Times Like These Read online

  ‘That’s none of your business, Hannah, and it’s certainly not your story to go gossiping to Rosalie about.’

  Hannah raised her hand to say stop. ‘I’m not finished.’

  Andrea straightened, dropping her hands on her hips and pulling her lips into a pout. But she didn’t move from her spot on the sidewalk.

  ‘You sleep with someone like Hunter for six months and walk out on someone like Tommy, who you get along with. You’re terrified of being with anyone who might stick. You’re afraid to be committed to anyone.’

  ‘I have been committed to people all my life,’ Andrea snapped back.

  ‘You lost your mom. You took care of your dad when he needed help. You brought up Sofia as if she was your responsibility. You have never committed by choice and you’re terrified of doing so.’

  Andrea lowered her voice, glancing at passers-by on the street, whose attention had been drawn by the showdown. ‘You’re the prime example of how that statement is bullshit, Professor Hannah. I’ve never walked away from you. Or maybe that’s because I feel a sense of responsibility to you too, huh? With a million mouths to feed and a lazy, selfish husband to take care of. Well, let me tell you something, Hannah, I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of playing friend instead of boss when you take endless days off for sick kids. When you leave early because Rod got a new job and didn’t have the decency to discuss it with you first.’

  Hannah saw the proverbial red mist. ‘Do. Not. Talk about. My family.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s shitty when someone spreads crap you don’t want to hear, isn’t it?’

  Hannah squared up to Andrea. ‘I told our friend – one of your best friends – that you slept with Tommy. I wasn’t gossiping, I was putting her as far off the scent of you fucking her dad that she could get. That’s the joke, Andi, I was protecting you. And why? So that you could badmouth me and my family? I’ve stood by you for years and you’re currently throwing it back in my face because I’ve called you on your shit. You’re terrified of getting hurt. Well, aren’t we all, Andi?’

  Andrea’s shoulders heaved and Hannah almost felt bad. She knew Andrea’s insecurities and had just exposed them in the street. But not unprompted.

  ‘You need to decide whether you’re my friend or my assistant and realise that there’s a line you can’t blur.’

  Hannah scoffed. ‘We’ve blurred the line for years. I’m always looking out for you, Andi, no matter how bad your mood or what stupid things you decide to do.’

  ‘No, Hannah, I’m always looking out for you. Any other boss would have kicked you out on your ass already, not brought you over from Sanfia Records and kept giving you pay rises to help with the ever-growing family.’

  What stung Hannah, what made her feel like someone was driving a stake through her heart, wasn’t the words being thrown at her but the person saying them. She looked through the revolving door to the office. She did need her job. She needed the salary and the stability, now more than ever. But she could find these things closer to home, where her commute would be negligible.

  She stayed with Andrea because she was her best friend. Because Andrea needed Hannah more than she would ever admit. Because working with Andrea had always made her feel like she was just a city gal, free as a bird. Her own person, not a mom or a wife.

  Today, though, Hannah wanted to tell her so-called friend where to shove her job and her apparent pity vote. She had always defended Andrea. She knew Andrea behaved the way she had because she had had a tough life in many respects. But times change. And since coming over to Stellar and getting her promotion to CEO, working with Andrea had changed.

  She moved her focus to Andrea, who was looking back at her. Say sorry, she willed. Apologise to me for being a dick.

  But Andrea stood defiantly, her hands in her pockets. Of course she won’t apologise.

  ‘I’m going home,’ Hannah said.

  ‘We’ve got work to do,’ Andrea told her, not an ounce of compassion or remorse in her tone. Just cold, bitter Andrea. Shut down and in protection mode.

  Hannah shook her head as she walked past her friend.

  ‘Are you coming back?’ Andrea asked, a hint of feeling breaking her steely demeanour.

  Hannah let the words reach her back and decided not to respond. She had had enough. Enough of Andrea’s shitty attitude. Enough of her digs about Hannah’s family, as if Andrea’s life, with her spacious, empty apartment and nothing but work and men she fucked, was better than Hannah’s children and husband.

  She walked without purpose not knowing if she would go back, until she reached the river. Then she walked alongside the Hudson, dipping away and coming back as the sidewalk wound around buildings and through parks. She walked until the low heels of her ankle boots made the balls of her feet ache.

  Coming to sit on a bench, she looked out in the direction of Manhattan. There had been a time – a long time ago – when Hannah thought she could be anything she dreamed of. She had been one of the most attractive girls in school, when she was a teen. Back then, the thought of being a model or a movie star or that the mess-around sessions in Andrea’s dad’s studio recording herself, Andrea and Sofia singing along to Destiny’s Child tracks would lead to fame and fortune, had seemed possible.

  Then responsibility after responsibility started to pile up and dreams were replaced by a need to keep a job, to make money and to try to keep a semblance of independence.

  She was tired. So incredibly tired. From nappies, to gym class uniform, to back-chatting. From a husband who felt like he didn’t need to run life decisions by her and whose sleep deprivation seemed to trump hers. From the fact that no other person in her house would leave the toilet seat the eff down.

  Work was as much her escape as it was a necessity. Work meant she commuted into New York each day in smart clothes – though admittedly occasionally covered in puke – with her hair done and a little make-up to make her look human. It meant she sat on a train with people around her who didn’t know how many kids she had or that her dreams of college graduation and whatever else had been dashed by a youthful pregnancy. That she earned halfway decent money and had adult conversations with people, where her opinion mattered.

  But recently, her opinion hadn’t mattered. The level playing field that had always existed between her and Andrea, despite any hierarchy in employment, had tipped against her.

  Was it that Andrea was unhappy and taking it out on Hannah? Or had things changed between them? Was Hannah actually below par at work? Was Andrea doing her a favour by keeping her on?

  Andrea had always needed Hannah. They both knew that, despite the fact it had never been said. Andrea had demons that most people couldn’t see. Hannah recognised them and kept her friend’s head above water when they started to creep in. But she had failed recently.

  The Andrea Hannah knew could be promiscuous but she would not have had a six-month long affair with a married man, let alone the father of one of her best friends. She wouldn’t have yelled at Hannah in the street and badmouthed her family.

  Sure, they had had fights before but lately it felt like their crossed words were chipping away at years of friendship. They were losing touch with each other. Keeping secrets.

  Hannah missed their days at Sanfia Records, when Andrea was producing and happy. When she asked Hannah for her opinion on music and the management of artists. When Sofia was carefree and didn’t have Jay anchoring her. When Rosalie would pop into the studio to show them her latest pair of shoes and flirt with the artists.

  Times changed. What mattered now was that she had four mouths to feed at home. That Rod was excited about his new coaching job in Queens and she wanted him to be happy and to feel satisfied. He too had had dreams, bigger dreams than hers, and they had been shattered, not by children but a broken back. He could never change that, no matter how old and independent the kids got. Those boys and Rod were her life and they were what mattered, not an argument with Andrea over her sex life.

  Hann
ah stood from the bench with renewed purpose and headed back to the office.

  * * *

  Hannah and Andrea had passed the remainder of the week in the office with stoic silence, neither one of them speaking to the other, communicating through blunt email exchanges. Hannah was now standing in packed Penn Station staring at indeterminate train delays, thanks to a jumper.

  ‘People are so selfish,’ one commuter said.

  ‘Couldn’t they have jumped from a bridge or a building or something?’ another said.

  ‘All I want is to get home on a Friday night with my bottle of wine,’ said another.

  Whoever said humanity was dead?

  Though, despite having a little more compassion, Hannah couldn’t disagree with the inconvenience they had all been caused.

  It was the first week of Rod’s new job in Queens. She was frantically trying to get hold of him, wondering where he was and when he would make it home for the kids, since the sitter got off at 5.30pm. She wasn’t worried about Luke, or even so much about Jackson, they were old enough to fend for themselves for a few hours, but TJ was not.

  Rod finished work earlier than Hannah but he also had to pass through Penn Station and she had no idea if he had already made it through.

  She tried calling his cell again. No answer. She called home. No answer. She called the sitter. No answer.

  ‘Doesn’t anyone answer their goddamn phones?’ she shouted into the station, her voice lost in a mass of noise.

  As if the big man upstairs had heard her taking his name in vain and wondered what the heck was up, her cell phone rang.

  ‘Rod! Where are you?’

  ‘Babe? You there? Han?’

  ‘Rod? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Hold up, one sec.’

  ‘Rod?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I can hear you, babe. Whatssup?’

  ‘I’m stuck at Penn Station. Are you with the kids?’

  ‘No, babe. My first week, the guys wanted to take me out for a drink, you know, welcome me to the team.’

  ‘That’s great, Rod, but the sitter finishes in…’ She checked the digital clock on the train departure board. ‘The sitter finished twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘No, babe, I got her to stay until six.’

  ‘I hate to state the obvious here, Rod, but neither of us will be home by six.’ At that moment, God was definitely looking in on her because the departure board refreshed and gave her four minutes to get to the platform for her train home. ‘Rod, I’ve got to go, the train is coming.’

  She ran toward the designated platform, pushing and shoving other commuters, feeling like Kevin McCallister’s mom in Home Alone, eventually making it onto her train in time.

  Squished like a sardine in a can, she managed to dial the sitter and bring her phone to her ear. After a broken conversation, the sitter, Hannah thought, agreed to stay until 6.40pm, at which time she absolutely had to leave.

  Hannah watched the minutes tick by on her cell phone, working out with each passing second how long her kids might be left unattended between the sitter leaving and her arriving. How much harm can come to them in five or ten minutes? A teenager, an eleven-year-old and a baby… oh, hell.

  She had visions of TJ choking to death as his brothers played computer games. Or worse, lying in a heap at the bottom of the staircase, where they had fought on the landing and tumbled to their deaths.

  When the train pulled in, Hannah ran from the station, hardly breaking stride – despite her heels, despite the fact she had not run the distance since track in high school – until she arrived home.

  She burst through the front door to the house. ‘Kids?’ she managed, panting.

  Music was blaring upstairs – some godawful rap; the teenager’s latest fad. That she couldn’t hear any child was disconcerting enough to make her energy-drained legs carry her up the staircase.

  She followed the rhythmic expletives to Luke’s bedroom, where he was lying on his bed, playing computer games.

  She picked up his headset and plugged it into his stereo, stopping the racket. ‘Is everything okay? Where’s TJ? Where’s Jackson?’

  ‘They’re fine. They’re making potions or something in the bathroom.’ He snatched the headphones from her, pulled them over his ears and continued playing the game he hadn’t paused.

  Without the sound of rap music blazing in her ears, Hannah could hear TJ’s childish giggle coming from the bathroom. He’s alive, at least, she thought.

  ‘Splash!’ she heard Jackson say. ‘Splash!’ This time louder.

  She opened the bathroom door to find Jackson holding her only bottle of perfume in his hand, about to drop it into the loo.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she yelled, grabbing the bottle from him. She next saw TJ lying on his back on the bathroom rug, giggling as he held his foot to his mouth.

  Scooping up the baby and doing a quick check for any major injuries, she turned back to Jackson. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Playing splash. TJ likes it. He thinks it’s funny.’

  His pants were soaked through and he was shirtless. What the…?

  Then, she peered into the loo and all became clear as she saw her toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a razor and a bar of soap in the bottom of the pot.

  ‘I bet your smelly bottle would have made the biggest splash,’ Jackson said.

  Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply. ‘You’re eleven years old, Jackson, not five. Go change your pants,’ she said. Because what was the point in labouring the point to her child who already knew better that he was a little shit for putting all those things down the loo, which she would have to fish out before she could take a pee. Surely his retort would be something like, You abandoned your kids, what did you expect?

  She closed the bathroom door, then put down the toilet seat and held TJ to her chest as she slumped down on top of it.

  She was failing as a mom. She did nothing but snap at her husband. Her best friend currently wasn’t speaking to her. And she was so exhausted, she couldn’t tell her own ass from her elbow.

  Either she needed to quit working in the city, which she didn’t want to do, or they needed to move home, which they couldn’t afford to do.

  ‘Or I need to sell you kids to the highest bidder,’ she said, stroking TJ’s wiry black hair and kissing his temple, knowing there was no way on Earth she would ever sell her boys… Unless… No, she couldn’t give up the babies.

  She sighed. ‘But something does need to change, little man. Mommy can’t continue like this.’

  15

  Andrea

  Reading contracts on the train was knocking her sick. Or had she been feeling sick before getting on the train, when the smell of coffee in the station had made her stomach turn? For sure, the motion of the train speeding along the tracks now was making her feel worse.

  Andrea tucked the documents into her bag and opted instead to look out of the window at the sun bouncing off the multitude of buildings as she crossed from New York City into New Jersey.

  It had been a good while since she had ventured to New Jersey, her dad’s home town. Hannah still lived a few blocks away. Still as close as when Andrea and Hannah had walked Sofia to school. That’s how it was when they were kids, Hannah was always with Andrea, even on days when they had fallen out over something and nothing, and Andrea was always watching out for Sofia.

  Some things don’t change, she thought. The sun was beating down on her skin through the train windows, too powerful for the air-conditioning onboard. Though she was wearing thin jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt, she was feeling the heat. She slipped the wide neck of her top off one shoulder and sipped the cool ginger ale she had picked up in the station.

  The relative quiet of New Jersey struck her as soon as she waved off the train. Putting her sunglasses in position, she headed for the place she used to call home. For a moment, it occurred to her that she could drop in on Hannah whilst she was here, but given they had not been getting along well of late, a
dding a sixth day of seeing each other in a week was probably a bad idea.

  In fact, Andrea and Hannah hadn’t been getting along particularly well since Hannah came back to Stellar from maternity leave. Some of that, she suspected, was due to Hannah’s tiredness and being strapped for cash. And the problem with having your best friend working for you was that you still needed them to do their job, regardless of whether TJ had colic, Jackson had a sickness bug, Luke was taking teenager hormone-related tantrums and Rod was being his usual selfish personality.

  But that wasn’t all of it. Though blaming Hannah for their fallouts would be easy – and her big mouth was certainly to blame for the most recent argument – Andrea knew that some of it was down to her own guilt. Her affair with Hunter had started when Hannah was heavily pregnant and preoccupied. Maybe if Hannah had been around and not on maternity leave, it would never have happened or gone on for as long as it did. Once she was caught up in it, Hunter became like a drug to Andrea. A symbol of her defiance for once.

  Hannah’s return to the office and finding out about the affair made the shame of what Andrea was doing real. She knew that Hannah didn’t force her into having an affair but she couldn’t help feeling like Hannah could have stopped it in the first place.

  Maybe Hannah was right. Maybe Andrea had slept with Hunter because there was no chance of it ever going anywhere. Or perhaps… Andrea had been lonely without Hannah around, with Sofia more concerned with Jay and Sanfia these days.

  But she didn’t need people. People needed her. Andrea wasn’t dependent on anyone. She never would be – she remembered how much it hurt as an eight-year-old girl to lose the one person you truly depended on. It hurt too much.

  Before she knew it, Andrea had battled with her thoughts all the way to the porch of her father’s home. She knocked but entered without waiting for a response.