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Authors: Pippa Wright

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BOOK: The Foster Husband
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‘Thought you must be new in town,’ she says. ‘Her always does that. Famous for it. Never seen her pay for her tea once. She’ll have followed you down the
street.’

She presents me with a round silver dish containing the bill, the only time so far that I have seen her move with anything approaching speed.

‘Service ain’t included.’

I leave Emily a large tip for no other reason than she is the first person I’ve spoken to in Lyme who seems to have no interest in, or knowledge of, my private life. If only I could pay
off everyone else so easily.

9

London

The Hitz Christmas party had been cut back that year, for reasons unspecified. It was as if they thought we wouldn’t notice that we’d been relegated to a
wind-battered marquee in London Fields instead of the ballroom of the Dorchester, as usual. Or that, rather than a sit-down meal, we’d be happy with a spread of sandwiches and sausage rolls,
much as if we were attending a provincial wedding rather than a party held by a multinational corporation.

Some said it was because Leila had been cautioned for possession when leaving last year’s do, and it had made the papers, which reflected badly on the company as a whole. But everyone knew
that was rubbish as the scandal just made Hitz sound like a rock and roll sort of place, which in our line of work was a good thing. Also the publicity had brought Leila a lot more business, so she
was delighted. Some said it was because our former head of marketing had woken up with a black eye and a missing tooth after last year’s party, and had to attend a meeting the next day
looking like a tramp. But he’d left now, so that couldn’t be it.

I thought it was more likely that our head of finance had wielded the anti-fun scissors; no one had got a bonus this year, and it hadn’t escaped my notice that they’d failed to
replace the last two people to leave the production team.

But there was one Hitz Christmas party tradition that would not die, no matter what cutbacks were forced on us. For the last three years, Sarah and I had pulled a stunt at the Hitz Christmas
party. In truth I wondered if we’d ever top last year, when we’d stripped down to leotards and broken into the full ‘Single Ladies’ routine. But that had taken weeks of
rehearsals. With Lagos having got in the way this year we just hadn’t had the time to practice.

‘But Sarah,’ I said, pulling down the hem of my dress, which kept clinging to my tights in a way that spelled trouble for later that night, when I was bound to be less sober and
therefore less attentive. ‘We could get
hurt
. Can’t we just take a year off or something?’

She stopped in the entrance to the marquee, grabbing my shoulders with both hands, her eyes glittering with determination. This year’s cunning stunt had been her idea, which made her
especially passionate about it.

‘Kate, the cunning stunt must continue. Don’t you see – they can take away our party, but they can’t take away what makes it great: you and me. Everyone is relying on us.
We’re like . . . Father Christmas or something. We owe it to everyone.’

I must have looked dubious, because she shook me, ‘Do you really want to deny everyone the full Christmas party experience? Do you?’

‘I’m not denying anyone anything,’ I began.

‘That’s what Chris said after Lagos,’ Sarah sniggered, letting go of me.


What
did Chris say after Lagos?’ I demanded.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she said airily, her back turned to me as she walked into the marquee.

‘Whatever,’ I said, trying to sound breezy.

To be honest I barely remembered what had happened after I’d downed a row of whiskys at the Airtel party. I’d found myself sneaking out of Chris’s hotel room at stupid
o’clock the next morning, staggered to my flight, and had tried very hard not to think of it ever since. I firmly believe that a bit of brazen denial is the best way to deal with such things.
Who wants to sit around talking about the stuff you’re ashamed of? Best to pretend it never happened and hope everyone else does too.

Sarah stopped in the entrance and took in the room. Smiling waiters greeted us with trays of champagne and dubious-looking bright blue cocktails. It was a given that at least half of the waiting
staff were aspiring musicians and presenters who would try to thrust a demo CD into your hand, or turn the evening into an audition if the opportunity presented itself. It was important not to let
yourself get into a conversation with any of them, or you’d never escape. Sarah and I, Christmas party veterans, took a glass each without making eye contact with the server.

Tables were laid out around an enormous dance floor where a few brave, or prematurely drunk, colleagues were already trying out their moves. Most people were, like us, just taking in the
atmosphere, admiring each other’s party outfits and initiating flirtations they hoped might end in the chill-out tent later, aka snogging central. Over at a table in a dark corner of the
marquee, Leila had already set up her dispensary; every few minutes a colleague would approach her and conduct a furtive transaction before disappearing off to the bathrooms.

Towering above all of us, beyond the DJ decks, past the buffet tables, stood a vast and imposing Christmas tree, its topmost branches brushing the canvas roof.

Sarah’s eyes lifted to the top of the tree, where a white-winged decorative angel looked down over the dance floor. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m just saying that you and
me, we’ve got reputations to uphold here. Bad ones.’

‘Okay,’ I agreed grudgingly. Over in a far corner, a familiar sight caught my eye.

‘Oh crap, the cameramen are all here,’ I muttered to Sarah. They stood in a huddled mass at the bar, in their best T-shirts and trainers. Jay had broken ranks to wear a festive
jumper with a snowflake theme, and it was clear from the howls of laughter around him that his friends weren’t about to let him forget it.

‘Really?’ Sarah asked, opening her eyes enormously and suspiciously wide. ‘I wonder who let them in?’

I turned to glare at her. ‘Sarah, no one ever looks that innocent without being very very guilty. This is your doing, isn’t it?’

‘Not exactly,’ she lied, beaming over at Jay. He looked relieved to see someone who might save him from his piss-taking mates. ‘But I might have mentioned that the party was on
tonight. And that they’re not very strict on the door.’

‘I thought you said you’d stopped seeing Jay after Lagos?’

‘I have,’ she said, not meeting my eyes. ‘Except on special occasions. Parties.’

‘Weekends?’

‘And, er, week nights,’ she admitted with a sheepish smile.

‘God, I don’t believe it. And you’ve kept it to yourself all this time?’

‘I don’t know what you’re so annoyed about, just because you and Chris never turned into anything doesn’t mean that Jay and I can’t give it a shot.’

‘Ooh, so it’s Jay and I now, is it?’

‘You can take the piss all you like, Kate,’ said Sarah, giving Jay a flirtatious wave across the room. ‘I really like him and you’re not going to put me off him just
because you’re always running away from relationships.’

‘Running away? Hardly, you would too if your only option was Chris, and you know it.’

Sarah shrugged. ‘Fair enough. I’ve never known what you see in him; I’ve hardly ever heard him say more than five words in a row.’

I snorted with laughter. ‘I don’t even know if I have, to tell the truth.’

I looked over to where Chris was studiously ignoring me in a manner designed to draw attention to himself.

‘Then aim higher, okay?’ said Sarah. ‘You deserve better than that. You deserve a proper relationship with someone who really likes you. It’s about time you found someone
nice.’

I started laughing. ‘Jeez, Sarah is this like when you wouldn’t get a tattoo unless I promised to get one done at the same time? Do I have to have a relationship just because
you’ve got one?’

‘You said you wanted a tattoo as well!’ Sarah protested, punching my arm crossly. ‘And fuck off, will you? I just want you to be happy.’

‘I am happy, you lunatic. I’ll be even happier when I beat you at the cunning stunt tonight, though.’

‘You reckon?’ said Sarah, looking at me challengingly. ‘We’ll see. I’m off to see Jay. Coming?’

I considered it, but once you got talking to the cameramen it was hard to get away, and it was best not to get trapped with them this early. Not when there were so many other people to talk to
first. I needed to get a few words in with our boss Richard, who found this kind of work function – where he wasn’t fully in charge – stressful. And my assistant Kirsty was still
new enough to need introductions to people. I’d reached an age where the annual shindig was not just about getting hammered and getting off with someone. Times were tough at Hitz, and I knew
I had to focus on the work part of the work party.

As Sarah joined the cameramen, disappearing amongst the checked shirts, I saw Chris look over at me and then quickly look away again, busily checking his phone as if he had lots to attend to. He
didn’t even offer a smile.

There was a time I’d assumed a deep soul lay behind his taciturn ways, but I seemed to remember I’d ended up snogging him in Lagos mostly because when he started talking he was so
immensely dull.

Well. If I was Chris’s last resort, then he was mine. Surely I could have much more fun tonight without revisiting my lazy cameraman? And I still had my mission to consider. This was going
to require tactics. I squeezed my way past a crowd of people just coming into the marquee, and started weaving between the tables so I could scope out the room. It was too early for many people to
be sitting down yet, though by the end of the evening it was a safe bet that the tables would be full of slumped Hitz staffers, snogging couples and glassy-eyed drunkards.

A movement caught my eye by the Christmas tree. Almost hidden by the branches, a barrel-shaped man stood, his back to the outside wall of the marquee. The muscles in his massive neck bunched and
flexed as he chewed gum while surveying the dance floor from his half-hidden position. The tell-tale curly wire of a radio headset disappeared into the collar of his white shirt, suggesting hidden
reinforcements close at hand. A security guard. This was a complication.

‘What are you up to?’ said a voice close to my ear. I turned around quickly and there was Matt Martell, looking far too gorgeous in a dark navy suit that made his eyes distractingly
blue.

‘Hello, Matt,’ I said frostily. ‘What makes you think I’m up to anything?’

‘A little bird tells me you’re pretty entertaining at the Hitz Christmas party. You and your friend Sarah. I couldn’t help notice you checking out the security arrangements
over there. Are you sizing up some sort of misbehaviour?’

‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ I said, raising an eyebrow and hoping I looked mysterious and inscrutable. Although there was no hope of remaining mysterious and
inscrutable once I was on the mission. Demented would be closer to the mark.

He smiled back with that confiding little head tilt of his. How did he manage to make every exchange feel like we were the only two people in the room? I could feel myself falling for it all
over again. I felt like giving my own face a sharp slap. Or Matt’s. Get a grip, Kate, I thought. Don’t let your guard down.

‘So it’s funny we haven’t seen each other at all since Lagos,’ Matt said. ‘I’ve been looking out for you.’

‘Have you? Well, Hitz is a big place, Matt, and I’m a busy person.’

‘It’s not that big,’ said Matt. ‘And no one’s that busy. I get the feeling you’ve been avoiding me, Basher Bailey.’

‘I don’t know why you’d think that,’ I said hastily. Because of course that is exactly what I had been doing ever since we got back. I’d sent Sarah to meetings when
I knew he’d be there. I’d avoided the third floor entirely. I’d even gone so far as to take the stairs instead of the lift for a full month to ensure I wouldn’t bump into
him, with the added and unexpected bonus of some impressive thigh-toning action.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Matt. ‘I suppose for you it’s normal to flirt with a guy and let him think he’s going to kiss you, and then when he turns his back
for one minute you disappear off with another man?’

‘That is not at
all
what happened, Matt Martell,’ I snapped.

‘Really?’ he asked, his expression no longer amused. ‘Because I went to get you a drink and the next thing I saw was you sitting on the lap of some cameraman downing shots. And
it didn’t look like you went home alone either.’

I felt my mouth opening and closing in rage, unable to spit out the words. I don’t mind calling myself a party girl – I’m not about to deny it – but for Matt to use it
against me like this, when he . . . when he . . .

‘How dare you question my morals, when
you’re
the one who had a girlfriend all along!’

‘When I had what?’

‘Oh did you think I didn’t know about Ailsa Logan?’ I demanded. ‘Well, I did, Matt. As soon as Chris and Danny told me about her I knew exactly what sort of man you were.
It may surprise you to know that I’m not the sort of girl who messes around with a man in a relationship. I
do
have morals, no matter what you might think.’

Matt raised a hand to the back of his neck, lifting his chin as if regarding the roof of the marquee. He let out a long, whooshing sigh.

‘Ah, Ailsa,’ he said. ‘So that was it.’

‘Yes,’ I said triumphantly. That told
you
, Matt Martell.

‘And if I told you that I’d split up with Ailsa before I even started at Hitz?’ he asked, lowering his eyes to meet mine.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘That’s not what the others said.’

Matt laughed, nodding towards the cameramen who stood, as ever, in a unified mass by the bar. ‘Those guys? Kate, I don’t even know them. Why do you think they’d know
what’s going on in my private life?’

‘So you’re saying they were lying?’ I challenged him.

He sighed again, ‘I’m saying they just didn’t know. Ailsa and I kept it pretty quiet that we’d split up – she didn’t want any bad publicity when she was about
to renegotiate her
Rise & Shine
contract.’

BOOK: The Foster Husband
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