The Foster Husband (40 page)

Matt rests his cheek on the top of my head. I can feel his breath against my hair, or is it the wind?

‘Kate.’ He sighs. ‘I can put this all behind us, but can you?’

I think for a moment, my eyes drawn upwards beyond the Cobb.

‘No,’ I say truthfully. ‘No, I can’t.’

Matt pulls away from me, leaning backwards to look at me. His eyebrows are drawn close together and his eyes glitter darkly in the moonlight.

‘Then what the fuck have you been doing emailing me all the time? Begging me for another chance?’

He turns his head away and pulls his coat around him, wrapping his arms across his chest.

‘Matt,’ I plead, reaching for him. ‘No, you don’t understand. I mean, I do want to try again, but I can’t pretend all of this didn’t happen. Or, don’t
you see? It will just happen again. Not . . . not Chris, but something . . . the distance. The not talking.’

He looks back at me over his shoulder, his expression forbidding. But he is listening.

‘I did a stupid, terrible thing,’ I continue, putting my hands in my pockets and hunching down into my coat. ‘And then I tried to run away from it. Matt, the worst of those
things was the running away. I want to face up to what I did. We can’t go back to how we were before. We can only make it work by starting where we are. With all our mistakes.’

Matt turns to face me.

‘My mistakes,’ I say. Hot tears hover on my eyelashes.

He lets out a short, angry laugh. ‘You can’t take all the blame. I admit, I thought you should for a while. It made me feel better to think it was all your fault.’

‘It
was
my fault,’ I say.

‘It was,’ admits Matt. ‘But it was mine, too. I gave up on you. I couldn’t reach you and I just stopped trying.’

‘Matt,’ I say. ‘I slept with someone else. It
was
my fault.’

Matt shakes his head.

‘If you face your fuck-ups, I can face mine, too,’ he says. ‘I should have helped you, made you talk about things. Not said you were crazy for being upset about not getting
pregnant. I dismissed it all and left you to deal with it on your own.’

I stare at him in surprise. I’d never thought there might be an apology from him. I thought what I’d done had somehow wiped out any mistakes he’d made – my own error big
enough to negate any of his.

He takes my chin in his hand, turning my face towards him. The moment stretches out between us, the only sound the waves far below us on the shore.

‘Yeah,’ I say, trying out a smile. ‘Come to think of it, it probably was all your fault, Matt.’

‘I guess this is what they mean by for better or worse,’ he says, pinching my chin playfully. ‘I’m better and you’re the worst.’

‘Do you think you can stand to try it all over again?’ I ask. ‘Really?’

‘I reckon I’ll take my chances,’ he says. My eyes rake over his face, the laughter lines at the corners of his navy eyes, his dark hair black in the moonlight. ‘You may
be the worst, Mrs Martell, but you’re the only wife I’ve got, and I’d like to keep it that way.’

He leans in towards me until our lips touch; his fingers are entwined in my hair, drawing me towards him. I don’t remember when I last kissed my husband like this. I don’t plan to
forget again.

It already feels like I’ve come home.

P
IPPA
W
RIGHT
lives in London and works in book publishing. You can find her on twitter at
www.twitter.com/troisverres

Also by Pippa Wright

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to my Lyme Regis visitors: Jo Roberts-Miller for plot advice, and smoked anchovy sharing. Jo Paton Htay and Nic Boddington for old-lady seed-catalogue reading, a lot
of red wine and a traditional Gilbert hangover to remind us of the bad old days.

Huge thanks to Lisa McCormack and Nikki Sopp whose work anecdotes I have shamelessly plagiarized throughout. And who gave me more excellent stories about Lagos than I knew what to do with. Sorry
I had room for so few of them here.

Thanks to Nigel and Susie Cole in whose Lyme Regis studio I first had the idea for this book, and where much of it was written. And to the Town Mill Bakery and the much-missed Mill Tea and
Dining Rooms for sustenance.

And finally, thanks, as ever, to all at Pan Macmillan and Aitken Alexander.

First published 2013 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-1994-1

Copyright © Pippa Wright 2013

The right of Pippa Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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