The Fallout by Tamar Cohen Page A

seven
    Yesterday it was my birthday. Daddy gave me a bike with pink glittery streamers on the handlebars and it has training wheels, but I mustn’t worry about them because soon I’ll be able to ride it and they’ll be off quick as a flash. Mummy didn’t come downstairs and Daddy said she’s tired but I know it’s because of Eloise. Sometimes I hate Eloise but I can’t say that because it’s Bad. I went creeping upstairs to see Mummy even though Daddy said I shouldn’t. She was lying in her bed like a princess with her hair all around the pillow but when she saw me she told me to go out because she couldn’t bear the sight of me. It’s because I had that bad thought about Eloise. Mummy knows. She knows everything.

Chapter 7
    â€œI’m going to give her whatever she wants. Anything. I know that scene last night was hideous and she hates my guts at the moment, but she adores September just as much as I do. Once she calms down a bit she’ll want to do what’s best for her.”
    â€œLike having two parents living together? That’d be best, wouldn’t it? Isn’t that what all the studies say?”
    Dan frowned over the top of his strawberry-and-passion-fruit smoothie.
    â€œNot helpful, Josh, man.”
    â€œSorry.”
    Josh wished he didn’t feel quite so awkward. They were in the café at Dan’s fancy gym in the shadow of Alexandra Palace and, as always, Josh felt like he was being judged. It wasn’t that he was in bad shape exactly, but compared to Dan and the other guys in there, he felt flabby and underdefined. It wasn’t his fault they didn’t have extra money lying around to spend on a membership and state-of-the-art Lycra workout gear. And yes, he supposed he could do as Hannah was always suggesting and go running or cycle to work or whatever, but she had no real clue how much teaching took out of a person. People always assumed it was a sedentary, physically undemanding job, but he was always on his feet to illustrate a point, or pacing around the classroom looking at individual students’ work. And there was psychological stress. It’d take more than a few chin-ups on one of those fancy weight machines or twenty minutes in the steam room to sort out the knots in his brain after eight hours of teaching.
    â€œLook—” Dan put on his sincere face, just as obviously as if he was pulling on a hat “—I don’t know how many times I can apologize for last night. I know I made you and Hannah a promise, and I broke it. I feel like I abused your hospitality. But, hand on heart, it was the first time Sienna and I met up. I just had to see her.”
    â€œSo it’s serious, then?”
    Dan’s face slackened and he cast his eyes downward, looking for a moment like a love-struck teenager. “We have...strong feelings for each other.”
    â€œRight. So that was all bullshit then, that stuff about Sasha not having to know about you and Sienna because it was so new and it could go nowhere?”
    Dan looked as close to shamefaced as he ever got.
    â€œI just wanted to keep her out of it. I was being protective, I suppose.”
    â€œProtective of whom? Your wife or your mistress?”
    Dan glared at him. Clearly the word mistress grated. Well, good. Dan was so infuriatingly sure of himself, always bending the truth until it fit in with the image he’d created of himself in his own head. He needed to see how this looked from the outside, just how grubby the whole thing was.
    â€œHey, Dan.” The woman who stood by the table was the color of a newly minted penny and dressed in head-to-toe electric blue spandex, her highlighted blond hair pulled back into a high ponytail. “You coming to circuit training later?”
    At first Josh had taken her to be in her late twenties, but closer inspection put her more in her midforties, the fine lines next to her eyes and the crepey swell