The Fallout (7 page)

“Sorry,” she wailed, as if he'd spoken aloud. “I just can't... I can't... Oh, God, I can't breathe.”

She was making rapid gulping noises as if she was being starved of oxygen and Josh dropped to his knees beside her.

“Look at me,” he commanded, seizing her around the shoulders. “Sasha, look at me!”

She brought her eyes up to his face, her breath still coming out in uneven gasps.

“Now breathe in,” he said in his best schoolteacher voice. “Come on, breathe in. That's right. And out again. Good.”

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Josh. I'm being a nightmare, aren't I? It's just—it's just. Oh, God. He was with
her.
You can't imagine what it's like, seeing the person you love, the father of your child, with someone else. Touching them. Kissing them. Oh, I feel sick.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth, and for a horrible moment, Josh thought she might actually vomit, right there on the rug.

“How could he? Josh, you're a man. How could he do this?”

Luckily Josh was saved from answering this unanswerable question by Hannah rushing back into the room.

“All quiet. Shit, Sasha, I don't know what to say. Did he see you? Dan, I mean?”

Sasha stared at her.

“Of course he saw me. Obviously he saw me.”

“Not necessarily. It must have been dark outside and he was, um, distracted. He could easily not have noticed you.”

“Well, seeing as I was standing right next to him screaming at him, I think it's highly unlikely!”

Josh closed his eyes. Oh, dear God. Hannah was still standing by the door, her hands on either side of her face and her mouth open in a long O shape in an approximation of the Edvard Munch painting.

“Don't look so shocked, Hannah. What the fuck did you think I was going to do when I saw
my husband
feeling up some underage slut? Turn around and walk away?”

“And what hap—”

Josh's question was cut short by the sound of a key in the door. He and Hannah locked eyes.

Dan burst through the living room door, his face grim. His slightly wild gaze flickered from Josh to Hannah and then to Sasha, who was still slumped on the floor. Josh felt his own indignation draining from him as he watched his friend's eyes fill with tears.

“Sash? Sash? I'm so sorry.”

“Get away from me.”

It was more of a hiss than an actual voice, and in truth Sasha had the look of an angry feral cat crouched there on the floor, glaring at her husband with such a fierce intensity, Josh half expected him to turn tail and run for the hills.

“Look... God, I don't know what to say.”

Dan ran his hands through his lank-looking hair as if he might find some inspiration there.

“I know that must have been an awful shock for you, but Christ, Sash, what were you thinking? I can't believe you followed me. And then screaming like that in the middle of that restaurant. It was—” he closed his eyes and shook his head as if trying to shake loose a memory too awful to recall “—horrible!”

“Was it?”

Sasha was looking up at him with her eyes dangerously narrowed.

“Was it horrible for you? Poor Dan. We can't have that, can we? We can't have things being horrible. Not when you've done nothing to deserve it. Apart from
fucking some bimbo while your daughter is at home crying herself to sleep
!”

“I wasn't fucking her.”

Dan's voice now had an unmistakable steely edge to it.

“We were just having dinner. And unless you've left our daughter home alone, which I fucking well hope not, she's right here fast asleep, so don't try to play the moral card with me. Look—” his tone softened “—I know this is difficult for you. Fuck, it's difficult for me. I hate not seeing September every day, but it's for the best in the long run. We're not good together anymore, Sash. We need to let each other go while we're still friends.”

Feeling like a voyeur, Josh kept his eyes trained on Hannah, watching as she opened her mouth to say something then bit down on her lip to stop whatever she had been about to blurt out. He didn't blame her.
Friends
. Jesus Christ! Two weeks ago, Sasha thought she was happily married. Did Dan really expect her to switch to being friends just like that? Clearly he did, because he was now looking at Josh as if seeking some kind of validation. Josh shook his head, barely perceptibly, but Dan seemed to take that as a signal to press on and Sasha's silence as some kind of grudging acquiescence.

“Sash, babes. We've had eight happy years, haven't we? We've got a beautiful little girl. Let's just be thankful for that and move on with the next stage in our lives, shall we?”

He was moving toward her, right hand slightly outstretched as if he seriously thought they might shake hands.
Stop
, Josh commanded in his head.
Stop now.
Yet, at the same time he was willing Dan to stop, there was a little part of him that was also urging him on toward the inevitable confrontation. He was so infuriatingly sure of himself, so convinced of his entitlement to happiness. So completely unaware.

Slap.

Sasha moved so fast, Josh hadn't even registered her getting up. One minute she was crouching on the floor and the next she'd sprung to her feet and whacked Dan across the face, the sound reverberating in the air.

“Don't you dare!” she was screeching in a voice that didn't sound quite human. “Don't you dare imagine I'm going to make this easy for you. I am your
wife
, Dan. In there—” she gestured toward the hallway and Josh and Hannah's bedroom “—is your
daughter.
You do not get to throw us away like so much rubbish. You do not get to slot someone else into our place the minute things get a bit difficult. You know what a divorce will do to me. You might as well take a gun and shoot us both. I won't let you do this!”

She streaked past and straight out of the living room.

“And you do not own me,” Dan yelled after her, still holding his hand to his cheek, where a vivid red mark was already mapping out the shape of Sasha's hand. But his words were cut short by the slamming of the front door. “At least now you have some idea how fucking insane she is.”

Dan sat down on the floor, although he kept springing up periodically to check his face, with its stinging handprint, in the mirror over the fireplace.

“For God's sake, Dan. What did you expect? Did you really think she'd just wish you luck and step aside?”

Hannah was pacing around the room. Josh hadn't seen her like this in a long time. There was a raised patch of eczema on her forehead by her right temple that only ever appeared when she was stressed.

“No. Of course I didn't expect that. But fuck, you should have seen what she was like at the restaurant. Screaming her head off. So fucking embarrassing. And then hitting me like that. You have to admit that's way out of line.”

“You lied! You told us all you weren't seeing that...
woman
.”

“I know. I'm sorry. But we just had dinner, that's all. We weren't...
doing
anything.”

“It doesn't matter. You broke your promise. I'm sorry, Dan, but you can't stay here anymore.”

Dan's head shot up.

“Hang on. You're supposed to be neutral here. You said so. How come you're siding with her all of a sudden?”

“We're not siding with anyone.” Josh's anger took him by surprise and gave his voice a pompous tone that made him cringe inwardly.

“We had a deal, Dan. You said as long as you were here, you wouldn't be in contact with Sienna. So you'd have some thinking time, you said.”

“I've done nothing but think!” Dan's face was dark. “Look, I know you guys would love for me and Sasha to get back together and for us to be a cozy little foursome again but it ain't gonna happen. Okay? I'm not about to start badmouthing my wife, but let's just say Sasha has problems, all right? Big problems. You don't go through what she went through and come out the other end a completely well-balanced, sane member of society. It's not her fault and I'll do whatever I can to support her, but I am not going back to her. End of story. You want me to leave? Fine, I'll leave, but I am not going back home. And the sooner you get used to that idea, the better. Now, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to go and look in on my daughter.”

“Oh, nice of him to remember he has a daughter,” snapped Hannah after Dan had stalked from the room.

“Come on, that's not really fair.” Now that his burst of anger had burned itself out, Josh felt slightly wretched. For all his faults, Dan was pretty much the best friend he had and it felt wrong to be throwing him out.

“He dotes on September, you know that. It would just have confused her if he'd been in and out of her life, there one minute and gone the next. It's better for her to get used to him not being around.”

“Better for him, you mean.”

Josh frowned. This was a side of Hannah he struggled with, the judgmental side that took a position and refused to budge from it or countenance an alternative despite any conflicting evidence. Josh himself was more rational—show him a persuasive argument and he was perfectly prepared to change his stance. That's what adults did, wasn't it? Listened to reason?

“We can't just throw him out. It's ten thirty. Anyway it won't do September any good to wake up and find neither of her parents here. As it is she's going to have to wedge herself in with Lily in Lily's bed, which won't exactly be comfortable.”

“Sasha will be back for her. She won't just leave her here. It's a school night. She knows September has been upset. She'll come back as soon as she calms down.”

Chapter 6

“How was Dan after I left? I bet he couldn't believe he had to look after September. That must have put a bit of a wrench in the works if he was planning a late-night rendezvous with the Child Bitch from Hell!”

Hannah glanced quickly around. They were standing at the school door waiting for the teacher to finish the lesson, and Sasha was talking extremely loudly.

“I sort of assumed you'd come back, Sash. I didn't think you'd leave September at our place all night, not after she'd been so upset earlier.”

Sasha flicked her black hair out of her eyes. “I was in no state to do anything, Hannah. After that scene at the restaurant and then seeing Dan back at your flat. I just couldn't have coped with September, as well. You can understand that, can't you? Anyway, I didn't think it would matter, seeing as her beloved daddy
was there to sort her out. Him being so hands-on and all.”

Her voice rose dangerously as she spoke, so Hannah decided not to mention how, after they'd told Dan he had to leave, he'd insisted on going that very night. “I don't want to put you guys in an impossible position,” Dan had said, as he wheeled his hastily packed suitcase across the communal hallway. “I'll call you tomorrow and let you know where I'm crashing.”

Neither did Hannah tell Sasha about how she'd been awakened during the night by the noise of September sobbing through the wall. She'd gone into Lily's room to find the little girl curled up with her head on a pillow at the bottom of Lily's bed, and tears leaking from her tightly shut eyes.

“Are you awake, sweetie?” she'd asked, kneeling down next to the bed and folding one of September's clammy little hands in hers. But the tiny figure kept her eyes closed and refused to answer.

“So anyway, what was he like after I'd gone?”

Sasha hadn't lowered her tone at all. A couple of the other mothers glanced over sharply. The children were singing the “say goodbye” song, where one by one they were bid a musical farewell by the group. The appropriate response for the parents was to gaze on misty-eyed, and certainly not to interrupt.

Hannah shrugged. “A bit shaken up, I suppose.”

“Did he feel guilty? What did he say?”

“Oh, you know.”

Hannah was grateful when the preschool teacher, Mrs. Mackenzie, started singing “Goodbye, Lily, goodbye.” The little girl got up from her cross-legged position on the carpet and cast her eyes anxiously around for her mother before making her way over, as pinkly self-important as if she was on a stage in front of hundreds of people.

“Hello, Lily-put.” Hannah dropped to her knees to wrap her arms around her daughter, breathing in her hot, sweet breath and nuzzling her nose into her poached-egg soft neck, glad to escape Sasha's intensity. Sometimes when she held her daughter, she felt a rush of love so overpowering she felt like she wanted to inhale her altogether.

“How was your day?”

Lily drew back and looked at her solemnly.

“Okay, I s'pose.”

Hannah's chest constricted as it always did when she thought about the things that might have happened to her daughter while she wasn't around to see—the little hurts she might have suffered, the games she might not have been invited to play, the times she might have missed her mother. Mrs. Mackenzie always insisted Lily “couldn't be happier” when she was at school, but Hannah couldn't shake off the nagging doubt that there were things she wasn't told, or the fear that Lily might be putting on a brave face to mask some deeper unhappiness she didn't want them to know about.

“Hey, Hannah. Long time no see.”

The woman who'd materialized by her side, with a tousle-headed four-year-old buried in her leg, was plump, with a doughy face and the kind of haircut that—according to Sasha—was probably administered in her own kitchen by a mobile stylist more used to catering for seniors. Amid the well-heeled Crouch End mothers with their expensively dressed-down labels, her baggy sweatshirt and long, shapeless skirt, not to mention the canvas bag slung over her stooped shoulder, looked out of place. But her shy smile made her almost pretty, and her voice was soft and warm.

“Oh, hi, Marcia. I know, I've been...preoccupied.”

“Don't I know how that can be! I was just wondering...well, Sarah was just wondering—” she indicated the small child who seemed to be attempting to burrow right into her skin “—if Lily would like to come for tea today. You as well, of course.”

“How kind. I'd love to, and I'm sure Lily would, too. Lily?” Hannah felt a kind of giddy relief at the thought of spending time with someone normal, someone who wouldn't insist on making her listen while she dissected the corpse of her failed marriage.

She bent her head to her daughter, who looked up at her and nodded, a closed-lipped smile making rosy apples out of her round cheeks.

“Not fair.”

Hannah hadn't noticed September coming up to join Sasha behind her.

“Lily's my friend. Not fair if she goes to Sarah's house.”

“But, September...”

“No!” September was shouting now. “Lily's
my
friend. I want Lily to come to
my
house.”

She broke off to fling herself at her mother's legs.

“Don't you think, in view of the circumstances, it might be kinder if you and Lily came to our place?”

Sasha was smiling, but her voice was tight, as if someone had pulled a thread through the middle of it.

“But I...”

“September has had a lot to deal with over the last couple of weeks, Hannah—as you well know—and I think you might be a little more sensitive. Lily's her best friend. She needs her right now.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” A vivid pink stain had spread across Marcia's pleasant face. “We can make it another time, Hannah, if it's a problem.”

Hannah felt her own cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“Sorry, Marcia,” she mumbled. “Maybe we should leave it for today.”

“But, Mummy—” Lily was tugging on her arm “—I want to go to...”

Lily's words were cut short by Sasha bending down and pulling her in for a hug.

“We'll pick up jelly donuts on the way home, and then you and September can play on her new Wii game. You know, the one you two were going on about all last week? Won't that be fun?”

She stood up and turned to Marcia, smiling at her without quite meeting her eyes.

“I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that Lily and September are so close, inseparable really, and September is going through a bit of a hard time at the moment. I'm sure Sarah will find someone else to play with.”

As they made their way out of the classroom, past the wall of colorful self-portraits with their goggling round eyes and red, U-shaped mouths, and exited into the playground, Sasha's mood seemed to lighten.

“You owe me,” she whispered, leaning in toward Hannah. “I saved you from an afternoon of drinking chai and swapping whole-grain pizza recipes, followed by a nutritious tea of vegetables ‘grown in our own garden.'”

She did a very good imitation of Marcia's soft, tentative voice and Hannah smiled in spite of herself—and then was mortified to realize Marcia was walking a few paces behind them.

“She's nice actually, Sasha. I like her. You really should give people a chance.”

“Oh, sorry. Didn't realize Pollyanna was in the house!”

* * *

Sasha and Dan's dazzling white modernist house was set back from the road, and as they approached along the front path and up the flight of wide stone steps, Hannah was aware that for once, she didn't feel the usual stab of resentment. It sometimes felt unfair that Sasha, who hadn't worked in years, should have all this, while she and Josh seemed at times to be running on a hamster wheel just to hang on to their tiny flat. But instead she imagined how Sasha and September must rattle around in there, now that it was just the two of them in those huge white rooms with their gleaming white floorboards. What would happen to the house if they divorced? Dan earned good money, but he was self-employed and had a lot of expenses, and as far as Hannah could tell he hadn't had a big job for quite a while.

“Wow,” she said as Sasha casually threw open the wide, solid-oak front door. “What's been going on in here?”

The normally pristine house was in disarray. Jackets and sweaters seemed to have been dropped wherever they were divested, lying in brightly colored heaps over the white floors and ivory-colored furniture like so many exotic blooms. The long, low glass coffee table in the cavernous living room was crowded with wineglasses and half-filled coffee cups and September's toys, including a long row of mutilated plastic dolls with toilet paper bandages tied around them in various inventive ways, were littered everywhere.

“September was making a hospital,” said Sasha, as if that explained the empty pizza boxes on the arm of the sofa or the photographs strewn across the cream-colored deep-pile rug.

“And Katia's off sick again. Honestly, that woman is ill more days than she's here. She's going to have to go.”

Sasha's inability to hold onto a cleaner for longer than a few months was a running joke. Over the years Hannah had known her she'd had cleaners who stole her underwear, cleaners who made passes at her husband and one cleaner who, when caught red-handed trying on one of Sasha's favorite dresses, looked puzzled at the furor, insisting “but I have alvays done zis.” Sometimes Hannah wondered whether Sasha exaggerated the stories for comic effect. A couple of times, having met and liked the pale-faced girls with their dyed blond ponytails, their tight stone-washed jeans and the shiny slippers they swapped for their towering platforms at the door, Hannah had found herself querying whether they could really have committed whatever infringement Sasha was accusing them of, and worrying about how they'd make ends meet without Sasha and Dan's house to clean two days a week.

“Last week she reached up to pull a Monopoly board down from the shelf in September's room and the corner poked her in the eye. She reeled around the room screeching ‘I blind! I blind!'”

Sasha did an imitation of the poor, afflicted Katia, staggering around with her hands clapped to her face, and Hannah giggled in spite of herself. But the smile died on her face as she watched Sasha collapse suddenly onto a dove-grey velvet chaise longue, shoulders sagging, face staved in by grief.

Sitting down next to her friend, she put her arms around her frighteningly thin frame, feeling how the breath was being pulled out from a place deep inside her like handkerchiefs from a magician's hat.

“How could he, Han? How could he do this to me? I feel I'm going crazy. I lie awake at night and it's like I've swallowed acid or something and it's burning through me, eating me alive. Oh, you wouldn't understand, but I lie there and everything hurts so much and I can't think of any way to get the pain to stop except to take a fucking ax and smash it all to bits—Dan, me, this home we built together, my stupid hurting heart, all of it, just smash it all to pieces.”

Hannah gazed at her. Did Sasha really think she had the monopoly on hurting hearts?

“You're bound to feel like this, Sasha. It's horrible, what's happened to you. But you know you have to stay strong, for September's sake. You're all she has right now.”

“I know, but it's so unfair, Hannah. How does it work out like this? How does he get to do all this damage and just move on to the next woman as if I didn't count for anything, as if I was no one? After all the things he said to me, all the promises he made. How does that happen?”

Hannah shook her head.

“I don't know, Sash.”

Suddenly Sasha's delicate-featured face contorted, skin stretched out like pizza dough over sharp cheekbones, mouth twisting horribly at the corners.

“He won't get away with it. He thinks he will, but he won't.”

Her voice was harsh, almost inhuman, and Hannah had to stop herself from recoiling.

“I'm going to see a lawyer.” Sasha was nodding to herself, as if she'd forgotten Hannah was even there. “I'm going to get that bastard.”

“Don't you think, for September's sake, you should hold your fire awhile? Far better to try to sort things out amicably...”

“Amicably? Really? While he's fucking some underage bimbo? I don't think so. Do you reckon
he's
thinking about what's best for September?”

Hannah shook her head. Glancing down, she noticed her friend had scraped the skin off from around her thumb and was digging a sharp fingernail deep into the exposed, raw flesh. Hannah watched transfixed as a bead of blood ballooned out from around the nail before dropping, squat and fat, onto the pale fabric of the chaise longue.