The Broken

by Tamar Cohen

  ‘I still can’t get over being able to be here, with her,’ Dan said, gazing at September as she and Lily ate their lunch cross-legged on the trampoline, their heads bent together. ‘It’s like being given a second chance, you know.’

  ‘If you start counting your blessings, I might have to be sick into this most excellent salad,’ said Josh.

  ‘Oi, less of the sarcasm,’ laughed Sienna, prodding Josh with one of the wooden salad-server hands.

  Dan, though, was clearly intent on having a serious moment. ‘I blame myself, you know.’

  For a moment Hannah thought Dan might actually be about to take some responsibility for the chain of events he’d set in motion.

  ‘I should have realized my leaving would set Sasha off. I was just too in love to see it.’

  Sienna blew him a kiss across the table, while Josh shuffled awkwardly in his chair next to her.

  ‘What exactly did happen to Sasha when she was little?’ Hannah had never dared ask this question outright. Sasha’s traumatic childhood was one of those mythical things that everyone knew existed, but not exactly what they were.

  Dan glanced over at the trampoline, but September and Lily had now gone back to bouncing again, taking it in turns to perform silly mid-air jumps and grading each other out of ten.

  ‘Sasha’s mother was a cunt, basically.’ Dan picked up a lettuce leaf from his plate and started tearing it to pieces. ‘She never really got over Sasha’s dad leaving and blamed Sasha, because she couldn’t accept that he just couldn’t stand being married to her. She hardly had anything to do with Sasha if she could help it, and then she married this complete arsehole who got off on little girls, and when Sasha told her mum what was going on, she ignored it. She told Sasha she was making it up to get attention. She accused her – a nine-year-old child – of being jealous of her. She said Sasha had driven her father away by fawning all over him and she wasn’t going to let her drive his replacement away too.’

  ‘She knew, and she did nothing?’ Hannah felt sick. It was what she’d always suspected from the little snippets that Sasha had let slip over the years, but to hear it spelt out like that, so brutally, was a shock. For a moment all four of them watched the two girls on the trampoline and Hannah knew they were all thinking the same thing – Sasha would have been not much older than September and Lily when the abuse started.

  Sienna got up from the table and went inside the house. Hannah wondered whether being pregnant might make her especially sensitive. She was well aware of how the hormones could drive you from one emotional extreme to another. Hers had well and truly disappeared now, but the memory of them had lingered for quite a while after the miscarriage, tricking her trusting body into believing it was still growing something inside it, still expectant, still fruitful.

  ‘What about her real father?’ she asked Dan.

  ‘He was a selfish bastard. He’d moved on to wife number two by then, and had another baby and moved to France. Having a child from his first marriage come to stay would have got in the way of his playing happy families.’

  Dan seemed oblivious to any irony in what he was saying, to any links between the situation he was describing and his own.

  ‘But surely he couldn’t just ignore what Sasha was saying?’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t say it, did she? Bear in mind she was just a child and she hardly ever saw her dad. They didn’t have the kind of relationship where you just say, “Oh Daddy, by the way, my mother’s husband comes into my room at night and rapes me.” She hinted at it the few times she saw him, but he never picked up on it.’

  ‘But you think he knew?’

  ‘I think he wouldn’t let himself know. It would have been too inconvenient for him. I’m sure that’s why he set up the trust fund for her before he died, the one that’s paying for the five-star nut house she’s in now. It’s guilt money.’

  For the first time since the accident, Hannah allowed herself to feel pity for Sasha, for the child she’d once been. No wonder she was so totally screwed up. What chance did she have – had she ever had – to lead a normal life, with all that lurking in her past?

  ‘How long did she put up with it?’

  ‘Till she was sixteen. That’s when she left home and came to London.’

  Seven years. She’d lived with it for seven years. What did that kind of thing do to a child? How did it affect your ability to form relationships? To parent? How did you learn love when you’d never been shown it?

  ‘Now,’ said Sienna, emerging through the folding glass doors at the back of the house bearing a large cheesecake, ‘it’s time to stop talking and celebrate your fabulous new commission with cake. Double celebration, because I didn’t make it myself!’

  Hannah was embarrassed, but still pinkly pleased. The commission wasn’t anything exciting in itself – just a straightforward case-study interview. But it was a newspaper she’d never written for before. And after the work famine she’d just been through, any commission was a bonus.

  ‘I thank you all kindly,’ she said as the girls scampered over to toast her with cake. ‘And thanks for offering to look after Lil, too. I’d have been totally up the creek if you hadn’t.’

  It was only after she’d accepted the work and put the phone down to the commissioning editor, hoping she had managed not to sound too pathetically grateful, that she’d realized the day the interview had been set up was an inset day at school, so she had no childcare. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel that tight band of panic across her chest as she’d imagined phoning the editor back to say she couldn’t do the job after all. Luckily she hadn’t had to. Josh had convinced her that Sienna wouldn’t mind looking after Lily and had even rung her himself to ask, reporting back that she’d be delighted to help. Lily herself wasn’t so delighted, but Hannah would make it up to her when she got paid. Take her out somewhere special.

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ Sienna was smiling, showing her perfect little teeth, white like Tic Tacs. ‘I’m happy to do it.’

  Later, when they were back at home and Lily was finally asleep, after a protracted bout of tears that seemed to come out of nowhere, Hannah brought up the subject of Sasha again. She was like a sore spot you just couldn’t stop touching.

  ‘No wonder she was so desperate for her and Dan to stay together. After what happened to her, it must have seemed like the end of the world for September to be part of a broken family. And it must have triggered so much stuff from her past.’ They leaned back on the sofa and Josh put his arm around her, still tentatively, as if he was half expecting her to shrug it off or stiffen under his touch as she would have done not so long ago. They still had a long way to go to get their relationship back to where it used to be. Sometimes, when Hannah was crying in the night and wouldn’t let him comfort her, she felt the distance between them unfurling endlessly like a coil of rope and wondered if they’d ever find their way back to each other. But at other times, like now, she felt as if they might just make it. She found it helped to view the last few months as some sort of endurance test that they had been through, like one of those sadistic game shows where contestants have to eat live frogs and crawl through rat-infested sewers. She was proud of how they’d survived. Occasionally, she sought out statistics on how many marriages fail and felt quietly content that they were still here, still together.

  They would come through this, she decided now as Josh picked up the remote and flicked his way through the channels in the way she was determined not to resent. Their marriage would be one of the successful ones. She realized how many threats lurked around the shady edges of their relationship, but they were wiser now, warier. If nothing else, the tragedy of Dan and Sasha had taught them not to rely on anyone else. They were the unit – the two of them, and Lily, of course. Everyone else was on the outside.

  On y va, as Sienna would say.

  She leaned back against Josh’s arm, closed her eyes and allowed herself, finally, to relax.

  Lucie/Sienna, aged twenty
-four

  Lucie is back, that petite cochonne. I think it’s because of the baby. Until recently, I hadn’t seen her for years. I wish she’d go away again. I’m worried what she’ll do. I’m worried what she already has done. Gobble, gobble, gobble. When Lucie and Eloise were in the womb, Lucie ate Eloise. No, really, she did! There’s a name for it. Vanishing Twin Syndrome, where one twin grows so big it totally absorbs the other. Pffff. Now you see it, now you don’t. Mother never got over it. Imagine expecting two little babies and ending up with one giant, greedy one! No wonder she lost the plot. She couldn’t get past what Lucie had done, couldn’t stop thinking about poor fragile Eloise she failed to protect.

  And now my baby needs protecting, too. Not from Sasha any more, now she’s locked away merrily self-harming somewhere (that thing on her arm that so shocked them all – amateur time, baby!). It’s Hannah and Josh who are the threat now. Lucie doesn’t like how they stuck by Sasha and refused to write statements even when they knew she wasn’t fit. Mothers should be fit to be mothers. It’s a basic maternal requirement. Lucie made the call to Josh’s work, and wrote the things on Hannah’s Twitter. She popped that note into little Lily’s bag. She doesn’t like how much influence Hannah and Josh have over Dan. She doesn’t like the history they all shared before, the way they keep telling in-jokes that only they understand. Some of us non-Jurassics were still at school when all these oh-so-amusing things (not!) happened. But you know what Lucie especially doesn’t like? Those two little girls. They’re sitting in the back of the car right now. I can see the tops of their heads. From where I’m sitting, here behind the wheel, they could almost be twins. Double trouble!

  I love those two girls, really I do, but I’m scared Lucie doesn’t understand.

  She’s been quite a bitch to them, setting one against the other, strongest against weakest. It’s survival of the fittest, she says. But then she’s insane. All that stuff she did to Sasha – the break-in, the escalator, the nail in the car tyre – I’m scared of what will happen when the baby comes. Lucie is such a greedy-guts. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

  We’re on our way to the seaside for the day – heading down to Sussex for a nice long walk near the cliffs on the South Downs. Me and the double-trouble girls. I offered. I’m happy to help out. They’ve all been through so much – Dan and Josh and Hannah – and I feel like it’s my fault. If I hadn’t fallen in love with Dan, none of it would have happened, so this is the least I can do. I just wish Lucie hadn’t come too. Sitting there in the front seat as if she was invited. Cheeky cow! Maybe she’ll leave soon. Now that would be a relief. Maybe she’ll check her phone, and realize she’s late for something, and unbuckle her belt and go. I’ll see her in the rear-view mirror – a blur of motion at the edge of my vision. Here today, gone tomorrow.

  Lickety-split.

  Acknowledgements

  Massive thanks to everyone who made this a better book – Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown, and Jane Lawson, Kate Samano, Bella Whittington and Leanne Oliver at my wonderful publishers, Transworld.

  Thanks also to Dr Roma Cartwright for her help with all things medical, and to Fiona Godfrey for advice on schools and disciplinary procedures. Any mistakes that remain are completely down to me.

  I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy tremendous support from writer friends during the gestation of this book, particularly Louise Millar, Amanda Jennings and Lisa Jewell.

  Other friends have also done their bit to keep me sane, notably Rikki Finegold, Juliet Brown, Mel Amos, Helen Bates and, of course, the Tuesday Club.

  Writing days can be long and lonely – special thanks to Ben Clarke for cyber company and up-to-the-minute weather reports.

  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my lovely family – Gaynor Cohen, Sara Cohen, Simon Cohen, Emma Cohen, Colin Hall, Ed Hall and Alfie Hall, Margaret Fawcett and Paul Fawcett.

  And love, as always, to Michael, Otis, Jake and Billie.

  About the Author

  Tamar Cohen is a freelance journalist who lives in London with her partner and three teenage children. She is the author of the acclaimed The Mistress’s Revenge, The War of the Wives and Someone Else’s Wedding. The Broken is the first in a series of psychological suspense novels. Follow her on Twitter: @mstamarcohen.

  Also by Tamar Cohen

  The Mistress’s Revenge

  The War of the Wives

  Somone Else’s Wedding

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  A Random House Group Company

  www.transworldbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain

  in 2014 by Doubleday

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Tamar Cohen 2014

  Tamar Cohen has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448169030

  ISBNs 9780857521842 (hb)

  9780857521859 (tpb)

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at:

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1