The Foster Husband (29 page)

‘I know you’ve moved on from work, Kate,’ she said, ‘I just hope that doesn’t mean you’ve moved on from me. I thought we were proper friends, not just people
who used to work together.’

I made myself laugh brightly. ‘Sarah! As if I’d think that!’ I screwed the top onto the jar of dressing I’d made and shook it hard. Sarah stepped back cautiously,
flinching away from the flying jar.

‘I’ve just been busy,’ I continued. ‘You have too. Don’t go reading too much into it. It’s not some massive diss, honest.’

She smiled. ‘God, sorry, I didn’t mean to lay a guilt trip on you. I only realized when Jay and I were coming here that I hadn’t seen you for months. I counted. Four months,
Kate! I used to see you every day. It’s just weird.’

‘It’s weird for me, too,’ I admitted.

Sarah looked over at the table where Matt and Jay sat. ‘That’s why I was so glad Matt said you wanted us to come over for lunch. It really means a lot that you asked us over. And
Matt has been going on and on about your amazing cooking these days.’

So Matt had presented this as my idea, had he? I wondered what he was playing at.

‘I’m really glad you’re here,’ I said. ‘Don’t expect too much on the food front, I think Matt’s probably been embellishing a bit.’

‘No I haven’t,’ he called over from the table. I could see by the slight glassiness in his eyes that he’d already had too much to drink. Again. Lunch wasn’t even
going to be ready for an hour. ‘My wife is an extraordinary cook, I’ll have you know. She’s extraordinary at everything.’

I wondered if he thought that complimenting me extravagantly in front of my friends was the way to get back into my good books, or if he was drunk enough to believe his own words. As far as I
could see, he mostly just thought I was extraordinarily annoying.

‘Don’t go getting any ideas, Jay,’ warned Sarah, sauntering across the kitchen, wagging her finger at him. Somehow the way she did it managed to be teasing and sexy instead of
nagging. I could see Matt looking at her admiringly, the glamorous high-heeled professional compared to his stay-at-home wife in her apron. Well, there was no point in taking the apron off now,
I’d only get spattered with hot fat when I took the chicken out of the oven.

Sarah sank down onto Jay’s lap, crossing one elegant ankle over her knee. ‘Kate might have transformed herself into some domestic goddess, but she is a way better person than I am.
You can dream on if you think that I’m ever going to be fannying around in the kitchen on your behalf.’

Jay tickled her ribs, making Sarah shriek and writhe so that her wine sloshed perilously close to the top of her glass. I picked up a cloth from next to the kitchen sink, ready for it to
spill.

‘Yeah, right, Sarah,’ he said, rubbing his stubbled chin into her neck to make her laugh. ‘The day you make me a meal from scratch, like Kate’s done, is the day I make an
honest woman out of you.’

Sarah snorted with laughter and leaned back over her shoulder to kiss the top of his head. ‘That’s enough of a threat to keep me single for ever, babe. Anyway, I scratched that curry
out of the takeaway packet last night, you’ve got nothing to complain about.’

‘God, takeaway curry.’ Matt sighed with patent longing, and then he flinched guiltily, catching my eye. I turned back to the kitchen counter and wiped at a spot of water by the sink
with the cloth I was holding tightly in my hand.

‘Anyone want more wine?’ I heard him ask. I felt his presence as he crossed the kitchen towards me, putting both hands on my hips. It felt like a sort of apology. I leaned my head
back, about to rest it on his shoulder, when he moved me bodily out of the way, and I realized he was just trying to get to the cutlery drawer.

‘There it is,’ he said, picking up the corkscrew and returning to the table to open another bottle.

‘Kate?’ he waved the bottle at me again. ‘Just one won’t hurt, will it?’

I shook my head. When Matt said it wouldn’t hurt, he meant it wouldn’t hurt
him
. He didn’t understand that I had committed to this. Everyone said giving up alcohol
increased your chances of getting pregnant. If it didn’t happen this month – again – it wasn’t Matt who’d blame himself.

‘You’re no fun,’ he said. I could tell that he was trying for the teasing tone Sarah had adopted, but instead he just sounded petulant.

‘Maybe it’s not all about being fun,’ I snapped, unable to stop myself.

Matt barely reacted, but I saw the swift, anxious look that Jay gave Sarah, and the way she squeezed the arm he had wrapped around her. It was typical that it would seem like me who was being
unreasonable, when they knew nothing of how he’d behaved before they arrived. I looked like the shrewish, sober wife, while he was Mr Good Times.

‘Did I tell you what happened last week with Randy Jones and the sixteen-year-old intern in Talent?’ asked Sarah valiantly.

We all turned to her gratefully, gladly, trusting her to lead us to safer conversational ground.

I don’t hear the exact words of Ben’s reaction to my handiwork, but I get the general idea from the shouting and crashing noises that emerge from the bathroom first
thing the next morning, shortly followed by the man himself. He stumbles into the kitchen, his face bright red and dripping with water.

‘Why the fuck,’ he stammers, pointing to his forehead. ‘Why the
fuck
does it say Barbados on my forehead in giant letters?
Backwards
?’

‘Well, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to read it in the mirror, Ben,’ I say sweetly, trying not to laugh. It is one thing to play a practical joke, but quite another to
guffaw out loud in the face of your victim. That would be cruel.

‘It won’t come off! Been scrubbing at it with a flannel for ten minutes!’

‘Oh shit,’ I say. I had assumed it would wash off straight away, once the joke was over. ‘Ben, I had no idea it was permanent.’

‘Did you use the permanent fucking marker in the living room, by any chance?’ he asks. ‘Because that might have given you a clue.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘It was a joke, I thought you’d see the funny side. Look, why don’t you try some of my exfoliating scrub, that might do it.’

‘Already used half a tub of it,’ he barks. ‘Face is totally flayed.’

He rubs at his forehead with the sleeve of his dressing gown, as if the soft terry towelling will succeed where Dermalogica has failed.

‘I’ve got a meeting today,’ he wails. ‘Who is going to take me seriously with the word Barbados on my face? Backwards? Why Barbados? Why?’

‘Because of the honeymoon?’ I say cautiously.

Ben spins round, his eyes narrowed. I never knew his affability could turn to pure rage like this. It almost makes me like him more to know that he’s not as one-dimensional as I’d
feared.

‘Honeymoon?’ he asks, in much the same way as a fundamentalist Christian might say ‘abortion?’

‘You wanted to know where Prue wanted to go on honeymoon,’ I titter nervously. ‘Umm, now you do.’

Ben growls something under his breath and storms out of the kitchen. When he returns, dressed in a suit, he has engineered a strange, thin fringe over his forehead by straightening his curls
with what looks like a great deal of hair product. He scowls out from under the wispy curtain that entirely fails to obscure the faded blue letters.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘if you set out to humiliate me, you’ve done a great job. Good for you. Hilarious. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to work, which is
something you clearly know little about, or perhaps you would have thought more carefully about this.’

He points to his forehead as if I might have missed it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I really am sorry. I didn’t think it through at all. It seemed funny at the time. Surely the ends justify the means?

‘Prue said I should look out for this,’ Ben says. ‘I said, no, Kate’s a good egg, don’t know why you’ve got such a problem with your sister. But Prue said you
just use people, only think of yourself. Don’t care how you affect anyone else. Now I see she’s right.’

I stare at him with my mouth open, winded by his accusations.

He produces from his coat pocket a knitted hat that he pulls down over his hair. Blond curls escape at the front, but the offending letters are hidden.

‘Good day to you,’ he says, bizarrely, as if we are in a Victorian novel. Good day? I suppose he thought it would sound cutting.

After Ben is gone I hear a noise at the door and I wonder if he’s coming back to shout at me again. But no, while I was steeling myself for another blow to my core, a knife has been
slipped between my unsuspecting shoulder blades. On the doormat lies a letter from my husband.

At the sight of his handwriting my first emotion is pure guilt. I know rationally, of course, that I have no reason at all not to have been kissing another man last night. Some people might say
that it’s inappropriate to fool around with Eddy when I’m still married, but even puritanical Prue seemed to grant me an amnesty on that one, so some people would have to have
incredibly high and unrealistic standards. But it is impossible to see Matt’s cramped scribble on the envelope – the messy writing of one accustomed to texts and emails rather than
penmanship – without feeling a lurch of shame and horror. Perhaps I will always feel like this in some way: guilt at having let our marriage fall apart, at not being stronger and more
resilient.

When couples who have been married for years and years share their secrets, they all seem to say the same thing: that it’s hard work, and that there has to be forgiveness on both sides. I
don’t know if I am good enough at either of those things. I worked hard, of course, I worked harder on my marriage than on anything. When I think of how I used to complain of my long hours at
Hitz, I realize how easy I had it. Those hours raced by in a blur of activity and appointments and teamwork. There were tangible results – a show produced, a budget finalized. Far harder was
the painful stretch of time alone between nine and six when you were working working working for the happiness of someone who not only wasn’t there, but who seemed to actively resent the
things you were doing when he finally returned home.

And forgiveness. That is the hardest thing of all. I honestly don’t know if I have it in me to forgive everything that happened. To stare it in the face unflinchingly and take the
consequences. Because to forgive is to accept, isn’t it? To accept what happened, instead of resisting it and running from it. That is what I’m not sure I can do. Reading Matt’s
letter instead of throwing it away would be a start.

Before I do that I need coffee. I take my time grinding the beans and letting the boiling water steep. I heat up a pan of milk, a refinement I rarely bother with because it will take more time.
All the while the unopened envelope sits on the kitchen counter, all the more obvious because I am trying so hard to pretend I am unconcerned by it.

When my coffee is made, I take my cup and sit down at the kitchen table with the letter. Minnie settles herself by my feet, sighing heavily at this interruption to her morning routine. We should
be out on a walk by now; there are seagulls unchased down on the rocky shore, lampposts unsniffed.

I use a knife to open the envelope; it makes a snickering sound, as if someone was laughing at me.

I don’t know if I should read anything into the graduation from a postcard to two pages of actual watermarked writing paper. Even through my guilt and confusion, I am oddly touched by the
idea of Matt going to the trouble of buying paper on which to write to me. I know we have nothing like this at home – who does, nowadays? I shake my head crossly – why am I wasting time
on considering the medium when I haven’t even read the message?

Of course, forgiveness is what Matt wants. As if it’s as easily given as it is asked for.

Maybe it is because I am a little hungover this morning, so my brain isn’t ready to spin straight into its accustomed fury against Matt. Maybe it’s because last
night I was kissing another man. Or maybe it’s knowing that my insistence on having things on my terms has sent my sister’s fiancé to an important meeting with magic marker all
over his face. Whatever the reason, I find myself contemplating how it would feel not to be angry with Matt.

I can’t say I am going as far as thinking about complete forgiveness. But, like someone probing a sore tooth with their tongue, allowing themselves to measure the pain in careful,
self-prescribed intervals, I consider reacting differently.

Running away, blaming, hiding. These have always been my solutions to everything. But where have they got me? When I think about it in the bright, sober morning, it is less of a surprise that I
found myself snogging Eddy Curtis last night, leaning against an ice-cream-coloured beach hut on the seafront, like my teenage self. Because I may be running away from adult problems now –
from marriage and responsibilities – but my reaction is still that of a frightened adolescent. Afraid of facing up to actual emotion, preferring to bury it in new experience and hope that the
bad feelings will just go away.

Suddenly kissing Eddy feels less the action of a free-spirited woman reasserting herself after the failure of her marriage, and more the regressive step backwards of someone who has failed to
deal with her past in any way. To my creeping discomfort, Ben’s words come back to me, again and again, more insistent even than the letter in my hand.

Prue said you just use people, don’t care how you affect anyone else.

I let Ben move in here, wasn’t that selfless? It’s not like Prue was about to put herself out, even though he’s her fiancé. And did I sulk and moan about it? No, I
dedicated myself to making him a better person – for Prue, not even for myself! He may be annoyed about the magic marker – and I admit it was a step too far – but hasn’t it
had the desired result? He wanted to find out Prue’s preferred honeymoon destination and I have delivered it to him – in black and white and scrubbed red skin.