Read Online The Broken by Tamar Cohen - Free Book Online

trying to view Dan through Hannah’s eyes. Yes, his presence might be inconvenient, but might not his new-found singledom also give him a kind of cachet, a sense of danger and alpha-maleness that had been better concealed when he was a safely married man? Josh could see how a man like Dan, clearly desired by other women, successful at work and suddenly back on the market, might be very attractive, particularly when he and Hannah were so bogged down in debt themselves. More chokingly, might not this clear evidence of Dan’s healthy sex drive throw the recent deficiencies of their own into sharp relief?
    This jealousy that had crept up from nowhere was like a slow-acting virus you’re not even conscious of until your throat closes up and, wham , you find it’s overtaken your entire system. It’s not as if Hannah had ever expressed the slightest interest in Dan. In fact, it tended to be Josh who would leap to his friend’s defence in the face of Hannah’s disapproval. She’d once said, ‘Dan is like cheap paint. Looks great to begin with, but give him a rub with a damp cloth and he’ll come off on your hand.’ Josh had argued on Dan’s behalf, but inside he’d glowed with pleasure at the unspoken inference (or so he liked to imagine) that he, by contrast, was a man of substance.
    Turning into their road with its mishmash of Victorian and 1920s houses, many of them converted (badly) into flats, Josh’s heart sank when he noted the lack of parking places. Cruising past his house, he felt a twinge of anger when he saw Sasha’s SUV parked right outside in prime position. Couldn’t they have just one evening to themselves, free of drama? While Dan was the model house guest, hardly ever around and entertaining and largely discreet when he was, Sasha was the non-house guest from hell. In the ten days since she and Dan had split up, there’d hardly been a moment when Sasha hadn’t been there, either curled up on the sofa sobbing into whichever of Dan’s crumpled and frankly rank T-shirts she’d fished out of his suitcase, or else pacing the room on those tiny little legs that always looked to Josh as if they shouldn’t even be capable of supporting an adult body, ranting about mid-life crises and responsibilities (or lack thereof) while Hannah brought her cups of tea or glasses of wine, and Josh made endless rounds of fishfingers and pasta and pesto for the girls. It wasn’t that he begrudged her anything – it was just that he and Hannah and Lily had developed such an easy, pleasant routine and now everything was so . . . unsettled .
    As soon as he walked through the door of the flat, he could tell it wasn’t one of Sasha’s good days. Or rather, not one of her less-bad days. The tension rose up to meet him as he lingered in the hallway, taking far longer than he needed to hang his jacket on the hook and fuss over an ecstatic Toby. He could hear September’s shrill voice coming from behind Lily’s closed bedroom door. ‘No, no. Not like that, Lileee,’ she said, stretching out the last syllable of his daughter’s name so that it hung gratingly in the air.
    Hannah came through the living-room door bearing two empty mugs, clearly destined for the kitchen. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’
    Josh’s heart sank. He’d had a tricky day at work. One of the Year Elevens, Kelly Kavanagh, had clearly copied her answers to a test from the girl who sat in front of her and he’d had to get quite tough, which hadn’t been pleasant. Then there’d been an awkward departmental meeting where he and Pat had disagreed. It was only a trivial thing – whether to set coursework based on a production of Macbeth the Year Tens were going to see. Josh was in favour, but Pat thought they should encourage the kids to regard theatre as a pleasure rather than a chore. The issue had been resolved with minimum fuss, with Pat’s view eventually winning over the majority, but it had left a sour taste in Josh’s mouth. All