The Broken Read Online Free PDF

snapped out. ‘What I mean is, I asked him that. It was the very first thing I asked him, but he swore there wasn’t. And one thing about me and Dan is we never, ever lie to each other. He knows that if he ever started lying to me, that’d be the end.’
    For a second, Hannah almost said it. Then the moment passed.
    ‘More tea?’

3
    Josh experienced mixed feelings when he finally got to sit down during his lunch break and noticed the three ‘missed call’ messages. While he was relieved that Dan had got in touch after all these days of unnerving silence, he couldn’t help being irritated by his friend’s unfailing inability to grasp the fact that not everyone could take personal phone calls at any time of day. Some people had actual proper jobs that meant their mobile phones remained in their bags, switched to silent, and quite often weren’t looked at from one end of the day to the other.
    ‘Want to go for a coffee?’
    Pat Hennessey flopped down heavily in the empty chair opposite Josh in the uninspiring staff room. The school management was forever promising to make improvements – new carpet, a decent coffee machine – but something else always came along that took priority. The five-a-side pitch needed resurfacing. The security system had to be updated. In a large inner-city state secondary, where resources were always stretched to the maximum, the state of the staff’s soft furnishings was always going to come way down the shopping list.
    Pat’s cheeks, always flushed with colour, were looking particularly pink, as if he’d been rushing, and there was an unspoken appeal in his puppy-like brown eyes. Josh had always got on well with Pat since he’d transferred there three years before from a much smaller school in Merseyside. But since Pat had been made Head of English, things had become a little awkward. Josh always told him he didn’t mind, and that he’d only gone for the promotion himself because Hannah had pushed him into it. He was glad not to have the extra responsibility, he insisted, particularly with Lily still being so young. Which was true – in fact, it was Hannah who was more upset, accusing him of ‘a failure of self-belief’. But still, their friendship had never completely returned to normal.
    ‘Love to, but I have to make a call and I think it might be quite an epic one.’
    Pat looked hurt. He had one of those open faces that betray every emotion. ‘Another time then.’
    Outside the bottom gate, Josh pushed his way past throngs of sixth-formers and Year Elevens.
    ‘Hi, Sir. Are you going to meet your girlfriend, Sir?’
    The kids found it endlessly amusing to quiz him about his private life, as if it was an inconceivable joke that he might actually have a life outside of them and this school.
    ‘That’s right,’ he humoured them. ‘One of my huge harem of women.’
    Before they could ask him what a harem was, he moved off across the main road and into the little park opposite. There were a few knots of school children eating crisps and swigging from cans of fizzy drinks, but he ignored them and made for an unoccupied bench under the trees. Finally he was ready to call Dan back. Yet still he hesitated, his finger hovering over the keypad.
    Josh was nervous about talking to Dan. Since Sasha had turned up in the middle of the night and had a nervous breakdown in their living room the previous weekend, things had gone eerily quiet. Hannah had tried calling a few times and left messages, but Sasha hadn’t called her back. She’d been nagging him to call Dan, too, but he’d put it off. They needed a bit of time on their own to sort things out, he’d told her. Coward, she’d said. Hannah still didn’t really get how men dealt with each other. Dan and Josh spoke on the phone to make arrangements for meeting up, or swapped the occasional email when they heard a joke they thought the other might enjoy. Josh would have been embarrassed to call Dan out of the blue and quiz him