The Foster Husband (21 page)

Matt let out an ungentlemanly ‘oof’ sound as I leaned into him.

‘Matt Martell, are you implying that I am anything other than a sylph-like featherweight?’ I asked indignantly.

‘Not for a minute,’ Matt promised, his face solemn. ‘Have you even sat down yet? I can’t feel a thing.’

‘That’s better,’ I said, slipping my arms around his neck.

‘Because my legs have gone completely dead,’ he said, grimacing. ‘I may never be able to feel them again. No, no don’t get up, stay here. I’ve missed your
face.’

I rested my head on his shoulder and inhaled. Matt didn’t wear aftershave, but I loved the mingled scent of his shaving cream, the moisturiser that he insisted was actually a very manly
‘face protector’, and something indefinable that was just Matt. His hair; his skin. I traced the tip of my nose along the side of his ear.

‘I missed yours, too.’

‘How come you’re so late home?’ he asked.

‘It’s only eight,’ I said. ‘I just stopped off for a drink with Sarah. Richard’s being a total bastard at the moment and we just needed to let off a bit of
steam.’

‘Get drunk, you mean,’ said Matt, pretending to sniff my breath.

‘I had one glass of wine, Matt,’ I said, warningly, looking over at his open beer bottle. ‘And then I left them to it.’

I didn’t tell Matt that I’d been roundly berated for leaving so early. Jay had turned up at the Crown and Two Chairmen to meet Sarah, with Danny and Chris in tow, all ready to settle
in for a session. Their disappointment at my leaving was mostly because I held the Hitz credit card that usually paid for several rounds. But we’d been told to cut expenses lately and I
didn’t dare use it unless it was legitimately for work. Instead I bought a round with my own money – tactical, since the three of them were coming out to Singapore in a few weeks
– and left them to it. Ignoring all the calls about the ball and chain at home.

‘I know, I know, it was work, right?’ Matt laughed. ‘You weren’t enjoying yourself at all, it was a struggle and a trial forcing that wine down.’

‘Oh, shut up. Why are
you
still working, anyway?’ I asked, glancing over at the laptop glowing on the coffee table, an unwelcome intruder into my homecoming. It wasn’t
like I’d expected Matt to meet me wearing an apron and brandishing a casserole dish – unless he’d had a personality transplant since I’d been away in Singapore – but
when I’d longed for home it was for more than a stressed-out husband and his computer.

Matt pushed himself forward, so that I nearly lost my balance on his knees and had to tighten my grip around him. He slammed the laptop shut. ‘I’m not,’ he said, squeezing me
back. ‘I’m spending the evening with my lovely wife.’

He kissed me, his hand reaching around to stroke my bottom.

‘I’ve missed this arse,’ he said. I tried to look at him seductively but my stomach gave a loud gurgle and he broke into laughter. ‘Hungry?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘For me,’ said Matt, kissing me again.

‘For you, but also, I am genuinely starving, Matt. Sorry. Can we eat first?’

‘Sure,’ said Matt, picking up his phone from the sofa beside him. ‘What do you fancy? I’ll order in.’

I took the phone from him and switched it off. ‘I don’t want a takeaway,’ I said.

Matt looked puzzled. ‘It might be a bit late, but we could head to Pizza Express or something?’

I shook my head, my hair falling out of the ponytail I’d pulled it into when I got off the plane. ‘Matt, I haven’t had a meal at home for a week. I just want something that
hasn’t been fiddled about with, heated up on an airplane, or garnished with two crossed chives and a kumquat. What’s in the fridge?’

Matt made a face that told me not to expect much. Even though we’d spent a fortune on an American-style two-door stainless-steel fridge, there wasn’t often anything decent in it
– usually little more than a few beers, a half-open bottle of wine and an optimistically purchased bag of salad mutating from a solid into a liquid in the vegetable drawer – but it was
always especially bad when I’d been away.

‘Is there any bread?’ I asked. Matt considered, his eyes rising to the ceiling thoughtfully and then he nodded. ‘Cheese?’

‘Think so,’ he said. ‘Cheddar.’

I rocked myself up off his lap and straightened up my skirt. ‘Tonight, Matt, I will be serving my speciality, fromage au pain.’

Matt clapped his hands together in mock delight. ‘
Avec
le sauce de Worcestershire?
’

‘
Naturellement, monsieur,
’ I said, with a little curtsey.

‘Good job I didn’t marry you for your culinary expertise,’ he grinned.

‘Fuck off,’ I said affectionately. ‘You could always make it yourself, you know.’

‘You know I don’t mean it, Kate,’ he said, opening up his laptop again. ‘You’re everything a wife should be, and more. I’ll be down to the kitchen in ten
minutes, just need to finish this off first.’

He picked up his beer and took a long gulp, while I headed down to the kitchen and hoped there were more where that came from.

I know what people in Lyme think about the sort of person who wears sunglasses on a grey morning in November. Chanel sunglasses. Inside the bakery. But the choice is to either
be considered a pretentious urban idiot or have everyone witness the fact that my eyes have swollen up into puffy slits from crying, like the freshly risen dough on the racks behind me, and I know
which one I’d prefer. I expect they already think the former, so let them think it. I don’t need to be the subject of more gossip.

‘Are you all right there, my love?’ asks Cathy, kindly, as she brings over my coffee.

‘Fine, thanks,’ I say, turning my covered eyes in her direction and offering her my brightest smile. ‘How are you?’

‘Oh I’m fine, my love,’ she says, staying nearby while she adjusts the position of a sugar bowl and moves the butter dish by a few unnecessary centimetres. ‘Got a bit of
a hangover this morning, have you?’

I seize on the excuse instantly. ‘Yes, gosh, half a bottle of wine with Mum last night and I’m a proper state today.’

‘Thought so,’ she says, nodding her head in satisfaction. ‘Your Mum stopped in this morning for a Danish pastry and I’m not betraying any confidences if I tell you she
only ever does that if she’s got a sore head. She said she’d been visiting you last night, so I put two and two together.’

‘I suppose the sunglasses gave it away a bit,’ I admit.

‘Oh, my love, I don’t judge. Whatever gets you through. A coffee will sort you right out. Go and get yourself some toast, that’ll help.’

A family comes into the bakery, parents and children, all anoraks and walking boots and glowering teenage resentment, so Cathy leaves me to show them to the far end of the trestle table. I go to
the counter and cut myself two thick slices of heavy sourdough bread, and drop them into the toaster, watching the filaments glow hotly as the toast browns.

When I go back to the table, one of the teenagers is crouched down by my seat, her sulkiness forgotten, stroking Minnie’s eager little face. The girl blushes as I approach, and stands up,
flustered.

‘S-sorry, I should’ve asked,’ she says, stepping backwards.

‘It’s okay,’ I reply, smiling. ‘She loves a bit of attention. Her name’s Minnie.’

The girl hesitates, looking back at her parents. ‘They said I shouldn’t disturb you,’ she says, and I’m not sure if she has come over here to see Minnie because she
wanted to or because she wanted to defy them. They smile at me apologetically. I expect I do look quite forbidding in my harsh sunglasses.

‘Oh it’s fine,’ I say, and sit down on the bench next to her. ‘You’re not disturbing me at all. Are you on holiday?’

The girl crouches down again, and starts scratching Minnie’s chest in a way that makes her puppy eyes glaze with contentment.

‘Yeah.’ She sighs. ‘Lyme fucking Regis with my parents. Seriously. I’m too old for this.’

I hold back a smile. She looks impossibly young to me, with her gangly limbs and heartbreakingly studied attempts at nonchalance.

‘How old are you?’ I ask, before remembering how much I hated being asked that when I was her age. Every year gained felt so significant back then that it astonished me people
couldn’t tell exactly how old I was. How mortifying to be taken for fifteen (silly, schoolgirlish) when one was seventeen (about to leave home, grown-up).

‘Sixteen,’ she says, a challenge in her up-tilted chin, as if I might dispute it.

‘Oh, I thought you were older,’ I say. This is quite untrue, but I feel I owe her a favour after asking the dreaded question in the first place.

She ducks her head, blushing again, but not before I see a glimpse of the smile that shows her delight.

‘I found Lyme pretty boring when I was your age too,’ I admit, buttering my toast. ‘There’s not a lot here for teenagers.’

She looks up at me witheringly, clearly unable to believe I might ever have had anything in common with her. It’s strange how coming back to Lyme has made me feel like I’m the same
insecure eighteen-year-old who ran away to London, and yet to this teenage girl – nearly the age I was then – I am just another tedious adult who can’t possibly understand her
angst.

‘Yeah, anyway, thanks for letting me say hi to your dog,’ the girl says, standing up. ‘Bye, Minnie.’

‘Bye,’ I say. ‘Enjoy the rest of your holiday.’

She rolls her eyes. As she goes back to her parents I hear her mother tell her to wash her hands after stroking the dog. The girl refuses – ‘It didn’t even lick me!’
– and they begin bickering in fierce whispers, as if we can’t all tell that they’re arguing. To my surprise, it’s the mother I feel sorry for. She’s only trying to
look after her daughter, to protect her. I feel a sudden pang for my mother, and how she must have felt when I shut her out of my life back then.

My throat constricts and I feel blood rush to my cheeks. I can’t start crying again; God, I won’t be able to see out of my eyes at this rate. All of this reminiscing is turning me
into a lunatic. This is why it’s better not to dwell too much on the past.

‘Yoohoo!’ calls a voice, jolting me out of my thoughts. Mrs Curtis bustles through the door of the bakery determinedly.

Cathy suddenly steps into her path and there is a heated debate, conducted mostly in whispers. Cathy grasps Mrs Curtis’s elbow and starts to steer her towards the door.

‘Pam, it’s nothing personal, but if you can’t show me you’ve got enough money to pay for your tea—’

‘Dreadful woman!’ exclaims Mrs Curtis, slapping ineffectively at Cathy’s hand.

I stand up and join them, lowering my voice to the same whisper, even though every eye in the bakery is already on the three of us.

‘Cathy, it’s okay. Mrs Curtis was going to join me, weren’t you?’

Mrs Curtis straightens her fleece and pink knitted cap, sniffing in outrage. ‘Thank you, dear. Is there
no
respect for one’s elders these days?’

Cathy and I exchange a look that tells me I, too, may be persona non grata here if I don’t watch it. But Mrs Curtis has already moved on and, with blithe unconcern, is helping herself to a
plateful of pastries from the counter.

When she sits down opposite me her plate is piled high, and she begins to wrap each pastry in a napkin before tucking them into a plastic bag that she has pulled out of the pocket of her
fleece.

‘For later, dear,’ she says. ‘So kind of you. One small
misunderstanding
over my bill – so long ago! – and Cathy simply will
not
let bygones be
bygones.’

I decide that now is not the time to tackle Mrs Curtis’s free-and-easy attitude towards other people’s money.

‘Have you been for a swim this morning?’ I ask.

‘Ooh,
no
, dear,’ she says, with an elaborate wink. ‘Of course not. Now, I have been meaning to
ask
you . . .’

I steel myself for another round of questions about Matt. Mrs Curtis seems determined to draw parallels between her life and mine and, although I have grown pretty fond of her, I have to admit
to resisting comparisons to a nearly bald kleptomaniac with a taste for sea water and rubber hats.

‘That young man who’s living with you – Prue’s fiancé, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, Ben,’ I say. ‘They’re getting married on New Year’s Eve.’

‘My dear he looked
ever
so cross last night. Not that I’m a curtain-twitcher – far from it! – but I just
happened
to see him leaving the house at about
half past seven and he seemed in a
fearsome
mood. Muttering to himself, you know.’

I had thought Ben seemed far too accepting of my lesson last night. And now here was the proof that he wasn’t accepting at all. How strange to realize that Ben, who I had considered to be
so transparently obvious in all things, is able to hide his true feelings after all. But at the same time, it shows that the lesson must have gone in at some level. He needed to feel the bite of it
to remember for next time.

‘Just a bit of confusion over visitors, Mrs Curtis,’ I explain. ‘Nothing to worry about. You know how it is when you’re living with someone new, takes a bit of getting
used to.’

Mrs Curtis nibbles thoughtfully on a pain au raisin, chewing all the way around the outside in little bites.

‘I suppose it is rather
strange
, to have to accommodate someone else in your own living space,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure I could tolerate it.’

‘Well, you know,’ I answer. ‘It’s just a matter of expectations, really. And training, ha ha.’

She looks at me shrewdly over the top of her pastry. ‘Training, dear?’

‘Just joking,’ I say, picking up a napkin and wiping at a non-existent spot of coffee on the table.

‘
Are
you?’ she asks.

I fold the napkin up into a small square and tuck it into my empty coffee cup. Mrs Curtis continues to wait for my answer as she picks at her pastry with her red fingernails.

‘Mrs Curtis,’ I say. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

‘No, dear,’ she answers frankly.

But I decide to tell her anyway. Who’s she going to report back to, after all? And even if she does go blabbing, everyone thinks she’s crazy. No one would believe her. I feel a
compulsion to have a witness to my mission – someone to observe the progress that would otherwise go unmarked by anyone but me.