The Fallout (18 page)

Lucie/Eloise, age thirteen

Maman came to school today for the prize-giving. I was so excited because the Prize for All-Around Excellence is pretty much the biggest deal EVER and Juliette said her parents would literally Drop Dead from Pride if she ever won anything like that. And at first it was great. Maman looked amazing and Binky from the year above actually asked if she was on TV because she thought she'd seen her in
Casualty
or something. And Daddy was so pleased with me. And we all had lunch in the dining room and Maman was being very funny and had lots more silly English phrases that she'd learned from her book. Like lickety-split. And we kept saying “lickety-split” and laughing and laughing. And I could see the other girls were looking at me and wishing they had parents like mine and my heart was just EXPLODING but at the same time I couldn't eat because my insides were churning like something bad was about to happen. And later on, when Mrs. Eldridge-Parry gave the speech to introduce my prize and said “This is for Lucie, or as she's known to us in our Archminster family, Eloise,” I knew what that something bad was. I was sitting on the stage in a row of chairs with the other prizewinners and I heard the scream and I stayed in my chair as if my bum had been superglued to it while there was a big commotion in the audience. And when Mrs. Eldridge-Parry started talking again and gave me my prize, I didn't look at the empty seats where Maman and Daddy had been sitting. I already knew they were long gone. Lickety-split.

Chapter 19

Josh gazed at the white plastic stick on the table as if it might turn out to be some sort of trick. While he gazed, neither of them spoke, their silence a concrete presence in the room. He reached out and picked it up, turning it over in his hands.

“You're not going to find any answers hidden on the back, you know.” Hannah snatched it back from him and threw it down to the other end of the table.

“Well?” she said.

Surprise had wiped Josh clean of emotion. He blinked at her, opening his mouth and then closing it again when he realized there were no words waiting to come out.

“I knew it. It's a disaster, isn't it?” Hannah asked.

Josh now became conscious of thoughts returning to his brain as if back from a minibreak. He probed them cautiously. Another baby. How did he feel? Slowly the thoughts took shape and he was astounded to find he felt...
ecstatic
.

Let Pat Hennessey keep the promotion, let Dan keep his gorgeous new girlfriend. This would show them both. Josh had what they didn't. He was virile, dynamic, the founder of a dynasty. Babies were something Josh could do. They were something he was good at. And a new baby would sort out whatever had been going wrong between him and Hannah. He wouldn't need to worry about her losing interest in him—or secretly lusting after Dan. A new baby, he couldn't help but feel, would restore him to himself. It was something clean and pure to counterbalance those ugly things being said at school.

He got up and walked around the table so he could put his arms around Hannah. “I'm thrilled,” he whispered. For a moment, she slumped into him and they swayed together wordlessly. Then she pulled away.

“We can't afford it,” she said flatly.

“Screw the money.”

Hannah made a strange noise then, something halfway between a sob and a snort, and Josh tried to pull her back toward him.

“We'll make it work. I'll look for another job if you want, with better pay. Come on, Hannah. We never wanted Lily to be an only child, and isn't it better to do this now, while they can still play together and enjoy each other? Can you imagine how excited Lily is going to be?”

Hannah nodded slowly. Lily had been begging them for a little brother or sister almost since she first learned to talk. She and September were always pretending to be sisters, desperate for entry into what they fondly imagined to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day sleepover club. “We're like you and Auntie Gemma,” Lily would tell Hannah happily as she and September were tucked into her single bed.

“I just can't help feeling it's the wrong time, though,” Hannah said. “Not just the money, but also this thing with Sasha and Dan that, thanks to you, I might add, has just gotten even worse.”

Josh sighed. They'd been through all this. He'd acknowledged he shouldn't have told Dan about the happy pills. It had been an impulsive email when he'd been particularly fed up with Sasha—he hadn't thought it through. He didn't know how many times he could apologize.

“We've become way too caught up in their shit, and it hasn't been healthy,” he said. “This is something that's about us—about our little family. It'll help us get a bit of distance, reprioritize.”

Hannah nodded again, but she still didn't seem convinced, and later that night when he snuggled up to her in bed and laid the flat of his hand on her gently rounded belly, he could have sworn that, just for a second, she flinched.

* * *

“It's the last fucking straw. I'm not kidding, Josh. This is it. I'm finished with being Mr. Nice Guy.”

Dan's face was so disfigured by his outrage that, for the first time, Josh wondered whether his friend might not actually be quite ugly. They were, once more, at the odious gym café, but Dan was a long way from looking his normal relaxed self. His shoulder-length hair looked unwashed and slightly greasy under the bright lights, and the purple shadows under his eyes were the texture of sweated red onion.

“It's got to be crossed wires, Dan. Sasha wouldn't do that to September deliberately.”

“Know what? I'm beginning to realize there's nothing Sasha wouldn't do. She told me seven o'clock. I wrote it down. I'd been looking forward to it all week.”

“Well, maybe she got her times mixed up.”

“She did it on purpose, Josh. She deliberately got there an hour early, just to make me look bad, and then left before I arrived. How do you think it feels getting a voice mail from your daughter, crying hysterically because she thinks you stood her up? I was in the car, on my way to meet them. At the time we'd agreed.”

“Didn't you try to go over there to sort it out?”

“Of course I did. Sasha refused to come to the door. I completely lost it, shouting through the mail slot. I think I might even have threatened to kill her. Then she sent me a text saying I'd upset our daughter enough for one day, and if I didn't leave she'd call the police and tell them what I'd said.”

Indignation caused Dan's voice to rise until he was almost shouting, and the woman sitting at the table behind him turned around to frown.

Josh felt his skin prickling with irritation. He'd only agreed to meet Dan here because he couldn't wait to share his news, and now Dan had hijacked the whole thing with yet more vitriol about Sasha.

“Well, like I said, it's the last straw. I've already called my lawyers about this, and they're going to nail her to the wall.”

“Lawyers? What lawyers?”

Josh was sure he hadn't heard Dan mention lawyers before. In fact, as far as he knew, Dan had been convinced they could do everything through mediation, without involving lawyers. Hadn't he talked about the most amicable divorce in history?

“Piers Butler. Sienna put me on to him. He's a fucking rottweiler.”

“But do you really think...”

“Look, I've tried to play fair, but now that she's started using September as a pawn, fairness has gone out the window. I've got to do what's best for my daughter.”

Dan had a glass of something green in front of him that looked like the stuff that came out of Toby the dachshund's mouth when he'd eaten too much grass. Josh took a sip of his coffee and tried not to look at it.

“Anyway,” Dan went on after a short silence, “that's enough about me. What did you want to talk about? Your text said you had news.”

Josh hesitated.

“Hannah's pregnant,” he said. “We're having another baby!”

Dan froze, green sludge halfway to his lips.
Yes
, thought Josh, jubilantly.
Gotcha.
All that gut-twisting speculation about Dan's sex life with Sienna, the feelings of inferiority. Well, now he had something better. A family. Stability.

Josh watched as the news sank in and a smile slowly spread over the other man's face until it looked as if it would burst clean off his cheeks.

“That's fantastic. So pleased for you both.”

Still that smile, stretching his skin cling-film tight.
No
, thought Josh.
Don't let him say it.

“I've got to tell you something.”

No, no, no, no, no.

“We weren't going to say anything, but I can't keep it secret now.”

No, no, no, no, no.

“
Sienna's pregnant, too! Isn't that the weirdest thing? We're going to be new dads together!”

“Yeah, that is weird. But isn't it a bit soon?” Josh knew he should try to sound more enthusiastic, but he could hardly speak.

Dan was nodding, even before Josh had finished his question.

“We didn't plan it. It's a total fluke. Sienna was on the pill but she was doing this all-night shoot and someone gave her this stuff—you can only get it on prescription in the States apparently—that makes you not have to sleep, and she took it for a few days. And only after she got pregnant did she find it totally reacts with the pill. She's going to make the most fantastic mum. I can't wait. Just think, Josh, our babies can grow up together just like September and Lily.”

Josh struggled to find something to say. “Who'd have thought it, eh?”

Dan suddenly looked serious.

“Listen. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I don't want Sasha finding out. I'll tell her and September when the time's right. But now you can see how important it is that I push the divorce through as soon as possible, and sort out money and custody and all that.”

“And you really intend to take the house and September? Don't you know what that'll do to Sasha?”

“Just in the short term, while Sasha gets her head together. Of course, I'm going to make sure she's well looked after in the long term, but for now September needs stability, and it'll be good for us all to get used to living together as a family, especially now there's a baby on the way.”

Josh couldn't believe what he was hearing. What kind of rock had Dan been living under that he really believed he could slot Sienna into Sasha's place without messing up his daughter for life?

Dan leaned across the table to put a hand on Josh's arm. Josh froze, muscles tensed, feeling his skin itch where Dan touched it. “Look, I know Sasha is a good mum, or at least she has been up until now. But she's not herself, and frankly I'm afraid of what she might do. Of course I feel guilty as fuck about what's happened to her, but I need to look after my daughter. That has to be my priority.”

Dan was saying all this as though, if he could just explain things properly, Josh would agree that he was right, that everything he was saying was reasonable. When Josh didn't reply, he sat back, nodding to himself, clearly taking the silence as tacit endorsement.

“You know,” he said after a while, “I still can't get over this joint pregnancy. Sometimes the world is in-fucking-sane.”

Josh stared long and hard at the disgusting green mulch in Dan's glass.

In-fucking-sane.

* * *

Hannah had agreed to wait until Josh got home before they broke the news to Lily about the baby. They both knew it was still early days, but Hannah had sailed through the first pregnancy and Lily could really do with a lift. She'd seemed so down recently. All day at school, he'd been stifling his smiles as he thought about Lily's face when they told her, but by the time he came through the door, his pleasure had dissipated, leaving only a lingering, stale taste.

Trust Dan to ruin it. Did he have to compete on everything?

When he walked into the living room, Lily hurled herself at his legs.

“Daddy. I made an angel in school and Mrs. 'Kenzie said it was the best angel and can we get a puppy? 'Cause I think Toby is sad because he has no one to play with.”

Hannah, sitting at the table with one of Lily's reading books open in front of her, shrugged. She looked tired, Josh thought. Her lovely hair was scraped back and knotted on the top of her head with a rubber band, giving her face a vulnerable, exposed look. Her shoulders, swamped by that old burgundy sweatshirt of his, slumped as if weights were resting on them.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” she said, in a voice that suggested she wasn't fine at all. “You?”

“Good. Well, I was until I stopped off for a coffee with a certain person at a certain gym not far from here.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

“And?”

He sighed. “I'll tell you about it later.”

Hannah had made pasta with tomato sauce again. He tried not to mind. It wasn't as if Lily was the most adventurous eater in the world. They were both constrained in what they cooked by her conservative palate. But it would be so nice to have something different—just for a change.

Once the food had been served up and they were sitting down, Hannah took a deep breath.

“Lily, Daddy and I have something very important to talk to you about.”

Lily's round blue eyes flicked between the two of them and something jolted painfully in Josh when he recognized the fear in them.

“I don't want Daddy to move away,” she said, her bottom lip trembling. “I don't want you to be divorced like Tember's mummy and daddy.”

“Oh, darling.” Hannah got up and threw her arms around their daughter. “Daddy and I aren't getting divorced. I promise you. This is nice news. Exciting news.”

She glanced at Josh over the top of Lily's head, and he nodded encouragingly before getting up and coming around to kneel in front of Lily's chair.

“What do you want most in the world, Lily?” he asked.

She thought carefully, her blue eyes cloudy with the effort of it.

“A BABY born?” she said hopefully, naming a doll Hannah refused to buy.

“No.” Hannah smiled. “Much better than a BABY born.”

Lily looked at her wonderingly.

“It's not a puppy, though, is it?” she said, every word sending the message “please let it be a puppy.”

Hannah shook her head.

“Darling girl. You're going to have a little brother or sister.”

Lily's eyes seemed to grow bigger, like a cartoon character's. Josh felt a dissolving somewhere at the heart of him as he watched the news sink in, the smile spreading like sunlight across his daughter's face. He felt something heavy lift off of him and was hit by a sudden conviction that things would turn out all right. But first he had to tell Hannah about the conversation with Dan.

* * *

“You are joking. Tell me you're joking.”

They'd only just managed to get Lily to bed after a long, protracted bedtime where she'd made them promise again and again that she could help choose the baby's name, and that when it was old enough it could sleep in her bed. Now Hannah, who a minute ago had looked like she was asleep on her feet, was sitting bolt upright on the end of the sofa, staring at him.

“I know. Crazy, isn't it? I don't think he meant to tell me, either, he just blurted it out when I told him our news.”