The Fallout (13 page)

Lucie/Eloise, age eight and a half

I like school. It's called Archminster and I have three best friends and one of them is called Juliette and she has long hair down to her waist and I am going to have hair just like hers. I am absolutely
determined
!
When I came, Juliette asked me if I had a nickname and I told her it was Eloise. Now everyone calls me Eloise and I am nice and funny and very, very kind and I am not the person who did that Bad Thing. A leopard can change its spots! Mummy will be proud of me and call me Purty Cushion.
Purty
is how she says
pretty
, I think, but I don't know why she calls me a cushion.

Chapter 13

“Look! Just look!”

Dan thrust his phone at Josh so he could see the text message for himself. Josh read it aloud.

“‘Bet you think you're a big stud, lounging around half-naked in your shabby-chic shag pad with that slut. Just 'cause there are shutters on the windows, doesn't mean no one can see you.'”

Dan glared at Josh expectantly with the air of someone awaiting vindication.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Don't you get it? She's fucking stalking me, Josh. I could have her fucking arrested.”

Josh shrugged.

“Or it could be just a lucky guess. I mean how many people who live in Notting Hill have shutters on their windows? It's got to be about ninety percent. I think there might even be a law about it.”

“And the shabby-chic bit?” Dan wasn't in the mood for joking.

Josh held up his hands.

“Find me a house in that neighborhood that
isn't
done in shabby chic.”

Dan shook his head, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

“Why the fuck are you defending her? You know this is way out of line.”

“I'm not defending her.”

But in reality, Josh supposed, that was exactly what he was doing. There was an outside chance Sasha could be guessing about Sienna's apartment, but he had to admit it wasn't likely. And there was something creepy about the idea of her sneaking around outside Sienna's window spying on them. But then, Dan wasn't exactly trying to smooth things over between them—cutting off Sasha's bank cards without warning had been seriously underhanded. And even though he'd unfrozen the account soon after, Sasha swore most of the money had disappeared. “Siphoned off into a secret offshore account,” she'd insisted in her usual hyperbolic way.

It had been only weeks since Dan had sat across from him in this very same pub, at this very same table, and told him that he was leaving his wife. Now everything had changed. Sasha and Dan were at each other's throats. Hannah walked around the flat sighing heavily, and whenever he asked her what was wrong she gave him that “are you a complete idiot” look and said “Nothing” in a very pointed way. She complained about Sasha monopolizing her time, but then she'd agreed to go clubbing with her next week. When was the last time she'd gone clubbing? Even Lily seemed subdued. Hannah had told him what Mrs. Mackenzie had said and while she was clearly exaggerating the sinister aspect, Josh couldn't help agreeing that maybe it would be a good thing for Lily and September to spend time apart. Overshadowing it all was that horrible incident at school that he still couldn't bear to think about, let alone share with Hannah.

Even this regular postmatch drink with Dan wasn't like it used to be. On the surface everything seemed normal. They'd sat in their usual seats at the match, surrounded by the same characters they saw week after week. There was the middle-aged couple to their right, the normally soft-spoken woman with her pearl earrings and pastel-colored cashmere cardigans yelling streams of expletives throughout the game, and the two brothers behind them who never spoke to each other, just watched side by side in companionable silence. Josh's particular favorite was the old guy who came with his young granddaughter. He'd hear them chatting at halftime about formations and goal point averages. “Life doesn't get much better than this,” the old man had once told Josh contentedly, his arm around his granddaughter, after Arsenal had just snatched a last-minute victory at the tail end of a nail-biter. Josh remembered it because it had struck him that the man was absolutely right. Life didn't get much better than that.

But already those were coming to seem like halcyon days, when everything was simple, straightforward. Now that there was this undercurrent with Dan, this sense of misalignment in the natural order of things, Josh couldn't seem to find his way back to that easy companionship he and Dan had enjoyed.

Dan was still fiddling with his phone, and Josh found himself staring at Dan's hands, with their long, slightly feminine fingers. Could those hands have inflicted damage on Dan's own wife, so much so that she'd had bruises worthy of measuring? It was impossible, of course. And yet, and yet...wasn't the news full of people saying “He was the last person you'd suspect” after yet another father went crazy and strangled his wife, or shot his kids?

Dan looked up and caught Josh staring. Suddenly his expression changed, a bright smile playing out across his rugged face.

“Do you want to see her?”

Josh felt himself floundering.

“Who?”

“Sienna, of course. I've got a photo of her here on my phone.”

Dan's eyes had taken on the rapt fervor you sometimes saw in fundamentalists on the television talking about their faith. Josh felt a disagreeable prickling sensation in the pit of his stomach and realized that he really, really didn't want to see the photograph of the famous Sienna. Yet at the same time he acknowledged that, on a completely different level he had a desperate hunger to know what she looked like.

Maybe she wouldn't be as gorgeous as Dan had made out. Maybe he'd look at her and think,
Really? You left your family for that?
And he'd feel relieved to think of what he still had, his intact, safe domestic life.

“I suppose so,” he said. Before he'd even finished the sentence, Dan had laid the phone in front of him, eyes fixed on his face, waiting for his reaction.

Josh looked down reluctantly and...
oh.
Such a visceral reaction, that blow to the lower abdomen, that punch of envy. A lightly tanned, heart-shaped face with a neat, pointy chin, vivid green eyes with thick dark eyelashes, silky, sun-streaked, blond-brown hair hooked over one shoulder and hanging loosely down over the front of her white T-shirt. Faded denim shorts revealing coltish brown legs that went on forever. Bare feet, one endearingly rubbing the top of the other as though she was finding the experience of being photographed something of an ordeal. She smiled shyly up at the camera, the sun reflecting in her eyes.

Beautiful.

“Well?” Eagerness lit up Dan's face as he scoured Josh's expression looking for clues. “What do you think?”

Josh swallowed, giving himself time to corral his feelings.

“Yeah, nice enough. Too young for me, though. Reminds me too much of the girls at school.”

That was a lie. The girls at Josh's school either had acne and braces and refused to meet his eye, or were hard-faced and confrontational, their hair scraped up into ponytails that pulled the skin of their faces taut over their cheekbones, taking every off-the-cuff comment as a personal attack, always on the lookout for imagined slights.

He was gratified to notice Dan's smile dimming a notch.

“She's twenty-four. Hardly a child.”

Dan snatched his phone back as if to protect the picture from Josh's critical appraisal and gazed at it again.

“I gotta tell you, mate. She's so soft and gentle, but she's got a steely side to her, too. People think that because of how she looks they can get away with being patronizing, but she won't take shit from anyone.”

“Steady on, Dan. You'll be declaring undying love next.”

Dan stared at him.

“I do love her. Of course I love her. What's wrong with that?”

Josh felt again that terrible punch to the stomach. He waited for it to pass.

“It's just so quick. You've only been apart from Sasha for a couple of weeks.”

“Three and a half, actually.”

“Exactly. It's nothing. Too soon to go falling in love again.”

“Come on, Josh. You can't timetable love. It comes along whenever it wants to.”

Josh's insides were churning. People like him tried and tried to do the right thing. They honored their commitments, they stuck with their marriages, even through the tough times. Dan walked out on his wife and child and not only was he unscathed, but he was also
ecstatic.
If it was that easy, what was to stop everyone from giving up the minute things got a bit difficult?

Dan, not normally the most intuitive of men, seemed nevertheless to guess something of what was going on in Josh's head.

“Don't get me wrong. It's not all perfect, I know that. It kills me to think of September missing me and not being able to see me, with only that crazy bitch for comfort.”

Josh frowned. “Easy, now.”

“No, I'm serious. I'm not saying Sasha hasn't got a right to be angry, but sneaking around outside my house
spying
on me and freaking out my girlfriend? Listen, can't you talk to her for me, about letting me have access to September? You must admit it's wrong, what she's doing.”

“Yes, but whenever you talk to Sasha, she's always got some reason why she couldn't let you see September.”

Dan snorted.

“Yeah, the reason is she's a vindictive cow.”

He registered Josh's disapproval.

“Okay, okay, I didn't mean that. It's just...you have no idea how much it kills me not to know what September had for her tea, or who her friends are at the moment or what bedtime story she's reading at night.”

Josh stared at his friend. Dan had always been so wrapped up in his career, he'd never been around for the day-to-day domestic stuff. As far as Josh knew he'd never once picked up September from preschool and Sasha always used to complain that on the rare occasions he was home in time to read September a story, he'd fall asleep before she did! But Dan really seemed to believe this image he'd constructed of himself as the devoted, hands-on father torn apart from the child he'd single-handedly raised. His eyes were full of hurt.

“I'll talk to her. I don't think it'll make that much difference but I'll try. And...” He paused, knowing Hannah would go mad if he finished what he was about to say. “September is coming to spend the afternoon with us tomorrow while Sasha...well, while she does something. Maybe you could drop by again.”

He was expecting Dan to break out into one of his warm smiles. Instead, Dan looked suddenly shifty, glancing around the pub, not meeting Josh's eyes. Immediately Josh regretted his generous gesture.

“That's really good of you, Josh, I appreciate it, I really do. And I'd give anything to spend some time with September, you know that, only Sienna and I are going to Rome tomorrow for a couple of days.”

Thump
. The sound of Josh's heart lurching against his rib cage. Before he could stop it, there came into his head an image of Dan and the beautiful Sienna, who now had a face and a body, in a rumpled hotel bed with French doors thrown wide open to the faraway buzzing of the scooters in the busy Italian streets. Naked in the middle of the afternoon, with no small child clamoring to be let in, no requirement to go out and eat in a family-friendly place where you could ask for ketchup without being frowned upon.

It wasn't fair
.

“Right.” He didn't care how huffy he sounded. “Never mind then. Wouldn't want you to miss out on a shag-fest just to see your daughter.”

Dan looked shocked.

“It's already booked. Sienna's taken time off.”

“Oh, well then, that definitely takes priority over your four-year-old.”

“Why are you being so judgmental all of a sudden, Josh?”

Josh couldn't explain it. Couldn't tell him about the image that was now seared into his brain of the naked couple in the messed-up sheets. Couldn't let on how Hannah hadn't let him go near her in weeks, how dirty it made him feel to even try to initiate something. Couldn't confess that jealousy was burning a path through his gut. He looked at Dan and forced himself to smile.

“Your round,” he said.

Chapter 14

“Told you this would be fun, didn't I? Well? Didn't I?”

Sasha was standing so close that every time she spoke, Hannah felt a fine spray of spittle on her cheek that she had to hold herself back from wiping off. Sasha was swaying while she talked, and her hazel eyes were hard and bright and glinted under the overhead lights like shockingly new pennies. At first, Hannah had wondered if Sasha could be on something. That is, something more than the four or five vodka tonics she'd already downed. Then she'd remembered the antidepressants. Weren't you supposed to avoid alcohol when you were taking those?

The evening hadn't started well when Sasha had turned up at the flat, dressed for their night out in a skin-tight black minidress with soaring heels and more makeup than Hannah had ever seen her wear. Josh had been noticeably taken aback when she arrived. He'd started talking really loudly and fast, which he always did when he was nervous. Normally, Hannah found it endearing, but this evening it irritated her. “No need to shout,” she'd said. “We're not deaf.”

Sasha looked incredible. She made Hannah, in jeans and boots and a newish, loose white top—which had seemed charmingly boho-chic when she'd examined herself in the full-length mirror in the bedroom—seem dowdy and middle-aged by comparison. “You look nice,” Josh had told her when she came out of the bedroom, and she'd instantly deflated.
Nice?
Really?

Hannah hadn't been able to stop staring at Sasha. It wasn't just the makeup. There was something else, as well. She seemed luminous.

“Have you done something to your hair?” she'd asked, head cocked to the side. “Had your eyebrows done?”

In the end Sasha cracked.

“BOTOX,” she squealed delightedly. “I wasn't going to tell anyone, but isn't it fab?”

Hannah felt a sharp pang then, which she'd put down to concern for Sasha and for the heartbreaking insecurity that would make a beautiful thirty-four-year-old woman pay to have bacteria injected into her face. Only much later would she admit to herself that the concern was tinged with resentment. She couldn't imagine ever wanting that kind of invasive cosmetic procedure for herself, but it seemed so unfair that she'd been working ever since she left university and still couldn't afford to get her legs waxed. Yet Sasha could splash out hundreds on making herself look better without thinking about it. Hannah felt like Sasha's frumpier older sister, even though Sasha would turn thirty-five six months before her. It was not a comfortable feeling. She was going to be left behind, she suddenly realized. She would be the drab, tired-looking woman wearing yesterday's fashions while women like Sasha, with their regular hairdresser appointments and weekly facials, would stay just the same.

Sasha had insisted on a drink before they even set off, and the change in her behavior had been marked. Her voice had become loud and strident, her laugh piercing and false. She insisted they put on the dance playlist Hannah had made for a party the year before, and immediately started undulating suggestively in front of Josh.

“Come on, big guy, let's see you move,” she said, attempting to haul him to his feet.

Josh looked so appalled, Hannah couldn't help laughing. Even his ears were blushing.

When they eventually called a cab, he didn't even bother to hide his relief.

“Have fun,” he said gamely as they left, and she wished suddenly, desperately, that she wasn't going out at all, but was joining him in settling down on the sofa with a glass of wine and the
Breaking Bad
box set. At the very same time, the thought of yet another Saturday night in, watching Josh marking his interminable pile of papers and listening to people walking past the window on their way to wherever it was people with lives went on a Saturday, made her want to scream.

Sasha had been in a bizarre mood in the taxi, flirting with the Somalian cabdriver, then nearly causing him to crash by leaning through the gap in the front seats to crank up the volume on the tinny car radio when a song came on that she liked. And ever since they'd arrived at the club, her behavior had become increasingly erratic. She and Hannah found themselves a table near the bar, but Sasha couldn't sit for more than a few minutes before she was up, throwing herself around the dance floor, or just standing next to the table, drumming her fingers and swaying, while her eyes darted around the room looking for available men.

And it seemed there were
plenty
of available men.

Practically from the second they arrived, they'd been attracting male attention. By
they
, of course, Hannah meant Sasha. Flicking back her silky black hair and rubbing one brown foot in her unfeasibly high shoes up the calf of the other leg, Sasha was like a man magnet.

“God, I'm on fire tonight. What's going on?” she laughed, after a man with close-cropped hair (meant to disguise his premature baldness, Hannah suspected) had come over expressly to inform her she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

But Hannah had seen how she did it, holding a man's gaze across the room just that fraction longer than was strictly acceptable, drawing him in with a playful half smile, then looking away after he'd committed himself to coming over, glancing up as he arrived as if surprised to find him there. That's when Sasha had said that thing about it being funny. Except Hannah wasn't finding it fun at all.

By this time they'd moved from the table to the bar, and Hannah was feeling cross and out of place. Most people in here were five or ten years younger than they were, cool, confident types who didn't need to keep glancing at their phones in case of child-related emergencies, women whose cropped tops and cutaway dresses revealed taut abdominals that had never seen a pregnancy.

“You look like you're in the waiting room at the dentist, not out enjoying yourself.”

The man had appeared from nowhere, materializing by Hannah's shoulder and speaking from the side of his mouth. She glanced up sharply and was surprised to find herself looking into a pair of shockingly blue, clearly amused eyes set into a ruggedly chiseled face.

“It's not really my scene,” she said.

“Mine neither. I was dragged along by a group of mates. We're on a stag night. You can't imagine the hell.”

Hannah smiled, the grumpiness of just a few moments ago miraculously melting away.

“Who's this?”

Hannah had been vaguely aware of Sasha's intense gaze flicking between her and the unknown stranger during the course of this brief exchange.

“I'm Ed.” The man nodded at Sasha, without making any attempt to move closer to her. Sasha's lip-glossed smile spread like a stain over her face.

“And you came all the way over here because you thought Hannah was about to kill herself! That's so sweet. But don't worry, that's just her regular default expression, although she can also do bored and indifferent. Don't be alarmed, she can't help it. Inside, she's positively beaming!”

Hannah felt a wave of anger, sudden and ferocious. How dare Sasha try to score points by putting her down? She hadn't wanted to come in the first place. Was it any wonder she wasn't dancing a happy jig in this overloud, overheated place?

Ed smiled at her, and she was conscious of his arm brushing hers, causing a burning sensation where their skin touched.

“I don't know,” he said. “I rather like Hannah's default expression.”

Sasha's features seemed to freeze. Through her flattered embarrassment, Hannah had a flash of insight. Sasha was jealous.

Of her.

Meanwhile, she'd moved her arm so that it was no longer quite touching Ed's, but in a way this was even worse because now the hairs on both their arms seemed to be reaching out to make contact, creating an unsettling tingling effect.

“Do you want to dance?”

For a moment, Hannah allowed herself the fantasy. It had been so long since she'd felt anything like this, what harm could it do? She would step forward with this charismatic stranger with his pale blue T-shirt that set off his tan, and his eagle tattoo, and his jeans loosely hanging off his narrow hips, and the faint whiff of nicotine that hugged close to him, reminding her of boys she had lusted after in her youth. And he would take her hand as they pushed through the sea of bodies to find a space and she would feel once again that particular thrill of closing your fingers around an unknown hand, the shocking vulnerability of another person's soft palm in yours. And when they arrived on the dance floor the force of the crowd would push them together until they had no choice but to...

“Oi, oi!”

Sasha thrust herself between Hannah and her fantasy suitor, shattering the daydream.

“Hands off. She's a happily married woman, I'll have you know.” Sasha was speaking in a loud, faux-jolly voice Hannah had never heard before. “If you're after a dance I'm afraid you're going to have to make do with me—the sad, single friend.” She pouted, tilting her head down and gazing up at him through her lashes. Then, with a final flick of her hair, she grabbed his hand, the very one Hannah had been fantasizing about, thrust her bag at Sasha to look after and pulled him off in the direction of the dance floor. He turned his head to Hannah as he was led away and gave her a helpless “what can you do?” look. She smiled and shrugged, hoping her face didn't betray the ugly feeling that gushed, acidic and corrosive, through her gut.

She didn't have a leg to stand on, she knew. She
was
married. And she couldn't blame Sasha for wanting to snaffle the first attractive man they'd seen all night. This evening was supposed to be about her, after all. But all the rationalizing in the world couldn't stop the rage that swept through her as she stood on the edge of the dance floor watching Sasha and Ed weaving their way through the crowds until they disappeared from sight. Her fingers gripped tight around her glass of rum and Coke until the knuckles, under the dimmed lights, were four pale smudges. She set her face into a “good sport” expression, ignoring the ache where the half smile felt heavy and started to sag. The red mist swirled around her brain but she forced herself to stay very still, concentrating her anger into the pressure of her hand around the glass. The music changed, and then changed again, a relentless bass beat that rattled her insides. Where
were
they?

“You on your own?”

A cloud of beery breath engulfed her, almost making her gag. The man who stood swaying next to her was shorter than she was, with hard-gelled black hair and fleshy red cheeks.

“You on your own?” he repeated, louder, as if she might turn out to be foreign.

“No, I'm with a friend.”

“And she's left you? That's not very nice.”

“It's fine. I'm fine.”

Hannah kept her eyes fixed on the dance floor, willing Sasha and Ed to reappear.

“Lemme buy you a drink.”

The man was leaning close, so the plastic spikes of his hair prickled her cheek.

“No. Thanks.”

She scoured the room again, standing on tiptoe hoping for a glimpse of Sasha's silky black head. But nothing.

“Come on. Let's go somewhere quieter. Have a chat.”

He put a meaty, clammy hand on her arm and she jumped back as if burned.

“No! Look, I'm sorry. I've got to go to the loo. I'll see you later.”

She hurried off without a backward glance, carrying Sasha's bag as well as her own. In the ladies' toilets there was the usual queue for the cubicles. Women stood in a straggly line, peering into mirrors as they waited, touching up their makeup and brushing their hair in the overbright, greenish light.

“Could take a while,” the woman in front of Hannah muttered to her. “There's three of 'em in there.” She indicated the middle cubicle from which there was coming a variety of shrieks and giggles. The woman put her finger to the side of her nose and inhaled deeply to indicate what might be taking place.

“And in
that
one—” she pointed to the cubicle on the far end “—there's a couple. A guy and a girl. Not hard to guess what
they're
doing.”

If the woman's thin tattooed eyebrows had arched any higher they'd have come clean off her forehead. Just then there came the noise of a bolt being unlocked. The women waiting wearily in the line shot to attention as the door to the far cubicle was flung open. Hannah's idle curiosity about the occupants turned to shock as a figure in a tight black dress came lurching out. Sasha's lipstick was smudged across her mouth and she was missing an earring. Behind her came a sheepish-looking Ed, whose expression turned to horror when he caught sight of Hannah.

Sasha, on the other hand, looked triumphant.

“Hannah! Where've you been? I've been looking for you all over,” she giggled.

“Slut,” Hannah heard someone hiss.

“Er, I think I'd better go,” said Ed, sidling toward the door.

“Good idea,” snapped Hannah.

A woman in line behind them called out, “Typical man—gets what he wants, then buggers off.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hannah turned on Sasha, not caring that the entire line was listening. “You have no idea who that man is or who he's been with.”

“You're just jealous,” Sasha said, smirking.

Hannah, who was only holding it together by a thread, was relieved when another door opened, and she was able to push past Sasha and lock herself away in a cubicle, leaning her head back against the wall, only now aware that she was trembling, her calves visibly shaking through those stupid frumpy jeans. Why had she agreed to come? Sasha was a liability, a joke. Why had she ever thought they had anything in common? Only now could Hannah see the truth about their friendship, that it had been based solely upon convenience and desperation, and a simple need for company. They had different values, different politics (Sasha never even bothered to vote at all), even a different sense of humor.