The Foster Husband (20 page)

Even while we’re snorting with laughter at the cheesy lines on the screen, I can see Mum’s mind is on something else. She keeps glancing over at me, and I remember the set of her
shoulders when I first led her into the living room this evening. She wants to talk to me about something. I know it must be Matt. She always had a soft spot for him; she told me I didn’t
know how lucky I was to have found someone like that. Well, I wonder if she thinks that now.

When she starts to speak, I’m already gripping the stem of my wine glass with tension. But she doesn’t want to talk about Matt at all, it’s far worse than that.

‘Love, I saw Eddy Curtis yesterday,’ she says.

‘Did you?’ I keep looking at the television, but it’s a little too late to claim to be gripped by the film. I wish I hadn’t been quite so quick to insist it was
rubbish.

‘He told me he’d had a chat with you the other day. About Tim.’

I feel bile rise up into the back of my throat, burning.

‘That was all a long time ago,’ I say. ‘It’s in the past now.’

Mum shifts on the sofa, trying to look at me properly, but I won’t meet her eye. I can’t believe she’s brought this up now, after all these years of never mentioning it. Like I
don’t have enough to deal with.

As if she senses my anxiety, Minnie gets up from her bed and comes to sit next to me, nudging my fingers with her nose, which is dry from sleep. I stroke her soft head and it is a comfort.

‘I wonder if it is, Kate,’ says Mum. ‘In the past, I mean.’

‘Of course it is, Mum,’ I snap, furious at her for ruining our evening together. I thought things had got better between us and now I realize they haven’t in the slightest.
‘What good is it, raking it all up again? Tim’s in Australia, I don’t ever have to see him again, I’m over it.’

Mum is quiet for a while. I can feel my heart beating wildly in my chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say eventually. ‘I don’t mean to be cross with you. I just don’t understand why you want to talk about it now.’

Mum’s expression is cautious, prepared for me to snap again. ‘I always thought we should have talked about it. You just never wanted to, and I thought it was better to let you deal
with it in your own way.’

I run Minnie’s silken ears through my fingers as I let Mum speak. Concentrating on the dog makes it easier to hear the words.

‘But, Kate,’ she continues gently. ‘You’re not talking again. And I know you only do that when something terrible has happened. This time I can’t let you shut
yourself off, love. I’m sorry. I know you want us all to leave you alone, but I can’t. I’m your mother.’

I bite my bottom lip, chewing until I can taste blood.

‘I can’t, Mum,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

I hear Mum sigh next to me, a slow sad exhalation. ‘I’m sorry, love, but you’re going to have to. You’re not a teenager now. You’re an adult. You can’t just
run away from things. You have to face up to them. Face up to yourself.’

I turn my head slowly in her direction, suspicious. I know she has been speaking to Matt; she’s told me he’s called them. What stories has Matt been telling her to ingratiate himself
with her? To make her take his side?

‘What do you mean face up to yourself?’ I ask, my voice very quiet.

‘No matter what happened, it takes two people to make a marriage. Or to break one. But you need to deal with this, not just hide from it. I let you do that with Tim and . . .’ she
hesitates.

‘Tim has nothing to do with this,’ I say.

I am trying to persuade myself as much as my mother. I don’t want to think about Tim Cooper any more. I have successfully buried that memory beneath my many accomplishments – my
fabulous job, my lovely husband, my wonderful life. It horrifies me to discover that the memory had not been obliterated, only suppressed, ready to emerge again when my accomplishments had proven
to be an illusion, no more substantial than dust.

‘Your refusal to talk about it has everything to do with this,’ says Mum, gently.

I shake my head.

‘Please don’t,’ I whisper. ‘Please don’t, Mum, I can’t bear it.’

My shoulders start to shake and, for the first time since I left my husband, I start to cry. Fat tears slide down my nose and drop onto Minnie’s fur. She wags her tail and looks anxiously
from me to Mum. I feel Mum’s arm around my shoulders, her hand stroking my hair, and I let myself sob until my breath comes in shuddering gasps.

I cannot say it is a release. I cannot say I feel better for it. All I can say is that I don’t feel any worse, which is more than I expected.

London

‘Kate,’ said Richard.

My pen traced the same words over and over on my meeting notes, shading in the spaces in the letters, adding a few hearts and flowers to break things up. I was so jetlagged from the overnight
flight that I could hardly focus on the letters, let alone on the meeting which seemed to have been discussing the same tedious point, round and round without any conclusions, for twenty
minutes.

‘Kate,’ said Richard more insistently. Sarah knocked my ribs with her elbow and I jumped.

The whole meeting was staring at me expectantly. Oh shit. Richard had been in a vile mood for over a month now. The fact that I’d been flying to Singapore for a few days each week had kept
me mostly out of his firing range, but the emails I’d received from the office had given me plenty of warning that he was not to be displeased. Fifteen people had lost their jobs in the last
two weeks, and everyone was nervous.

‘Richard,’ I said briskly, noticing that he was drumming his fingers impatiently on the table. The first rule of defence: attack. ‘Can you clarify exactly what you’re
asking? I’m afraid I may have misunderstood the question.’

Richard glared at me. His fingers stilled. I smiled back steadily.

‘I can
clarify
that I was asking, Kate, if you were fucking listening to a word I said.’

Ah. No escaping that one. Dean from Talent smirked happily at my discomfort; he was just glad to have someone else face the wrath of Richard ever since Leila had done one illicit deal too many
and been kicked out of Hitz. My kinder colleagues averted their gazes out of solidarity, but Richard continued to stare me down.

‘Of course, Richard,’ I said, trying not to blink. ‘Sorry if I didn’t seem to be paying attention, I was just thinking through a few things for Singapore. Got distracted
by – ah – the budget.’

‘Oh really?’ Richard reached across the table and snatched my meeting notes out from under my hand. I scrabbled to get them back, but my hand just clutched at empty space. He
squinted through his wire-framed glasses and an unpleasant smile spread across his face. ‘How sweet. Mrs Kate Martell. Mrs K. Martell. Kate Martell. Mrs Matt Martell.’

A small squawk of glee escaped from Dean’s throat before he could stop it, but as soon as I whipped my head round in his direction he dropped his eyes to the table, his shoulders shaking.
Richard pushed the paper back to me, a sardonic expression on his face. This from the man who’d cried drunkenly at my wedding and told me the sight of me and Matt together made him believe in
true love.

‘Well, Mrs Martell,’ Richard sneered. I folded my meeting notes over and over, as if by hiding them I could erase everyone’s memory. ‘Do you think you might turn that
fluffy little newlywed head of yours back to the matter in hand? Which is how many days of prep you and your useless team will need in Singapore?’

I had to bite my lip to stop myself from snapping back at him. I’d been working twenty-hour days, flying halfway around the world so often that I knew most of the stewardesses on Singapore
Airlines by name, barely seeing my new husband, and Richard was bawling me out in front of everyone for a moment’s inattention. I didn’t work that hard to be patronized like some
idiot.

‘Ten days of prep, Richard,’ I said carefully, keeping my voice steady. The person who loses their temper is the person who loses the argument. ‘I can forward you the
spreadsheet after the meeting. The local crew is on the case with the preliminaries, we need one week with just a skeleton crew, then three days with the full team and we’re there.’

‘How skeleton can you go on the crew?’ asked Richard, frowning. In front of him was a sheet of figures highlighted in neon yellow and pink. No iPad for Richard, he was proudly old
school, as he often liked to tell us. Acoustic, not digital, as if it made him more authentic rather than just out of date. He waggled his pen impatiently between his fingers, so that it was a blur
of movement.

‘Well, probably just me, Sarah and Kirsty initially,’ I said. ‘Plus the local team, that’s about eleven.’

‘And for the full crew?’ He peered at me over the top of his glasses.

‘Well,’ I said, trying to remember the figures off the top of my head. ‘Thirty? I think. I can send you the proper numbers after the meeting.’

Richard lifted the top sheet of figures and underlined something on the paper below. He looked up.

‘Do you really need everyone out there for three days? Can’t they get it done in two?’

I sighed and rubbed the heels of my hands against my red-rimmed eyes before I realized I was probably smudging mascara all over my face. Not that you’d probably notice – the bags
under my eyes were multiplying as rapidly as my airmiles lately, and the skin there was already grey.

You’d think I was asking Richard for holiday time rather than begging to be allowed to fly thousands of miles to work like crazy, far away from my home and my husband. Everyone wanted to
get the job done and get home, didn’t Richard see that?

‘Richard, every time I get back from Singapore you’ve changed the parameters again. It’s making so much extra work. It was meant to be five days with full crew, then three and
now you want to cut it again? Do you want this event done properly or do you just want it done cheaply?’ I put my palms flat on the table. ‘I can do either, but I can’t do both.
It’s impossible.’

Richard scowled. ‘It is your job,
Mrs Martell
, to get it done properly and not to spunk Hitz money all over the place while you’re doing it. Do you think that’s
impossible? Because there are plenty of people who’d leap at the chance if you think so.’

I knew exactly who he meant. If he thought he could go out to lunch with Jennifer Heston without my knowing about it, he was very much mistaken. Meeting the former MTV Production Manager in the
Delaunay was about as subtle as setting up a table for the two of them next to Lindsey’s desk in Reception. I don’t know if Jennifer was touting for freelance work, or if he was trying
to lure her over here above my head, but either way it had made me even more anxious on top of the jetlag and the stress.

I pushed my plastic cup of stale meeting coffee away from me. I thought it would keep me awake, but it was just making me jittery and paranoid.

‘When have I ever gone over budget?’ I demanded, hoping that he wouldn’t remember how much petty cash I spent on bribes in Lagos. I was sure I had hidden it well enough that it
wouldn’t immediately come to his mind. ‘You know I can deliver exactly what you want for exactly how much it needs to cost. It’s just driving me demented that the budget keeps
changing every five minutes.’

‘Everyone is having to make compromises, Kate,’ snapped Richard, throwing his pen down on the table with a clatter that made us all jump. ‘Everyone. And when I have to make
them, you make them too, do you understand?’

His face had become mottled with purple, as if all the blood vessels had rushed to the surface waving flags in solidarity with his argument. A vein stood out alarmingly on the side of his neck,
pulsing like it was trying to break out of his skin and escape to somewhere calmer.

‘Yes, Richard,’ I said, bobbing my head down obediently. I didn’t want to be responsible for him having a heart attack. ‘Sorry.’

‘Good,’ said Richard, his colour diminishing slightly. He ran a finger round the edge of his collar, pulling it away from his neck as if he needed air. ‘Get it right. I
don’t want to see Ball-Basher Bailey turning into Ball-Dropping Bailey, is that clear?’

‘Yes,’ I said meekly. I didn’t feel it was quite the right time to correct him about my new last name when he’d seen it written out six times only minutes earlier.

When I got home Matt was already on the sofa, staring at his laptop, elbows on his knees. A half-empty beer bottle sat on the coffee table next to him and his face glowed a
ghostly blue as he scowled at something, his nose only inches from the screen.

He’d changed into the old grey sweatshirt and pyjama bottoms he wore after a heavy day at work. I always teased him that they were his grotty equivalent of a Hugh Hefner-style smoking
jacket – the items of clothing that announced a man at leisure. And I can’t deny that I’ve worn that sweatshirt myself when he’s been away on a trip for too long, just to
remind myself of him.

‘You’ll go blind,’ I said, from the doorway.

He turned his head and gave me a faint, tired smile. The bags under his eyes were almost a match for my own. ‘I thought that was masturbation?’

‘Are you watching porn again?’ I teased. I leaned on the door frame. ‘Put your hands where I can see them.’

‘Yeah? Put your arse on my lap, Basher,’ said Matt, leaning back and slapping his thighs. His wedding ring winked on his left hand. I still wasn’t used to it. Matt Martell, my
husband.

I hovered at the door, I hadn’t taken off my coat yet and I felt grimy from the overnight flight and the commute home.

‘Come on, my wife,’ he said, stretching out his arm to beckon me over. ‘Come here and make your old man very happy.’

I dragged my feet as I crossed the floor, dropping my bag from my shoulder. Matt’s dark hair stood up in tufts on his head – he only twisted it like that when he was stressed. He
didn’t even know he was doing it, but it was one of the things I’d learned living with him. When his hair went like that it was best to tread carefully. I cast a quick glance at his
laptop screen as I lowered myself onto his lap – no porn, just another spreadsheet. Lately I saw spreadsheets as I drifted off to sleep, columns of figures leaping over fences, the way other
people counted sheep. Hitz was in trouble and we were all feeling it.