The Foster Husband (3 page)

‘Now, you must be Kate! How lovely. Don’t you look like your mother? I’d know you
anywhere
.’

‘Hello,’ I say, and I’m about to ask her name when there’s a clattering sound and the swimming hat disappears from view. For a moment her fingers still cling to the top
of the fence, knuckles blanching with the effort, and then they disappear too. I hear a worrying thudding noise, of something soft landing on something hard.

‘Are you okay?’ I call over the fence, but there’s no answer. ‘Shit,’ I whisper under my breath. ‘You stay there, Minnie,’ I say. I sprint back through
the house and out into the deserted close. Not even a net curtain twitches. There’s no one to ask for help.

A high wooden gate blocks off the entrance to next-door’s garden, and it’s locked. I try to peer through the slats, but they’re too narrow to see anything; all I get is a
faceful of creosote fumes. From Granny Gilbert’s garden I can hear Minnie’s high-pitched anxious bark.

I rattle the metal latch and call out again, ‘Hello? Hello, are you all right?’

I can hear a faint groan from behind the gate – what if the old lady is lying there with her head split open on the paving? God knows what Neighbourhood Watch will think, but I can’t
just leave her. I step backwards and take a running jump to leap over the gate, which has clearly been designed with the specific aim of preventing someone from doing exactly that. Instead of
clearing it, I hang by my fingertips from the top, my feet scrabbling for purchase against the bottom, achieving absolutely nothing. At this rate there will be two of us lying unconscious outside
this bungalow.

Wait, though, is that a recycling box at the end of the drive? They’re sturdy things, aren’t they? I drag it to the base of the gate and make sure the lid is secured before I stand
on it; it gives me just enough lift to allow me to launch myself over the top, swinging one leg over so I’m sitting on top of the gate. From this new vantage point, steadying myself by
clamping my legs on either side of the gate, I can see into next-door’s garden; a toppled stepladder lies on its side on the paving stones, but there is no sign of the old lady. She must be
hidden from view by the house; she might be really badly hurt if the ladder’s thrown her that far.

I’m about to swing my other leg over and jump into the garden when the gate rattles alarmingly, as if it’s about to give way. Before I can launch myself onto the other side, a hand
grabs my leg and a male voice demands, ‘Care to explain what you’re doing breaking into my grandmother’s house?’

I’m so intent on not falling off the gate that I can’t look down properly to see who has hold of my leg. ‘I’m not – I didn’t – I think she’s
fallen over in the garden. The ladder – the ladder.’ I’m babbling incoherently.

‘What is going on?’ asks a querulous voice.

The swimming hat is gone, revealing a damp, wispy head of hair, like the down of a freshly hatched chick. And now I can see it wasn’t just her face that was tanned. The old lady is
burnished to a rich shade of mahogany, the kind of Seventies colour you rarely see in these days of SPFs and skin cancer warnings. I wonder if it can be real, but she looks far too no-nonsense to
be messing around with fake tan or sunbeds.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask. ‘It sounded like . . . I thought you’d fallen, I was trying to check . . .’

The old lady looks annoyed, her eyes flash at me. ‘In the garden just now?’ she says. ‘I simply slipped. Nothing to worry about, I
assure
you.’

‘Oh, it’s just that you went so suddenly,’ I say, clutching onto the gate with my knees. ‘While we were talking. It made me worried when I saw your swimming hat disappear
like that.’

‘Swimming hat?’ says the man, frowning.

‘I wasn’t wearing a swimming hat,’ the old lady retorts. She glares at me pointedly.

‘Have you been swimming this morning?’ asks the man. He puts his hands on his hips and looks at her accusingly. ‘I thought we’d agreed you’d only go when I can take
you.’

‘Honestly, I’m not some helpless little old lady,’ says the little old lady, waving a dismissive hand in a way that is meant to include both of us. ‘All of this fuss
about
nothing
.’

Now the man’s let go of my leg, I see my chance to get down at last; my thighs are beginning to protest at having to support me in this position. There is no elegant way to lower yourself
backwards off a six-foot-high gate, let me tell you. I can only be grateful that I’m in jeans and not a skirt, though I can’t help wishing they weren’t tight ones; I realize my
bum must look huge as I hang over the top of the gate, my feet scrabbling in mid-air for the recycling box below.

Suddenly the voices behind me stop. I feel hands around my waist and I’m lowered onto the ground.

‘Thank you,’ I say primly, trying to regain my dignity. My hair has been flying all over the place thanks to my exertions, and I pull it back off my face in an effort to look
respectable, and not like a pensioner-robbing housebreaker.

‘No way,’ says the man, a slow smile spreading across his face. He is standing far too close to me.

‘What?’ I say crossly. I don’t like the way he’s staring.

‘Kate Bailey, I don’t believe it.’ I haven’t been called Kate Bailey for two years. I’m about to correct him – I’m Kate Martell now – but I stop
myself when I realize that I don’t really know what to call myself at the moment. Maybe I will go back to my maiden name. It’s too early to tell.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember—’ I begin.

‘Oh, of course you don’t.’ He laughs, stepping back to link his arm through his grandmother’s. She pats the drying wisps of her hair, trying to style it. ‘The
famous Kate Bailey’s forgotten all about Lyme, hasn’t she?’

I look at him more closely. I’m sure I would remember if I knew this man, he doesn’t look like someone who’s easy to forget. He towers above his grandmother, his dark hair is
closely cropped to his head and he has the kind of strong nose that would be a disaster on a woman, but which lends his face a certain character. It’s the commanding sort of profile you would
expect to see on an ancient coin.

His eyes begin to crinkle under my scrutiny, as if he’s about to burst out laughing. ‘Got it yet?’ he asks cockily, but I can see his apparent confidence waver momentarily. He
looks much younger for that second, and suddenly I know exactly who he is.

‘Eddy
Curtis
? Dready Eddy?’

Suddenly I can see him just as he was all those years ago – his dark hair twisted into giant, matted patchouli-stinking dreadlocks, the sides of his head shaved.

‘I knew you’d get there in the end.’ He grins, ducking his head shyly.

‘But, Eddy, give me a break.’ I laugh. ‘You look totally different. God. You used to have all that hair for a start.’

‘Ugh that
hair
,’ shudders his grandmother, grimacing at the memory. ‘Quite dis
gus
ting.’

He rubs the top of his head ruefully. ‘Not so much any more.’ I realize that his crop is designed to disguise the beginnings of a receding hairline. But who knew that underneath
those revolting dreads, Eddy had been such a looker? In my memory he was little more than a lanky spliff-rolling hairball who held a massive party one summer night just before I left Lyme for
good.

‘Short hair suits you,’ I say. He rubs the top of his head again, embarrassed, and I feel myself begin to blush in sympathy, as if I’ve just propositioned him on his
grandmother’s driveway, instead of idly commenting on his haircut.

Next to Eddy, the old lady speaks, ‘Kate, dear?’

Eddy and I both turn to look at her.

‘I do hope you don’t think I’m rude not to have called round before. Only I’ve had a bit of a chest, you know.’ She coughs once, primly, as if to demonstrate.

‘It’s all that swimming, Grandma,’ says Eddy. ‘I told you it might be time to pack it in.’ She pulls away from him crossly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing of the sort. Gets the blood pumping.’

‘Till you’re carted off in an ambulance.’

‘That was only
once
,’ huffs Mrs Curtis, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her cardigan. ‘I’m not dead yet, you know.’

Eddy’s expression softens, and he reaches out towards her.

‘Hmm.’ Mrs Curtis allows him to take her arm again.

Eddy raises his eyes to the sky in a way that only I can see. The whole exchange has an almost scripted feel, as if they have had this exact conversation many times and now it is almost a
pleasantry, drained of any actual meaning or expectation that the behaviour of either will change.

Mrs Curtis fixes her beady eyes on me, her fluffy head cocked birdishly to one side. ‘Now I’m better you’ll come round for tea, won’t you? Or we could even go out for a
cup?’

‘Grandma,’ Eddy says warningly. I wonder what objection he can possibly have to us sharing some tea.

‘What?’ she asks.

Oh God, am I going to get co-opted into the neighbourhood as a replacement for my grandmother? Forced into bridge groups and RNLI coffee mornings? The thought makes me shudder. In London I
barely knew my neighbours, except to exchange curt nods and twice-yearly comments about the weather or the shortcomings of the local bin men. But Eddy’s granny looks so pleased with her
invitation that I can hardly refuse. I only have to go once, I tell myself.

‘I’d love to,’ I lie. She beams at me happily.

‘Kate Bailey,’ says Eddy, shaking his head, and I’m not sure if he’s speaking to me or her. ‘Kate Bailey is back in town.’

‘Eddy, dear, did you bring my pills?’ his grandmother interrupts.

Eddy confirms that he has brought everything she asked for, and begins to steer her back towards the front door. ‘Come on, Grandma,’ he says. ‘Didn’t you say something
about a cup of tea?’

‘Oh yes, dear, a cup of tea. What a lovely idea. Aren’t you a thoughtful boy?’

‘Bye, Eddy,’ I say. I start to wave, but it feels stupidly childish somehow, so I shove my hands into my jeans pockets again. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

He looks up as he helps his granny up the step into her house. His smile is distracted; his thoughts already inside the house. ‘Good to see you, too, Kate. I’m glad you haven’t
forgotten me.’

He shuts the door, but I can still hear their voices; hers high and questioning, his calm. He always was the kind of boy you could rely on, even back when we were at school. The boy who’d
stay sober to drive everyone else home from a night out in Exeter; the boy who talked down Kim Dearborn when she’d started spinning out on acid at a party on the beach. It didn’t seem
like much, back then, being reliable – it’s not a quality highly rated by teenagers. It’s something you learn to appreciate only when unreliable men have stamped all over your
heart.

I hadn’t forgotten Eddy Curtis. Of course I hadn’t. I’d tried, of course. I’d tried to forget about Lyme altogether.

But now I’ve come here to forget everything else.

Lagos, Nigeria

In my time at Hitz Music Television, I had arranged for the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play a set under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris during an electrical storm that
threatened to electrocute everyone on stage. I’d battled German bureaucracy to shut down the centre of Berlin so that U2 could perform at the Brandenburg Gate with a fireworks display that
cost over a million euros, conducted by a lunatic pyromaniac who spoke only in an obscure Sichuanese dialect that had to be relayed to us through two interpreters. I’d had to clear Bondi
Beach of twenty-thousand pilled-up ravers after an Australian dance festival got out of hand. In short, I was used to dealing with a certain amount of drama. It was my job. But I’d never run
an event like the African Music Awards before.

After two weeks in Lagos I’d begun to get used to Nigerian time, which made the Spanish idea of mañana seem like a model of ruthless punctuality. Nothing ever happened when it was
supposed to, and not just because the traffic in Lagos was little short of diabolical, making it impossible to know how long it would take to get anywhere. A phone call from someone promising they
were on their way meant they could be expected any time in the next six hours. ‘They’ll be out of the venue this morning,’ meant ‘Prepare to be able to unload your equipment
no earlier than midnight’. ‘We will provide a VIP backstage area for the artists’ meant ‘You will arrive to find the artists’ dressing rooms only half built, with
exposed wires hanging from the ceiling over a large pool of water in the middle of the floor.’

My team and I had worked twenty-hour days to whip the venue into some sort of shape, handing out bribes in thick wads of multicoloured notes, keeping the peace between our surly South African
security team and the local crew, falling into bed at two in the morning after downing medicinal bottles of Star beer in the hotel bar.

And now, of course, the Hitz management had arrived, like the cavalry at the eleventh hour, here to take all of the glory without any of the graft.

‘I put a spoon in that brown slop, and all these fucking googly eyes were looking at me,’ whined Dean, our Head of Talent, as he lowered himself into a chair in the meeting room.

‘Trippy,’ said his assistant, Leila, encouragingly.

‘Fucking fish head curry, they said,’ Dean continued, glad of an audience. ‘Fish heads! Not just eyes – teeth! I felt like Indiana Jones in the Temple of Fucking Doom or
something.’

I didn’t dare look at anyone across the table in case I burst out laughing. The idea of portly Dean, his stomach straining against his shirt buttons, vast continents of sweat blooming
under his armpits, comparing himself to Harrison Ford would have to be savoured later in the bar.

‘Yeah, man, I think the Temple of Doom was actually in India,’ suggested dimwit Leila, known to us all as the Tangent, partly, as demonstrated, for her uncanny ability to hone in on
the least important detail of any discussion, and partly because she insisted on dyeing her skin a ferocious shade of orange. ‘This is, like, Africa?’

Her starey blue eyes wavered for a moment, as if she was suddenly unsure of herself – maybe this wasn’t Africa after all. Rumour had it she was only kept on by Dean because of her
unfailing ability to score drugs anywhere in the world. And then to take most of them herself. I nodded at her in affirmation – yes, you’re in Africa – and she looked
relieved.