The Broken

by Tamar Cohen

  Josh had seen Sasha turn on people enough times over the years to know what she was capable of. Once on a joint holiday in Spain, she’d taken exception to another British tourist and buried her clothes in the sand while she was swimming late one afternoon. When the woman had emerged from the sea and started hunting around for her clothes, Sasha had pretended not to know anything about them. He and Hannah had sat there, rigid with embarrassment, waiting for Sasha to give them back, but she hadn’t. In the end the two of them had slunk away, unable to watch any longer.

  But that was a total stranger. They were her friends. Was it really conceivable that Sasha could have phoned his head teacher and made an allegation like that, knowing it might cost him his job? No sooner had the thought formed than he experienced a bolt of nausea. It was true – this was the kind of thing that ended careers. How many times had he heard about it happening?

  ‘Josh?’

  There was a concerned expression on Ian’s pale face, but Josh thought he detected a wariness that hadn’t been there earlier, as if he was already trying to distance himself from this teacher with the question mark swinging over his head.

  ‘There is one possibility. Some good friends of ours are in the process of splitting up and we’ve somehow become embroiled in their battle. I think at least one of them might feel like I’ve sided with the other one. You know how that can happen. Maybe even both.’

  The head was looking at him faintly disapprovingly. ‘You know you should never get mixed up in other people’s break-ups, Josh. I wouldn’t have thought I’d have to tell you that.’

  For a moment there was silence while Josh’s stomach churned and the head looked increasingly pained, as if he was in physical discomfort.

  ‘I want you to know, Josh, that you have my complete confidence,’ he said at last. ‘Personally speaking, that is. But I’m sure you’ll appreciate I’m now in a very tricky situation. Normally I might be able to use my discretion over one anonymous call, but taken together with the previous allegation – well, you can see my hands are tied. There are procedures to be followed, governors to be appeased.’

  ‘You’re suspending me?’

  Josh swung around to face Sean, looking for outrage – Did you hear what he said? – but the other man was staring straight ahead.

  ‘Just while we make some investigations. You’ll be on full pay, of course.’

  ‘Mud sticks, Ian.’ Josh’s voice came out louder and harsher than he’d intended. ‘You know that. Even if I can prove these two ridiculous claims are malicious rubbish, which they are, some people will still believe there’s no smoke without fire. If you suspend me, there’ll always be a cloud hanging over me.’

  The head leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses, then rubbed them absently with a small pale-blue cloth he picked up from his desk. His eyes, when they looked up at Josh, seemed genuinely sorrowful, although maybe that was just how they looked without the lenses to give them focus.

  ‘I really wish there was another option, Josh, but I’m afraid we have to follow a strict protocol in cases like this.’

  Cases like this.

  Sexual abuse, paedophilia – that’s what cases like this meant.

  ‘You know Hannah is pregnant again?’

  The note of accusation in Josh’s voice was undisguisable and he felt gratified when the head’s eyes widened in shock.

  Ian put his glasses back on slowly.

  ‘I’m really terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘All I can do is reassure you that we’ll be carrying out our investigations just as quickly as we can, and hopefully we’ll have you back at work before anyone even notices you’re gone. Maybe you and Hannah can use it as an opportunity to spend a bit of time together before the baby comes.’

  ‘Oh yeah, every cloud’s got a silver lining, right?’

  ‘I don’t blame you for being angry, Josh, but my hands are completely tied on this.’ The head clasped his hands together as if to demonstrate.

  It was clear the interview was now over, but still Josh stayed in his padded chair, as if by staying he could delay making this real, keep the nightmare confined to this room. Once he’d left, it would spread in the wind like pollen.

  ‘Go home, Josh,’ Ian said eventually. ‘Kiss your wife. Hug your daughter. Remind yourself of all the good things you have.’

  Josh drove home in a daze. Though he’d navigated this same route just over an hour before, everything looked as different as if it was a foreign country. In fact, that’s just what he felt like – a tourist who’d got lost somewhere he didn’t know, but knew he didn’t want to be.

  Somewhere dangerous.

  ‘This isn’t happening,’ he told his own reflection in the rear-view mirror.

  He was possessed by an overwhelming fear. Someone was trying to end his career – maybe two people even. Everything he’d done and worked for throughout his adult life could be ripped to shreds, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  Hannah.

  How was he going to tell Hannah? He’d have to admit that he’d kept the Kelly Kavanagh allegation from her these past weeks. She wouldn’t forgive him for that, especially if she knew he’d confided in Sienna instead. At the thought of Sienna, he felt a pang that was almost like grief. He longed to get out his phone and call her now and tell her what had happened, feel that curious release he always got from talking to her, but how could he after Dan had shared his private emails with his lawyer?

  Once again his thoughts swung back to Hannah. She deserved to know everything – but what if she thought his not telling her about Kelly Kavanagh meant he had something to hide? Everywhere he looked, it seemed, there were dead ends and risks.

  Josh swerved over to the kerb, earning a long beep from the car behind. The driver, a middle-aged man with headphones in his ears, glared at Josh as he overtook him and shook his head slowly from side to side.

  Josh put his forehead on the wheel, aware he was hyperventilating but not sure what to do about it. He wondered if he was in a bus lane, but couldn’t face looking to find out. All he needed was to get a ticket on top of everything else. Hannah had got one recently just for pulling in momentarily opposite the post office while he flew out to post a letter. She’d only stopped for a few seconds, but a couple of weeks later a letter had arrived with a photograph of their car. CCTV. It was everywhere. No doubt there was a camera trained on him right this moment. Well, good. Let him be captured like this for posterity – a man slowly falling apart in his car.

  Now he was shaking, his whole body convulsing. He wondered if he was having a breakdown, right here by the side of the road. Pulling away into the traffic, all he could think about was having Hannah’s arms around him. He felt weak suddenly. He supposed it was shock. And cold. He was so cold. As he drove, his leg quivered on the accelerator pedal as if in spasm. Hannah was the only woman apart from his mum who’d ever been able to comfort him. He remembered one weekend morning, early in their relationship, lying in her bed in that flat in Maida Vale she’d shared with so many housemates that the galley kitchen had had to double as a living room, people perched on stools at the breakfast bar watching the portable TV on the worktop. She was asleep, her head on his chest, and he remembered trying to work out what it was that felt so good about being there and realizing, with amazement and a huge rush of gratitude, that he felt completely safe. A strange thing for a man to think, but that was the truth. She made him feel safe.

  But letting himself into their flat now, he felt neither safe nor comforted.

  ‘Josh? Why are you home early?’

  He hesitated in the doorway, his back to the still-open door. Hannah’s voice was tight, as if it had been wound up too much. He fumbled for the words he’d been rehearsing in his head, but they evaporated, leaving him gasping for air.

  ‘I’m not feeling well.’

  He felt Hannah’s sigh as much as heard it. A gust of breath that whispered through the flat, blowing disaffection like dust into his eyes an
d ears.

  ‘What’s up?’ She was trying to sound sympathetic, but the strain of it was threaded through the question.

  ‘Headache,’ he mumbled.

  Another sigh. Louder this time.

  ‘Wish someone would give me a day off,’ she said, but when he came through the doorway into the living room, something in his face made her soften. ‘Actually, you don’t look too good.’

  ‘I feel like shit.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Dan? He’s rung here three times leaving messages for you.’

  Josh took out his phone, as always set to silent. There were six missed calls from Dan and a voicemail.

  ‘Josh, mate. I’ve been trying to get hold of you. My lawyer told me what happened. I swear to god, mate, I never gave him permission to use that email. It was just part of a whole load of background stuff I sent to the legal team to help them make their case. It was never intended to be quoted. I told him straight off to take it off the official documents. I read him the fucking riot act, actually. Please don’t think it had anything to do with me. Call me back. OK?’

  ‘He says he didn’t give his lawyer permission to use my email.’

  Hannah didn’t even look up from her laptop. ‘Yeah, I gathered that. Doesn’t change the fact that he should never have given it to them in the first place though, does it?’

  ‘No. I know. You’re right.’

  ‘God knows what Sasha is going to do now. I’m pretty sure she’s going to insist I write a statement in her favour, just to counterbalance that email.’

  ‘Well, you can’t. You know she’s not stable.’

  ‘And Dan is? With pictures of women being raped on his computer?’

  ‘Oh, Hannah, you know you don’t believe all that crap.’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe. All I know is Dan isn’t going to provide a stable home for September any more than Sasha is. He’s so loved up he probably wouldn’t even notice she was there half the time. God, I’m so glad we’re getting away tomorrow.’

  Josh’s stomach lurched, an unpleasant sensation that left him instantly sweating and short of breath. On top of everything that had happened, he had this to look forward to – a visit to Oxford with all that entailed.

  Hannah looked up, eyeing him watchfully as if waiting for him to object. The moment stretched out between them, each of them painfully aware of the things the other was not saying. Josh was the first to turn away. He didn’t have the energy left for a fight. All thoughts of Hannah comforting him had now been banished so thoroughly it was as though they had occurred to someone else entirely. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so weak, as if those minutes in the head’s office had opened up a hole inside him through which all life force had drained away, leaving him hollow and empty.

  ‘I’m going to go and lie down,’ he said.

  In their bedroom, he drew the curtains and lay fully clothed on top of the duvet. Closing his eyes, he probed the newly empty space inside him, looking for something. Eventually he found it: a lump of hatred, hard as a cyst.

  Sasha.

  24

  ‘OK, prepare for a shock, Mum. Prepare to be amazed. I’m pregnant. Yes, again!’

  Hannah smiled, and for the first time in what seemed like months, she felt herself relaxing. This was exactly what she needed. She felt a powerful sense of release and calm.

  ‘Don’t go too far, Lil,’ Josh called from his position a few feet away.

  Lily was playing in the grass in the wintery sunshine, picking at the weeds that grew around the low stone walls. She was making a bouquet, Hannah saw now. From the way she kept stealing sly glances in her mother’s direction, Hannah could tell the posy was intended for her, and she felt a rush of tenderness for her daughter. It would be all right, she thought suddenly. All of it. The new baby would cement them together as a family.

  ‘Bet you never thought I’d be able to look after myself, let alone two children!’ She laughed, leaning back to give her mother a better view of her still non-existent bump under her thick jumper.

  Josh was looking uncomfortable, as he always did. Would it really kill him to chill out for once? Sometimes when she thought about how much she put up with from his mother, with her endless underhand digs that only Hannah ever seemed to notice, she felt like screaming at him to make an effort for her, too.

  ‘Shall we go, darling?’

  Despite the watery sunshine, the wind was biting and Josh was looking cold and underdressed in his thin leather jacket. Hannah frowned, desperately wanting to stay, but aware it was unfair to expect Lily and Josh to hang around for too much longer. On summer days the graveyard was a joyful place to be, full of wildflowers and people carefully tending the graves. But in the depths of winter, it was damp and grey and eerily still.

  Yet still she lingered, loath to tear herself away, nervously rearranging the flowers she’d brought to replace the ones her sister had left when she’d been there the weekend before. She knew Josh thought it was creepy, the way she and Gemma kept gravitating back to their mother’s grave, but he’d never understood how close they had been. By the time Josh met her mum, she was already ill with the cancer that would eventually kill her, so he’d never known her in the days when she could throw her arms around you and hold you in an embrace so warm and heartfelt that you felt nothing bad could ever happen to you. He didn’t get it, of course. He’d accused her before of ‘sanctifying’ her mother, reminding her that things hadn’t always been easy between them.

  ‘What about those episodes?’ he’d demanded, referring to the bouts of black depression her mother had been prone to throughout her life. Not many, but intense and terrifying, even so. A quick flashback to her mother’s venomous face at the hospital – no, she wouldn’t think of that now. That’s why their father had eventually walked out on them – because he couldn’t handle the downs. He’d stayed in periodic contact, but Hannah and Gemma had little respect for him. There was a Marilyn Monroe quote Hannah had once read – If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best – and it had made her think of her parents. Her father was long gone by the time Gemma was injured and their mother was finally properly diagnosed and given medication to keep her moods stable. Maybe he’d have stayed if he’d known, but having turned his back on her at her worst, he certainly didn’t deserve her at her best, when she could make you feel like the most loved, cherished person in the world.

  But Josh had never really seen that side of her mother, which is why he’d accused Hannah of being ‘ghoulish’ more than once, for insisting on coming here to talk to her. He’d been supportive at first, but his enthusiasm had quickly waned in the face of the long tedious hours he’d spent here waiting for her to finish. ‘You’re always so moody afterwards,’ he complained. ‘It’s not helpful for you.’ As if he had the first clue how to help her! She was being unfair. She knew it. But they had drifted so far apart, she struggled sometimes to imagine them ever being close again. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but everything he did at the moment irritated her. Yesterday he’d come home from work feigning illness and, after disrupting her work, had just taken himself off to bed, leaving her sitting at the table fuming and unable to focus on the feature she was writing. She was sure he wasn’t really ill at all. In fact, she half suspected it was a ruse to try to get her to drop her plans to come here this weekend. She couldn’t imagine Dan doing that. Dan would just come straight out and say if there was something bothering him, not sneak around inventing illnesses that didn’t exist.

  But why was she thinking about Dan all of a sudden?

  She knew exactly why she was thinking about Dan. Since their conversation yesterday morning, he’d hardly been off her mind. He’d been so concerned about her, so worried that she’d hold him accountable for his lawyer using Josh’s email. ‘You’re one of my favourite people in the whole world, Hannah, I couldn’t bear you to think badly of me,’ he’d said. She’d got the definite impression the honeymoon mig
ht be coming to an end for him and Sienna, now that she was pregnant. ‘She doesn’t really like me leaving her on her own,’ he said. ‘It’s cute in a way, but it makes it a bit difficult to earn any money.’

  ‘Maybe I should have chosen someone like you, Hannah,’ he said later. ‘Someone used to being independent.’

  Lily had stopped picking weeds now and was wandering around aimlessly, running her hands along the tops of the newer headstones with their smooth, shiny marble surfaces. Josh had a face like a wet weekend, as her mother would have said. He’d been in a vile mood since yesterday. Again Hannah found herself comparing him to Dan, whose moods were famously writ large on his open face, impossible to misinterpret. For a second she weakened, allowing herself to remember the thing she’d promised herself to forget.

  After listening to what he had said about choosing someone like her next time, Hannah had made some self-deprecating comment, comparing herself unfavourably to Sienna, and he’d said, ‘She’s jealous of you, you know. She knows you mean a lot to me and she’s jealous.’ Hannah had laughed it off, but when she came off the phone her cheeks were burning.

  Now Josh had gathered their things together – Lily’s colouring book that she’d been entertaining herself with, the canvas holdall in which Hannah had brought the trowel and secateurs she used to tend her mother’s grave – and was standing waiting, shuffling the bags from hand to hand in a pointed manner. Meanwhile Toby, who had to be kept on his lead in the graveyard for fear that he would start indiscriminately digging, had grown tired of lying at Hannah’s feet and was sitting by a neighbouring grave plaintively whining.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum, it’s time to go.’

  Even as she said the words, her eyes were filling with tears. It never got any easier. Even all these years after her mother’s death, Hannah still was no closer to coming to terms with losing her.

  ‘You rushed me,’ she said, once they were in the car and on the way to Gemma’s house. ‘You know how much I was looking forward to seeing Mum, and you just couldn’t let me have that time with her, could you?’