The Fallout (9 page)

Chapter 9

“I know it was her. It has to be.”

Dan jumped up from the sofa to stand in front of the living room window, staring out at his car, hands on hips, as if it might somehow look different from the last time he had jumped up to look, just minutes before.

“She knows how much that car means to me. It's just the kind of thing she'd do.”

Josh joined him at the window. As usual, Dan had parked his bright red vintage Alfa Romeo Spider convertible in front of the driveway next door, blocking it. Josh had in fact asked him not to do so on a couple of occasions, after the neighbors had arrived at the door, tight-lipped, baby in arms, muttering about the difference between communal and private rights-of-way. But the problem with Dan was that he'd be all affability and apologies at the time, and then do exactly the same thing all over again the next time he couldn't immediately find a place to park.

“It doesn't look
too
bad, not from a distance, anyway.”

Dan turned to face him, incredulity stretching out his features.

“What the fuck are you talking about? There's a fucking crater running around the whole car where she's scratched it with her keys. How can you say it doesn't look too bad?”

“Come on, Dan. You can't be sure it was Sasha. How could she have known where your car was in the first place?”

“Didn't she follow me the other night and practically assault me in a restaurant? How hard would it have been to find out where I'm staying? All she'd need to do is call the agency and pretend to be delivering something to Sienna.”

Josh's eyes swung to face Dan.

“I don't believe it. You really have been staying at Sienna's? Bloody hell, Dan. You're supposed to be trying to make this transition as smooth as possible.”

Dan looked shifty.

“Where else was I supposed to stay? You and Hannah threw me out, and I can't afford to go shelling out on a hotel, now that I've got two households to support. Anyway, it's traumatic not seeing September. I hate it and obviously I feel guilty as fuck. Sienna's been helping me through it. I don't think I could have survived the last few days without her.”

Josh shook his head as if trying to physically dislodge what he'd just heard.

For a few seconds, the two men stood side by side in silence, studying the mutilated car.

“So where does she live then, Sienna? Don't tell me—Notting Hill?”

Dan looked surprised.

“How did you know that?”

“Because every aspiring model, creative type or newly separated man living out his midlife crisis heads for Notting Hill.”

Dan grimaced as if Josh had said something offensive.

“Yeah, well, don't make too many assumptions. It's only temporary. Anyway, Sienna's flat is tiny. It's not like we're shacked up in some swanky Hugh Grant–style town house or anything. As soon as my house is sold I'll get something around here, big enough for September to have her own room when she stays with me.”

“
Your
house?”

“Okay, our house, although I did pay for the whole thing practically single-handed.”

“That's not the point.”

“I know, I know. Look, I've already said I'm going to be fair, haven't I? Although after what she's done to my car I feel like taking the whole fucking lot.”

They sat down again, Josh in the armchair and Dan on the sofa. Josh couldn't help eyeing the pile of papers on the coffee table that he'd been in the middle of marking when Dan turned up out of the blue. It was Sunday afternoon, and his class would be expecting their essays back the next morning. He hoped Dan wasn't planning on staying too long.

“I went to pick up September,” he'd explained when he arrived. “I'd left Sasha a long voice mail explaining exactly when I'd be coming, and she fucking well wasn't home. Can you believe that? I didn't even say anything about the car in the message—I was going to bring that up in person so I could see her expression.”

“She's out with Hannah. They've taken Lily and September to one of those indoor play places.”

“Fucking brilliant. I spend forty minutes sitting in traffic in my banged-up car just to see our daughter, and Sasha is out having fun with her mates.”

“I wouldn't exactly call it fun. Have you ever been to one of those places?”

“That's not the fucking point, Josh.”

“No. I know, but I was very relieved to give it a miss. Especially since I've got so much marking to do.”

If Dan had noticed Josh's pointed tone, he hadn't let on, and an hour later, he showed few signs of moving. Josh had a sudden inspiration.

“It might not be a bad idea if you cleared out before Hannah gets back,” he said, awkwardly. “She's still pretty angry about you breaking your promise about seeing Sienna. And obviously she feels very loyal to Sasha.”

This was the perfect opportunity to bring up Sasha's wild allegation. Josh could almost feel the words on his tongue, sitting there like lumps of undercooked potato. Yet he couldn't bring himself to say them. Josh was certainly no expert in communication, but even he knew that there were some things that, once said, cannot ever be unsaid. He knew there was no way Dan would ever have hit his wife, so why risk inflaming things by passing on what she'd said?

“Yeah, well, that's exactly why I'm going to stick around for a bit—so I can show Hannah the damage to my car. She needs to realize there are two sides to this story. I know I'm the one who walked out, but Sasha is not the innocent you think she is, believe me. Shit, do you know it's only since I've been with Sienna that I've realized just how fucked up Sasha really is? You have no idea how good it feels to be with someone who isn't testing me the whole time, who actually treats me with respect, who wants to hear how my day's been and genuinely cares how I'm feeling.”

Josh felt a twinge of resentment. When was the last time Hannah asked him how he was in a way that made him feel she was really interested? These days she seemed so impatient with him, as if everything he said irritated her.

He wondered again about Dan and whether Hannah was making unfavorable comparisons between them. Wasn't he always hearing that women are attracted to bastards, not nice guys who take out the garbage without being asked? And if anyone was acting like a bastard at the moment, it was Dan.

At school and university, Josh had always been the quiet one that girls spoke to if they wanted to know why their boyfriends were acting in a certain way, or whether Nick or Jason or Finn was seeing anyone at the moment. The role of Friend to Someone More Dynamic was one he'd been playing all his life, it seemed to him. Why should things be any different now, just because he was older and the person he was playing that role to was his own wife?

“What if Sasha comes back here with Hannah?”

“Good. That's absolutely fucking fine with me. I've got a couple of questions I'd like to put to my
ex-
wife.”

“Ex? Last I checked, you're married until you're divorced.”

“Not married. Separated. Sasha and I are separated.”

Again Josh felt that jolt of unease at how quickly it was possible to pass from couple to single, from lover to enemy.

When Hannah walked in an hour and a half later, Josh couldn't help feeling relieved at the cool reception she gave Dan.

“Hi, Dan. I thought that was your car outside.”

“Oh, you noticed it, did you? Did you also notice the fucking huge scratch on it, courtesy of my darling ex-wife?”

Hannah gave him a look of exasperated disbelief. Josh noticed she looked strained. There was that little patch of eczema again, up near her hairline, the skin pink and raised, with tiny flakes like grains of sand.

“Oh, really. And you know that for a fact, do you? You know that Sasha somehow tracked down your car and risked arrest and a criminal record for the pleasure of damaging it? You know it was her and not some mindless vandal? Where was it, anyway?”

“What does it matter where it was?”

“It matters because how would she have known where to find the damn thing?”

“He was at Sienna's.”

Josh couldn't help himself. But as soon as he'd spoken he wished he hadn't. He sounded so eager—as if he couldn't wait to sell out his mate. He saw Dan shaking his head silently and felt a stab of shame.

“Oh, Dan. You can't seriously be staying with that woman?”

Dan looked as if he was about to protest.

“I know how it must look to you, Hannah,” he said eventually.

“Do you? I don't think so. I think if you had any idea how shitty this looks to me you'd never have done it in the first place.”

“I didn't have much choice. I had nowhere to go after you threw me out, and I wanted to be with someone who doesn't treat me like the devil incarnate just because I'm finally being honest, for the first time in years.”

“Oh, I see, so now it's us who drove you to it, is that it?”

The patch of dry skin on Hannah's face looked red and angry now, clashing with the burgundy-colored sweatshirt she was wearing with her jeans. The sweatshirt was an old one of Josh's, faded and shapeless, and he secretly wished she wouldn't wear it. She had such a beautiful body, he couldn't understand her need to cover it up all the time. Not that he'd say as much to her. He'd tried that at the start of their relationship but she'd become defensive, sure he was either being controlling or trying to flatter her, so he'd given up.

“I'm not saying that, Hannah.”

Josh turned his attention sharply to Dan. Surely that wasn't a catch in his voice just now? The prospect of Dan being overcome with emotion was vaguely horrifying.

“I'm just trying to explain things to you.” His voice was definitely quivering. “I know what I'm doing seems really brutal, and you have no idea how much I hate hurting my family. But I was dying in that relationship. That's how it felt. Sasha has such set ideas of how she thinks a couple should be, and what image of us she wanted to present to the world. Sienna allows me to be me. Do you know how amazing that feels after ten years of trying to fit into someone else's picture of me?”

Josh felt strangely embarrassed at the end of this speech. He and Dan didn't talk about this kind of stuff. That was part of the reason Josh felt so comfortable with him. He'd heard him open up once to other people about emotional matters on the late end of a dinner party. How a cousin he'd been close to had died when they were teenagers, and how ever since then he'd felt a spiritual connection, as if part of his cousin was always with him. Freaky stuff like that. But as if by unspoken agreement, when they were on their own, they didn't discuss anything that risked straying into emotional territory.

If Hannah was moved by Dan's display of vulnerability, she wasn't showing it.

“Look, no one disputes your right to leave if you're unhappy. But not like this—dumping your wife for a model ten years younger. It's so tacky, so demeaning.”

“I didn't dump her for Sienna. Sienna might have been the catalyst but I'd been looking for a way out for years. Sasha just wasn't listening to me. Nothing I said got through to her.”

“Is that why you hit her?”

There was a pause.

Josh had heard the expression “the color drained from his face,” but this was the first time he'd ever seen it happen. Dan's head whipped backward as if he'd been physically struck and he stared at Hannah, wide-eyed.

“You heard me,” she said.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Hang on, is that what she's saying? The crazy bitch is saying I hit her? You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Hannah was the first to break her gaze away, looking down at her hands. Josh could tell she was regretting bringing up the subject.

“She says it's in her medical notes.”

Dan was on his feet now, pacing around with both hands clasped over his head,

“This has got to be a joke. Please tell me you're joking.”

Hannah glanced at Josh.

“She's crazier than I thought. Oh, fuck. Why would she say something like that? You don't believe her, right? You don't think I would actually do that, do you?”

His eyes, under the cradle of his clasped hands, flicked from Hannah to Josh and then back again.

“Of course we don't. We're your friends.”

Josh felt compelled to jump in with his support, to head off any confrontation. Anyway, it was the truth. He didn't think Dan would do such a thing.

“Jesus!” Dan dropped back heavily onto the sofa, his face grey and suddenly saggy, like someone decades older.

“When did it come to this? We loved each other. We had a beautiful little girl together, and now she's claiming I'm a
wifebeater
? How does that happen?”

“It was just something she said on the spur of the moment when she was angry and hurt,” said Josh. “She probably doesn't even remember saying it now.”

“I hope so. I really hope so. It's all so fucked up”

Dan's voice cracked properly, and Josh shut his eyes so he wouldn't have to watch the tear trickling down his friend's face.

Opening his eyes just a crack, he saw Hannah, pinkly overheated now in the thick sweatshirt she still hadn't taken off, dropping down next to Dan, all the fight now gone, and resting a hand on his leg.

“You're right about that, Dan. Totally fucked up.”

Lucie, age eight

I'm going away to school. Daddy says I must be brave and not mind because Mummy just needs a rest, but I know it's really because of the bad thing I did. Sometimes I say bad French words to myself that I've heard Mummy say when she thought no one was listening. I know they're bad because one time when Mummy was well and not resting I said them to her and she was shocked and she said a dirty mouth is a dirty mind. But she didn't go all cold and stare at me and make her eyes like daggers to stab me with so I didn't really mind. I'm scared of going to school but sometimes I'm scared of Mummy, too. I hope I will have some friends there and we can have midnight feasts under the covers and maybe it will be like a holiday camp, like Daddy says.