the top of Lily’s head, and he nodded encouragingly before getting up and coming round to kneel in front of Lily’s chair.
‘What do you want most in the world, Lily?’
She thought carefully, her blue eyes cloudy with the effort of it.
‘A Baby Born?’ she said hopefully, naming a doll Hannah had always refused to buy.
‘No,’ Hannah smiled. ‘Much better than a Baby Born.’
Lily looked at her wonderingly. ‘It’s not a puppy though, is it?’ she said, every word sending the message Please let it be a puppy.
Hannah shook her head. ‘Darling girl, you’re going to have a little brother or a sister.’
Lily’s eyes seemed to grow bigger, like a cartoon character’s. Josh felt a dissolving somewhere at the heart of him as he watched the news sink in, the smile spreading like sunlight across his daughter’s face. He felt a weight lift off him and was hit by a sudden conviction that things would turn out all right.
But first he had to tell Hannah about the conversation with Dan.
‘You are joking. Tell me you’re joking.’
They’d only just managed to get Lily to bed after a long, protracted bedtime where she’d made them promise again and again that she could help choose the baby’s name and when it was old enough it could sleep in her bed. Now Hannah, who a minute ago had looked like she was asleep on her feet, was sitting bolt upright on the end of the sofa, staring at him.
‘I know. Crazy, isn’t it? I don’t think he meant to tell me, he just blurted it out when I told him our news.’
‘Which I wish you hadn’t. I haven’t even told Sasha yet. Couldn’t think of how to broach it. Shit, Josh. I don’t believe it. What’s Sienna doing getting pregnant by a married man who’s old enough to be her father?’
‘Oh, come on. That’s a bit much. And they didn’t intend to. You see, Sienna was taking these pills and—’
‘What a bastard! What an utter bastard! This is going to destroy Sasha.’
‘Yes, well, you can’t tell her. You must promise, OK?’
Hannah said nothing, just continued gazing at Josh without seeing him, shaking her head softly from side to side.
‘Hans? We have to stay out of this now. We’ve let ourselves get far too drawn into Dan and Sasha’s stuff,’ he said. ‘This is where we have to lay down a bit of distance. You’ve got to start focusing on yourself now. Surely there are other friends who can rally round to give Sasha some support. Other mums at school?’
Hannah slowly shook her head. ‘You know what Sasha’s like. She always said she wasn’t a woman’s woman and she’s right. The other mums don’t really get her. And she doesn’t seem to have many other friends. I think the people they hung out with tended mostly to be people who knew Dan.’
‘You’re going to have to pull back, Hannah. It’s not healthy. For you, I mean. And I wouldn’t mind having a break from Dan as well. How about we go up to see my parents again next weekend and break the news? They’ll be made up.’
‘Your parents? We’ve only just been up there. How about we go and see my family for a change. It’s been ages since I visited Mum.’
Josh swallowed. ‘Do you really think you’re up to it?’
‘Course I’m up to it. She’s my mum.’
‘OK, whatever you like.’
Later, Josh lay next to Hannah in the dark, listening to the sounds of her sleeping, the little snuffling noises she made just before she changed position that never failed to move him. He tried to think himself back to how he’d felt earlier, when he’d been so sure of the inviolability of their little unit, to that sense of well-being he’d experienced for the first time in weeks. But it eluded him, and in the end he fell asleep thinking of the forthcoming visit to Hannah’s mother and wishing there was something, anything, he could do to stop it happening.
20
‘I came as quickly as I could. Where is she? How is she?’
Hannah was so out of breath the words tore from her in great painful bursts. She’d run all the way to the school, cursing herself the whole way for allowing herself to get so out of condition. She would start jogging. Everyone was doing it these days.
‘Please don’t worry yourself, Mrs Hetherington, Lily’s fine now, playing in the sandpit, happy as a . . . well, a sandboy!’
‘But you said she was hurt.’
Mrs Mackenzie breathed in heavily as if weighing up her words. Her eyes seemed to be drawn to Hannah’s clothes and, following the direction of her gaze, Hannah was mortified to see she’d come out in what she’d been wearing when she got the call – namely her nightdress, night T-shirt really, over an old pair of jeans, with one of Josh’s fleece-lined hoodies pulled over the top. She hastily pulled the bottom edges of the hoodie together and zipped it up.
‘There’s been an incident.’
‘What kind of incident? What’s happened?’
‘It’s nothing to get concerned about. It involved Lily and September. September . . . well, perhaps you’d better see for yourself.’
Hannah’s heart was hammering under her T-shirt as they made their way into the play corner of the nursery. There she was. How little she looked, standing there on her own, concentrating on pouring sand from a small bucket to a larger one, the tip of her pink tongue protruding from between her lips.
‘Liliput? Darling?’
‘Mummy!’
Lily ran to Hannah and flung her arms around her, burying her face in her mother’s dirty jeans.
‘Li
l? Are you all right? Let’s look at you.’
Hannah crouched down in front of her daughter, taking in her swollen red face and pink-tinged eyes.
Mrs Mackenzie bent down too. ‘Lily,’ she said gently. ‘Do you want to show Mummy your poorly arm?’
Lily looked stricken, but she nodded very deeply and very solemnly.
Mrs Mackenzie took hold of Lily’s pink cardigan and carefully slid the left sleeve off. Underneath she was wearing her favourite T-shirt with the yellow and orange flowers. Mrs Mackenzie turned Lily away from Hannah, and Hannah let out a gasp of horror. There, in the sweet pink flesh of Lily’s upper arm, just above her plump elbow, was a perfect purple bite mark.
‘It looks worse than it is, Mrs Hetherington. The nurse from the big school has had a look at it and luckily the skin isn’t broken, though there’s obviously some bruising. She doesn’t think there’s any need to take her to hospital, though that’s completely up to you.’
Hannah pulled her daughter to her, almost crushing her in a sudden need to feel that warm little body safe in her arms. When she finally pulled away, Mrs Mackenzie was gazing at them, her head to one side, her eyes full of sympathy.
‘Are you all right to play here for a few minutes longer, Lily, while I just talk to Mummy in the quiet room?’
Lily nodded, stepping obediently back to the sandpit.
Back in the other room, which was really little more than a corridor, with one side devoted to coat pegs, each marked by a different sticker, Mrs Mackenzie filled Hannah in. There had been some tension between the girls in the last few weeks, September becoming overpossessive and Lily seeming nervous. But today they seemed to have been playing fine.
‘Lily was so happy,’ Mrs Mackenzie reported. ‘She told the whole class she was going to have a new brother or sister.’
Hannah felt herself blushing.
‘She and September were in the dressing-up area, where there’s the castle where they play kings and queens. They both disappeared in there, which they do all the time. And the next thing, there was this scream, and Lily came out with that on her arm. September has been taken home by her mother, and we called her father in, too. He’d already asked to be kept independently informed of everything that concerns his daughter. I gather the relationship between the parents is a wee bit strained at the moment.’