Read Online The Broken by Tamar Cohen - Free Book Online Page B

more comfortable when things were calm and orderly. Though her little round face lit up in a smile when she saw him, he could tell by her eyes that she was worried. Something in Josh constricted at the sight of her and her transparent conviction that he would make everything all right.
    ‘I wanted Mummy,’ said September, who was kneeling on the floor wearing Lily’s treasured Snow White dress with lipstick smeared all over her mouth.
    ‘Mummy’s a bit busy. Won’t I do?’
    ‘No. I need her to do my hair special. You can’t do that.’
    Josh agreed that doing hair special probably fell outside of his area of expertise.
    ‘I’ll ask Sasha to come in when she’s finished talking to Lily’s mummy, shall I?’
    September eyed him coolly. ‘Are you coming to live with me?’
    Josh was used to Lily’s non-sequiturs, but this one from September caught him unawares.
    ‘Well, my daddy has come to live with Lily, so Lily’s daddy must come to live with us.’
    From the corner of his eye, Josh saw Lily’s eyes widen and her chin start to tremble. ‘I’m sorry, September. That’s not how things work, I’m afraid. I live here, with Hannah and Lily.’
    ‘But that means Lily gets two daddies and that’s not fair.’
    Now both little girls looked as if they were on the edge of tears.
    ‘This is only for a few days, September, while your mummy and daddy sort things out.’
    ‘Then he’s coming home?’
    ‘You’d better talk to him about that, sweetheart.’
    The endearment came out clumsily. While Josh had no problem being lovey dovey with Lily, he always felt awkward around other people’s children, sure he sounded phoney and, even worse, creepy.
    Now September started crying in earnest, her brown eyes brimming with tears.
    ‘I want my daddy,’ she wailed. ‘ I want my daddy! ’
    Finally Sasha appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh poor baby. Come here, my baby.’ Throwing herself to the floor, she swept September up into a hug, crushing the little girl’s head to her bony ribcage. ‘You want your daddy. I know you miss your daddy.’
    As she stroked her daughter’s curls, Sasha gazed up at Josh, all the time keeping up a stream of whispered endearments into her daughter’s shuddering ear, and he was shocked when he finally put a name to the expression on her face.
    Triumph.
    ‘Tell me again what he said.’
    It was the third time Josh had been through it. He was tired. He just wanted to have dinner and slump on the sofa, but instead he was being quizzed about every single conversation he’d had with Dan, and every single conceivable nuance of every single word.
    ‘He just said he felt like he’d been sleepwalking through the last few years of his life, and now he’s waking up.’
    ‘Yes, but that could be a good thing, couldn’t it? It could mean that he’s finally learning what’s important to him, couldn’t it?’
    ‘It could . . .’
    Josh didn’t tell her about the excitement in Dan’s voice when he’d talked about feeling alive for the first time in years. What would be the point?
    ‘I love him so much,’ Sasha said now, apropos of nothing. ‘I think it took something like this to really realize it. I know it will all turn out OK in the end. You know how some things are just meant to be. Dan would never break up our family – he knows what it would do to me after everything I went through as a child. You know, I feel almost relaxed about it now, because I’m so certain he’s coming back.’
    Josh didn’t even want to think about all the different levels on which that bothered him. The karmic everything happens for a reason bullshit-o-meter, the fact that for someone claiming to be so relaxed Sasha was doing a very good impression of being totally the opposite. Sitting in her usual spot on the end of the sofa with her feet tucked up underneath her, she was almost bouncing with excess energy like one of those nodding dogs people put in cars. Her eyes were like two dark glass marbles,