by Tamar Cohen
Sasha was shaking her head vehemently. ‘No way. I know what I saw, Hannah. This was porn, and the very worst kind of porn.’
The two women exchanged a long look and it was Hannah who broke away first, taking a gulp of her wine, trying to make sense of the thoughts flying around her head.
Sasha’s ringtone – a customized recording of September shouting, ‘Mummy – pick up your phone!’ – eventually broke the silence.
‘Oh God,’ muttered Sasha, taking it out of her bag and glancing at the screen. ‘I’d better take this. Hello?’
Hannah was relieved to have a break from the conversation they’d just been having, even if it was only momentary.
‘I don’t understand,’ Sasha was saying into her phone. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
Whatever the other person was saying, it was clearly nothing Sasha wanted to hear.
When the call had ended, she cradled the phone in her hand, as if unwilling to believe the conversation was over. Then she lifted her eyes to Hannah.
‘That was Caroline, my lawyer,’ she said. ‘She says Dan is going for full custody. Apparently Josh has made a written statement confirming I’m an unfit mother.’
23
‘It’s not my fault.’
Josh was well aware that a whine had crept into his voice, but he was just so sick of justifying himself. And why did he have to do that anyway? Hannah should automatically be on his side.
‘That email was private. I had no idea he’d give it to his lawyer.’
‘Yes, but why were you saying things like that to him in the first place? You know we said we’d stay neutral.’
‘Yes, but that was before Sasha went off the rails so spectacularly. You know perfectly well she’s not capable of looking after September in the state she’s in. No wonder the poor child is going around biting people. She’s all over the place.’
‘Yeah, well, thanks to you, Sasha will probably never speak to us again.’
‘You know, I’m starting to think that might actually be a relief.’
Hannah’s nostrils flared. She picked up her fork to spear the last new potato on her plate, then thought better of it. ‘That’s typical. It might be a relief for you, but what about me? She’s my friend, Josh. She helps me out. Don’t forget all the times she’s looked after Lily when I’ve had to go off and do an interview and you’re at work. I need that support. It’s OK for you – you just swan into school in the morning and come home at night and there’s never any question of it being any different, whereas I’m the one who has to sort out all the childcare and make excuses if I miss deadlines because Lily’s sick or there’s an inset day.’
Josh stifled a sigh. So this too would turn out to be his fault? If he didn’t have a full-time job he’d be able to help with the childcare and maybe Hannah wouldn’t be so reliant on Sasha. Was that the subtext here? That old unwinnable argument. If he earned more, she wouldn’t need to work or scrabble around for childcare, or conversely, if he had a worse job, she’d be the main breadwinner and he’d have to go part-time to take up the slack in looking after Lily. But this middle-of-the-road job, neither one thing nor the other, was somehow a failing. Shouldn’t she just be happy that he worked at all? Plenty of women would jump at the chance of having a partner with a steady, reliable income. He pushed his chair violently back from the dinner table, the legs making a grating sound on the wooden floorboards. Hannah flashed a warning look at him. Lily hadn’t long gone to bed.
‘Well, that’s it with Dan,’ he said. ‘I told him very clearly that I wouldn’t put anything in writing for his solicitor. He knew how I felt. Then he goes and takes something I wrote in a private email to use against Sasha. It’s really underhand.’
The more he thought about it, the more furious he was. Such a violation of their friendship. But there was something else as well. Something that made him feel cold. Hadn’t he also mentioned Hannah in that email? Said something about her going off sex? Hadn’t he made a comment about Siberia, even used the word ‘frigid’? He’d been joking, of course. But she’d never forgive him if she found out – not for sharing something so personal. Surely Dan wouldn’t have given that bit to the lawyer? Or might he have had to provide the entire email intact, just to prove it hadn’t been edited?
‘Dan’s changed,’ Hannah said. ‘The old Dan would never have done anything like this. Do you think it’s her doing? Sienna?’
Josh felt a ridiculous surge of protectiveness. Sienna had been so nice about that whole Kelly Kavanagh thing, so understanding. Hannah oughtn’t to be criticizing her. She didn’t even know her!
‘It seems to me,’ Hannah went on, ‘we don’t know the first thing about Dan any more or what he would or wouldn’t do.’
‘Oh come off it, Hans. You’re not talking about that allegation of Sasha’s, are you? You know she’ll say anything to get back at him. It’s such a cheap shot. You can’t seriously be considering it?’
They looked at each other, then immediately looked away.
But still Josh was uneasy. This was all too close to home. Since Kelly Kavanagh had made her allegation against him at school, he’d felt sick with fear at the thought of Hannah finding out. Of course, he told himself, she wouldn’t believe it for a second. But now, seeing her face, he wondered whether his confidence was misplaced. He could see that she didn’t really believe Dan was capable of what Sasha was saying – Dan wasn’t the sort to get his kicks from seeing hideous things done to women, the idea was preposterous – and yet there was that awful, infinitesimal wisp of doubt. And once doubt entered into your head, did it ever really go away?
‘Dan’s always been such an open book, I just don’t think he would have shared our private emails with his lawyer without someone pressurizing him. I think Sienna must have something to do with it. Ever since he’s been with her he’s been different – probably because he’s been thinking with his dick.’
The sound of Hannah’s familiar clipped voice enunciating the word dick echoed around Josh’s head, thrilling and disturbing him in equal measure.
‘I just hate all this, you know?’
To Josh’s consternation, Hannah’s eyes filmed over with tears as she spoke. He remembered then about her being pregnant. Here he was, thinking about himself and what this all meant to him, while she was having to cope with a pregnancy as well. He got up from his seat and moved around the table so he was sitting next to Hannah and put his arm around her. He was surprised at the shape of her shoulders under his fingers. How long had it been since they had properly held each other? Wasn’t there something terribly wrong, that his wife’s body should feel like a stranger’s?
She leaned against him, her forehead nuzzling against the hollow at the base of his throat. ‘What’s happening to us, Josh?’
He tightened his grip around her shoulders. ‘Nothing’s happening to us, darling. It’s everyone around us who is falling apart. We’re fine. We’re strong. You and me and Lily and now this new little person. We’ll be OK.’
Was he imagining the way she stiffened when he referred to the new baby?
‘Look. This thing with Dan and Sasha has been a nightmare, but it’s over now – at least our part of it. Sasha says she can’t be in contact with you now that my bloody email is being used against her, and Dan must know he’s burned his bridges with me by doing that. I mean, he asked me to make a statement and I refused. He knew exactly where I stood, but he went ahead and involved me anyway. I can’t stay friends with someone who’d do that. So now it’s just us, which is a massive relief, to be frank. Let’s have the weekend to ourselves and stay in the flat, just the three of us, and eat lovely food and drink fine wine and watch telly. Doesn’t that sound perfect?’
But Hannah had pulled away from him and was glaring at him. ‘I don’t believe you. You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?’
‘Forgotten what?’
‘Forgotten that we’re going to see Mum this weekend.’
Josh�
��s heart plummeted. He hadn’t really forgotten what she’d said about visiting her mother; rather, he’d been hoping that if he didn’t mention it, she might just lose interest in the whole thing. These visits to her mother always took their toll on Hannah, leaving her in a strange, distracted mood. At the best of times, she’d be hard to reach afterwards, and the way things stood between them at that moment, that was the last thing they needed.
‘Are you sure?’
Hannah was shaking her head. ‘Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. I had to put up with your parents for a weekend, with your mum insinuating that there was something up with Lily, like I was a neglectful mother for not noticing.’
‘I don’t think she—’
‘So don’t you try to get out of going to Oxford.’
Josh stared at the flaming pink patch of dry skin on Hannah’s forehead and swallowed back the words he had been about to say, aware that this had now passed beyond being about what made sense and moved into that hazy territory of loyalty and love and duty and doing what the other person wants just because it’s what they want.
‘Fine. We’ll go.’
The thought of the trip to Oxford and about what had happened with the lawyer sat heavily in Josh’s stomach overnight like undigested meat, making sleep almost impossible. At one point he even got up and dashed off an angry email to Dan, asking what he thought he was playing at. Thinking about it in the cold light of day, he probably shouldn’t have sent it, or at least should have tempered it. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but he knew he’d let rip about friendship and betrayal and – the memory came into his head with a sickening thud – even threatened to write a statement for Sasha instead, a formal one this time.
He shouldn’t have sent it.
The thought made him uncomfortable as he drove to school the next morning, shifting around in the driving seat. He’d ring Dan at lunchtime, he decided, in a total U-turn from yesterday’s adamant position of non-communication. He’d clear the air, give Dan a chance to explain himself. And then he’d tell him that he and Hannah were stepping back from the whole mess, before they got swallowed up in it themselves.
The heaviness of Josh’s mood transferred itself to his surroundings. Despite the half-hearted Christmas decorations, north London had never looked so gloomy. The normally leafy streets appeared grey and barren in the dim light of a November morning, bare branches clutching at the air like gnarled fingers. The bin men – or ‘waste-management technicians’ as he’d read you had to call them now – hadn’t been in a while. Since collections had gone from weekly to fortnightly, rubbish seemed to be constantly piling up outside shops and blocks of flats, black plastic bags spilling out of wheelie bins. The cold made everyone appear hunched and awkward in their uniformly dark overcoats, their pale faces pinched and serious.
There was a giant billboard next to the traffic lights where Josh waited irritatedly, his feet determinedly balancing between clutch and accelerator, refusing to admit defeat and go into neutral as if this small act of defiance could force the lights to change faster. The billboard featured an advert for perfume – all the adverts seemed to be for perfume at this time of year, celebrities in gold body paint spouting nonsensical snatches of poetry as they rolled around on satin sheets. The model – one of those who seemed to have become a celebrity in her own right, as if she had some other gift apart from taking off clothes and putting others on and staring into a camera lens with blank eyes – was wearing a long string of beads and high heels and very little else. He wondered if Sienna had ever posed like that.
Pulling into the staff car park, his depression deepened. With the exception of a gleaming 4×4 belonging to one of the receptionists who was married to a property developer and worked part-time to ‘keep herself busy’, the rest of the cars were similar to his – ten years old, self-consciously low-key. Golfs, Renaults, Hondas, Toyotas in silver, navy and black. Dan was the only person he knew who didn’t see an inherent ethical dilemma in having a statement car, a car that said, ‘Look at me, I’m happy to be defined by my car.’
He was late, so the cramped car park was already nearly full, apart from the corner spaces which were notoriously difficult to manoeuvre into and next to impossible to get out of. Rushing into school, having spent a long time inching his way into the space, Josh hoped no one had been watching from the classroom windows on the first floor. When it came to all things motor-related there was no more critical audience than a class full of Year Elevens who had yet to take a driving lesson and still believed there was nothing to it.
The bell was already sounding as he hurried along the corridor to his first class and he was mentally rehearsing the lesson he was about to take, so at first he didn’t hear the head calling softly to him from the open door to his office. When Josh finally turned and retraced his steps, he struggled to hide his irritation. Now he would be late, and as any teacher knew, being late meant you’d immediately relinquished the upper hand and had to spend half the lesson trying to recover it.
‘Josh, will you come in for a minute, please?’
The head had sandy hair and almost non-existent eyelashes, against which his severe black glasses frames appeared cartoonishly over-exaggerated.
‘I’ve actually got a class . . .’ Josh gave an apologetic shrug and made as if to walk off.
‘Ah, yes. Well that’s the thing, Josh. You’ve been relieved of the particular joy of drumming Macbeth into 9E.’
The head smiled at his little joke, but the smile was forced and awkward, and a pink stain was appearing on his neck above the collar of his pale-blue shirt.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, Miss Stokes – Marisa – has kindly stepped in to cover so that you and I can have a little chat.’
The pink stain had crawled up over his jaw now, and Josh’s heart began to hammer. This had to be about Kelly Kavanagh. What had she been saying now? Suddenly the unfairness of it all hit him like a slap to the face and he thought for a horrible moment that he might burst into tears. The head, whose name was Ian, although no one ever referred to him as anything except ‘the head’, indicated a padded chair across the L-shaped desk from him, and Josh sank heavily down into it, only now becoming aware that there was another person in the room – one of the PE teachers, Sean Silverman, a broad, compact man with a swarthy complexion and thick black hair protruding from the top of his white T-shirt. Sean was leaning against the wall and gave Josh an apologetic shrug. Josh was mystified. What on earth was Sean Silverman doing here? He hardly knew the guy.
Then all of a sudden it came to him with a sickening jolt of realization. Sean was the school union representative. This was a disciplinary matter.
‘Josh, there are times when I really hate my job.’ The head gave Josh a rueful smile, and for one wild instant Josh imagined he might be about to confess something, as if getting someone in to cover Josh’s class might turn out to be an elaborate way of facilitating an unburdening that only he could possibly understand.
‘And this is one of them,’ the head continued, and Josh knew without doubt that this was a prelude to something bad.
‘I’ve asked Sean to come here in his capacity as union rep, because I’m sorry to tell you there’s been another allegation of inappropriate behaviour made against you. As you know, I’m not at liberty to go into details, but suffice to say this was an anonymous phone allegation from a former female pupil.’
And there it was. The Something Bad that had, he now realized, been hanging in the air all morning. Under the desk, his legs were shaking.
Struggling to hold back the panic he could feel building inside him, Josh fixed his gaze on the photos displayed on the windowsill, showing Ian on holiday with his wife and two small children, all of them pale-fleshed and beaming up from under a huge beach umbrella. He felt strangely embarrassed, as if he was spying on something private.
‘“Former”? Why wouldn’t she have said something at the time?’ Ian, who had mad
e a steeple out of his hands, which he was pressing against his mouth, sighed. ‘Josh, you know I can’t go into any more detail about the allegation – as much for your sake as for . . . the other party’s.’
Josh was aware of his head shaking from side to side as if on a fulcrum. If he just closed his eyes and pretended he hadn’t heard, this would surely turn out to be a mistake – a manifestation of his own crappy mood. But when he opened his eyes, and saw the head’s pale eyes peering at him from over the top of that steeple of fingers, waiting for his reaction, he knew it was real. He glanced over his shoulder at Sean Silverman, who gave him a weak smile that was probably meant to be supportive but somehow made him feel even worse.
‘She’s lying.’
His voice lacked conviction, even to his own ears, going up slightly on the last syllable in that American way.
‘Any idea why anyone would want to make something like that up?’
Josh once again felt his head shaking from side to side, even while he realized that, yes, there were people with an axe to grind against him. Kelly Kavanagh, for one. She’d probably expected him to be suspended after her original allegation. Who was to say this wasn’t her determinedly sticking in the boot?
‘I should tell you at this moment we are treating this as completely separate from the earlier allegation.’
For a second, Josh thought he must have been voicing his thoughts out loud, before he realized that, of course, it was the obvious conclusion.
But the head seemed to want to make it very clear he didn’t think the two allegations were linked. So who then? Who would want to do him harm? It came to him like a body blow, knocking the breath clear out of his chest.
Sasha.
She wouldn’t.
Would she?
He remembered Hannah’s face as she described Sasha’s reaction to the phone call from her lawyer. ‘She was actually shaking,’ Hannah had said. ‘She kept saying, over and over again, how she couldn’t believe you’d done that to her.’