The Foster Husband (7 page)

‘Eight thirty on a Saturday.’ Eddy laughs. ‘Things have changed a bit since I last knew you.’

I hardly know how to answer that. It feels like everything has changed and yet nothing has at all. Here I am back in Lyme, chatting to Eddy Curtis. Next we’ll be jumping into his car to go
to some party we’ve heard might be happening outside Axminster.

‘Daddy,’ a voice whispers urgently. ‘Has she got a dog?’

‘Better than that,’ I call over the fence. ‘I’ve got a puppy. Would you like to meet her?’

Eddy’s girls are in my garden before I’ve had a chance to remember that I am still in my pyjamas, without having so much as cleaned my teeth. Not that they would notice, they have
eyes only for Minnie, who leaps all over them in excited welcome; she loves children. But Eddy looks embarrassed, and I’m not sure how to behave. My London manners feel all wrong – I
can’t air kiss him hello when I’ve most likely got morning breath. So much for the glamorous Kate Bailey he’s imagined; I must look a right state.

‘Sorry to barge in on you like this,’ he says, avoiding looking directly at me. ‘We collect my granny from swimming on Saturday mornings – it’s a bit of an early
start for all of us.’

‘Is there a pool in Lyme now?’ I ask. I wouldn’t mind a swim myself once in a while. Something to pass the time.

Eddy grins and rubs the top of his head with his knuckles. ‘Nope. Not for my Grandma. It’s the sea or nothing.’

‘The sea?’ I gasp. ‘But it’s October! It must be freezing.’

‘Bracing, according to her,’ says Eddy with a wry smile. ‘She used to go every day. Has done for years. But she got caught in a current a while ago – she’s not as
strong as she thought she was – and someone called the Coastguard.’

‘Oh my God, was she okay?’

‘She was completely fine by the time they arrived, just furious about all the fuss. Especially when they took her off in an ambulance for a check-up. The coastguards gave her a ticking off
about swimming by herself at her age. You can imagine how well that went down.’

‘But she still goes in?’

‘We’ve struck a deal – she swims on Saturday mornings only and the girls and I go, too. To watch, you understand. Just spectators. Not in any way keeping an eye on an
eighty-year-old woman submerged in the sea by herself.’

‘Obviously.’ I can’t help but be impressed by Mrs Curtis’s hearty ways, so at odds with her wiry appearance.

Eddy smiles. ‘But I’m not totally sure she’s sticking to her side of the bargain, judging by what you said the other day about her swimming hat.’

‘Unless she was just, er, wearing in a new one?’ I suggest, suddenly overcome with belated neighbourly loyalty.

‘Oh I see,’ says Eddy, raising an eyebrow. ‘I thought you’d be
my
ally in this, and here you are taking her side already.’

Eddy and I both watch the girls, shrieking as Minnie chases them around the garden.

‘Eddy Curtis, a dad,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe it.’

He looks at me quizzically. ‘It’s not that weird, you know. I’m thirty-four, not thirteen.’

‘I know.’ I laugh. ‘I suppose I still think of you as a teenager. You’re not weird at all. I’m weird.’

‘Why are you weird?’ he asks, looking amused.

I shrug. ‘Oh, you know,
it’s
weird, I mean. Life’s weird. You’re a dad; Dready Eddy is a dad. And I’m, well, I’m living in my granny’s
bungalow.’

Eddy shifts from foot to foot on the paving stones. ‘Yeah, sorry, I heard about, er, your husband.’

‘It’s fine,’ I say, glad he’s brave enough to say it straight out instead of hedging with euphemisms and platitudes, like most people. ‘Not every marriage is meant
to last.’

He barks a sharp laugh, as if it’s been punched out of him. ‘No.’

The youngest girl comes running up to us, breathless and excited.

‘Daddy, can we stay here with the puppy? Can we?’

Her sister, who can’t be more than eight, rolls her eyes in a distinctly teenaged manner.

‘Grace, we have
things to do
. Don’t we, Daddy? It can’t all be fun and games.’

I stifle a smirk at her world-weary air.

‘Charlotte’s right, sweetheart,’ says Eddy, pulling gently on Grace’s plait. ‘I’ve got to get you back to Mummy’s house by eight thirty so she can take
you both to ballet.’

‘But I don’t want to go to ballet,’ wails Grace, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I want to stay with you, and with the puppy.’

Eddy tenses up next to me. Back to Mummy’s house? He offers me a rueful half smile.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Life is weird. Come on, girls. We have to go and say goodbye to Great-grandma or we’re going to be late.’

‘Can we come and see the puppy again?’ asks Grace, clutching at my hand and gazing up at me imploringly. Charlotte tries to look more aloof, as if she doesn’t care, but I can
see that she’s every bit as keen to be invited back. Acting cool doesn’t fool me; I’ve done too much of that myself to fall for it from other people.

‘Of course you can,’ I say. ‘Next time you visit we can take her for a walk, if you like.’

Eddy’s already at the side gate. ‘Stop bothering poor Kate, girls,’ he calls. ‘Off we go.’

They run out of the gate, waving, and I have to catch Minnie by the collar to stop her from following.

‘Sorry, Mins,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to stay here with me.’

She whines as the gate closes, and I feel like whining too. I’d rather be off with Eddy and his children, chaotic and complicated as it all sounds, than here alone with another day to
fill. I wonder how different things would have been if Matt and I had had children. We weren’t torn apart by the pressures of a young family. No, we didn’t have that excuse. We
can’t blame the failure of our marriage on anyone but ourselves.

When I left every means of communication on the kitchen table in London, it had felt like a dramatic statement of intent. Screw you, Matt Martell, you have no way of contacting
me ever again. But, like most dramatic statements, one short week later it feels like lunacy. Of course it has kept Matt away from me, but it has also kept me away from everything else. It’s
not like I was expecting the emails to have built up or anything, or as if I had important business to attend to – let’s be honest, the most urgent emails I receive these days are ones
about the Ocado delivery – but I hadn’t remembered that I’d need to check my bank account, if only to watch the money drain out of it, and pay bills and generally remember that I
am actually a grown-up and not the Lyme Regis teenager I once was.

I left Minnie at home this morning while I trawled the streets of Lyme to see if I could find an internet cafe. Yes, I know, the internet cafe has gone the way of AOL and Yahoo Answers, but this
is Lyme Regis and I lived in hope that there might be a fossilized millennial internet cafe somewhere around, even if it was just in the Senior Citizens’ Centre. Mum offered me the use of one
of the work computers, but when I realized she meant I’d have to come into the office I decided I’d rather take my chances elsewhere. Somewhere I might get a bit of privacy.

It seems there’s no shortage of cafes offering WiFi, but everyone expects you to have your own laptop these days. Even here. I finally admit defeat in a chintzy tea house, and order a cup
of tea to mollify the sullen teenaged waitress who has so grudgingly answered my questions. There isn’t a single other customer in here, so it’s hard to see from what urgent tasks I
could have distracted her.

I’ve taken a seat by the window, even though it’s steamed up so much I can hardly see outside. I pull my coat sleeve over my hand and use it to rub a little porthole on the glass,
just enough to give me a view of the street. I’ve no sooner taken my hand away than two narrowed eyes appear, squinting in. There’s a sharp knock on the window and then the eyes are
gone.

Seconds later the door of the cafe swings open and Mrs Curtis appears, waving brightly.

‘Yoo hoo,’ she calls, approaching me determinedly. ‘I said let’s have tea, and here you are! What a
coincidence
.’

I stand up and pull out a chair for her, but she brusquely pulls it aside and settles herself in, fussing with a flotilla of plastic bags that must be arranged just so on the floor. She throws
her coat off with the exuberant gesture of someone disrobing in front of an admirer, but keeps her pink knitted hat on.

‘Left my wig at home,’ she whispers.

She points to the pot on the table.

‘Now then. What kind of tea are you having?’

‘Earl Grey,’ I say, stunned into monosyllables by this unexpected whirlwind of activity.

She grimaces. ‘Can’t stand the stuff. Emily! Emily!’

The teenage waitress ambles over, drawing her order pad out of a pocket in her apron. Although Mrs Curtis clearly knows her, Emily’s red-cheeked face doesn’t offer a flicker of
recognition.

‘Hello, Emily. One pot of Darjeeling please, dear. Three bags – not two, three. A jug of full-fat milk, none of that nasty skimmed. And I think a piece of the Victoria sponge,
don’t you? Wait, there’s a fly in this sugar bowl, so let’s have a new one, please.’

The waitress writes this down unhurriedly, and tucks the pad back into her pocket, before picking up the sugar bowl with a heavy sigh.

‘Chop chop, Emily!’ trills Mrs Curtis, drumming her red nails on the tabletop. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

As Emily leaves, casting dark looks behind her, Mrs Curtis leans towards me and confides, ‘Of course I
do
have all day, don’t I? But Emily’s mother tells me she is a
terrible
dawdler, so I like to come in here every now and again and give her a bit of a
push
.’

The mutinous set of Emily’s shoulders tells me she’d like to give Mrs Curtis a push right off the top of a cliff, but she does seem to have picked up speed, so perhaps there’s
a method in the old lady’s madness.

‘Now, Kate,’ says Mrs Curtis, patting at her bags to check they haven’t rearranged themselves while she wasn’t looking. ‘Why do I have the feeling you’ve been
avoiding
me? Hmm?’

‘Oh! I haven’t,’ I say. ‘That is, I’m sorry if it seems like that. I just haven’t felt very sociable since I moved in. I didn’t mean it to seem rude,
Mrs Curtis.’

I should have known that, in a small town like Lyme, hiding away only serves to draw attention to yourself. But if I had run all over the place telling everyone my problems I’d only have
been criticized for making a song and dance of it. I can’t win.

Mrs Curtis ducks down for a moment to pick up her handbag, and takes out a plastic packet of tissues, which she places on the table between us. ‘I suppose this is because of
that
man
?’

She nods pointedly at the tissues, as if even the mention of my husband will make me start wailing.

‘I suppose,’ I say weakly.

‘Needless to say I’ve heard all about it, dear. People are
terrible
gossips, you know. But why should you be hiding yourself away when it was that man that caused all the
problems?’

I remove a tissue from the plastic packaging, to Mrs Curtis’s evident satisfaction. She pats the packet approvingly, as if it is a pet. I don’t actually feel like I will cry,
it’s just something to do with my hands.

‘It wasn’t just him,’ I say, picking at the tissue.

‘Of course, I know it is very
modern
, dear, to say that both partners are to blame. Not like in the old days when there had to be a guilty party or you couldn’t get a
divorce. But I
do
think,’ she leans forward with her elbows on the table, ‘that when someone has been
unfaithful
, then it very much
is
their fault and there
is simply no point in pretending otherwise.’

The tea arrives and Mrs Curtis busies herself with sending back a cup, claiming to see traces of lipstick on it, and then trying to force me to eat half of her Victoria sponge. It gives me an
excuse to change the subject and I manage to sustain a fairly lengthy conversation about how tea should be made, whether tea leaves are better than bags, and whether milk should be poured in before
the tea or after. Mrs Curtis, I am unsurprised to learn, has strong opinions on all of these matters, and does not hesitate to share them.

But it doesn’t take long before she turns her shrewd eyes on me again. ‘I expect you think I’m dreadfully nosy, don’t you? Asking about your husband. Believe me, I
don’t want to
upset
you. But it is one of the few benefits of being old – ageing is so full of
indignities
otherwise, dear – that you are suddenly allowed to say
whatever you like. Everyone already expects you to be batty, you see.’

She waves a forkful of cake in my direction and I shake my head to decline it. Behind her Emily folds napkins, one at a time, placing them into a wicker basket with deeply felt resentment.

‘I used to be much more polite, I can assure you. But where’s the fun in that, dear? Anyway, I can see that you don’t want to talk about it, and that is quite all right with
me. God forbid I should be one of those
encroaching
women who can’t take a hint.’

‘Not at all,’ I demur. I pick up my teacup, and put it down again when I see it’s empty. It clatters loudly in the empty tea room. ‘It’s all just . . . it’s
very raw. I’m not—’

‘Quite understood!’ She leans forward again, waving a red-painted finger commandingly. ‘There will come a time when you do want to talk about it, dear. All the time, to anyone
who will listen. Believe you me, I
know
.’

Before I can follow this intriguing line of enquiry, she looks up at the clock on the wall behind me and gasps. ‘Goodness, will you look at the
time
, dear! I have bridge at
four!’

She summons poor Emily over to the table to instruct her on how to package up the leftover tea leaves into a parcel that Mrs Curtis can take home to put on her roses. The plastic bags are
mustered, the coat buttoned and offers of help with either are brusquely rebuffed. She is gone before I realize that she has left without paying.

Emily looks happy for the first time, a tight-lipped little smile spreading across her face as she watches the door swing shut.