The Foster Husband (26 page)

Eddy lets out a long breath, less of a sigh than an expellation of everything inside, as if he’s trying to get rid of it all. ‘Ten years?’ he says, and I wonder why he’s
posed it as a question, as if he isn’t sure of the answer. As if he can’t believe it’s over, or as if he can’t believe it happened?

‘Wow! Ten years. Jeez, Eddy, you were a child groom. If that’s even an expression. I know you get child brides, so you must get child grooms.’

Eddy laughs. ‘I was twenty-three. Yeah, it’s pretty young I suppose. But we thought why wait? We were in love – all the usual bollocks. It was going to be different for us, you
know?’

‘I do know,’ I say.

‘You?’

‘A year and a half,’ I say. It doesn’t sound long at all. Not in comparison to ten years. And no children, either. ‘Yeah, we were just beginners really. But I think when
it’s finished, it’s finished – you cut your losses and move on. No point dragging it out for years when you both know it’s over.’

Eddy pinches a piece of bread between finger and thumb, pressing it into a tight ball.

‘It’s different when you have children,’ he says, his voice tight in his throat. ‘I’d have dragged it out forever to stay at home with them. But Gaby, yeah, she
thought like you. Thinks like you. Move on.’

He makes a pathetic little mime of his hand taking off from the table, like a plane.

‘Um, sorry,’ I say. ‘You were right. We should’ve stuck to schooldays. I suppose the present
is
pretty fucked, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ says Eddy and lifts his glass to mine.

By the time the waiter arrives with our starters we are well on the way to being drunk. I don’t know about Eddy but I’m actively pursuing it, doggedly downing my drinks as if they
were prescribed medicine. I feel like I’ve been tightly wound up for weeks, and the alcohol spreads welcomingly through my veins, loosening everything, making me feel like everything will be
okay. I’m sure I won’t feel like that tomorrow morning, but tonight I don’t care. It feels good to be out, to have a friend in Lyme, to have a life again instead of hiding from
the one I used to have.

‘These anchovies are amazing,’ I say, taking another tiny battered fish from my plate with my fingers. It reminds me of something, but I can’t think what.

‘Told you the food here was good,’ says Eddy.

‘It’s not just good, it’s unbelievable,’ I say. ‘This is the best meal I’ve had in years.’

‘Oh, that’s the company,’ he says. ‘The food’s pretty average, actually, but the company just makes it seem unbelievable. I have that effect on women all the
time.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t just take me to McDonald’s in that case,’ I say. ‘If it would’ve tasted amazing wherever we went, you should’ve taken me
somewhere way cheaper.’

Eddy snorts and grabs his wine glass. ‘Yeah, I can just see Kate Bailey slumming it in Maccy D’s. I know what you’re like – a different fancy restaurant every weekend, I
bet. Wine list as long as your arm. One of those little scrapy things for taking the crumbs off the table.’

‘I carry my own, obviously,’ I say. ‘In my handbag. I like to be prepared.’

‘Seriously, though, you must be finding it so quiet in Lyme after what you’re used to.’

I consider. Quiet? After what I’d grown used to it’s quite the opposite. I smooth out the tablecloth under my fingers, the thick weave of the linen is rough and scratchy, like a
hairshirt. There’s something pleasing about the texture – I wonder, briefly, if it would be so bad to wear a hairshirt anyway. Having a tactile reminder of your sins always with you
might be better than being ambushed by the memory of them when you least expect it.

‘Once upon a time, maybe,’ I reply. ‘But to be honest I wasn’t going out much by the time I left. I – well, I stayed in a lot. Matt bought me Minnie – the
puppy – and that kind of tied me to home a bit. I didn’t like to leave her on her own at nights. She’d chew things, and I could tell it distressed her to be left alone.’

‘Do you think he did it on purpose?’ asks Eddy.

My eyes widen. ‘Bought me a dog to keep me at home you mean?’

Eddy nods.

‘No!’ I start laughing at the idea. As if Matt had tied me to a chair with a dog lead and forbidden me to ever go out again. ‘No, I mean – God, I never even considered
that. Totally the opposite, I think; he thought it would get me out of the house more, and then he got frustrated when it did the opposite.’

Eddy wipes a finger along the side of his plate, scraping up the last of the horseradish sauce.

‘Why did he think you needed to get out of the house?’ he asks.

‘Oh, it’s a long story,’ I say.

‘I don’t mind,’ says Eddy.

It is on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I do mind but – maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s the unaccustomed night out – instead I start talking.

‘He just couldn’t accept that things changed,’ I say. ‘He thought I’d always be the party girl who was out all night and working like a maniac. He couldn’t
deal with me growing up and calming down.’

Eddy’s forehead creases. ‘So he got angry with you for calming down?’ he asks, as if he’s heard wrong.

I know in Eddy’s eyes I will forever be the wild girl he knew back in the day.

‘Oh you should’ve seen me, Eddy,’ I tease. ‘Apron on, dusting the banisters. I even did a cordon bleu cookery course. I don’t do anything by halves, you
know.’

Eddy chokes on his wine. ‘Seriously?’

‘I know! I thought, Whatever it took to be a good wife, I’d do it. I gave up everything. My career, my friends, my social life.’

‘He asked you to do that?’ Eddy looks dumbfounded.

‘He didn’t ask,’ I admit. No matter how angry I am with Matt I can’t pretend he was some kind of pre-feminist-era caveman, dragging me into the kitchen by my hair and
chaining me to the stove. ‘He didn’t have to. You know how some of the most important stuff in a marriage is what isn’t said.’

Eddy nods sympathetically.

‘He was always saying how I put too much time into work and not enough time into our relationship. So I did it for us. For our future together. And then he turned around and said I’d
turned into someone else. After everything I’d done for him.’

‘It hardly seems fair,’ says Eddy loyally.

‘He just didn’t appreciate any of it. He kept saying I’d changed, but he didn’t see that relationships have to change if they’re going to move on.’

Eddy’s lips twist into a rueful smile. ‘Children have a way of forcing that change on you,’ he says.

I pick up my wine glass and hold the bowl of it in both hands, as if I’m trying to absorb the wine through my palms. I stare into it, watching the reflections of the candlelight shift and
flicker on the surface.

‘Yeah, well, that didn’t happen for us,’ I say. Light again, light as air. ‘There was a time when it seemed like a tragedy, but now I wonder if it was a sign, you know?
That this wasn’t going to work out. We weren’t going to get what we wanted from each other.’

Eddy looks bewildered, unsurprisingly, considering I have veered off into dangerously alcohol-fuelled philosophy – next I will be claiming something weird about the Law of Attraction or
some other woo-woo nonsense.

‘Or perhaps it was just my hostile womb,’ I say, forcing a smile.

I know the best way to get Eddy off the subject of my failed marriage is to lead him into a conversational dead end. A dead end with a man-terrifying gynaecological reference. Womb is hardly the
worst I could say – especially to a man who has witnessed the birth of two daughters – but, as I had hoped, Eddy blanches, changes tack entirely and the evening is saved.

It’s fortunate for both of us that the food is extraordinary and, like most of the other diners here, we can content ourselves with marvelling at it instead of talking about ourselves. The
fish arrives with a bowl of buttery samphire, in whose branches rest the palest pink curls of shrimps. It’s so rich that I can barely eat half of it, but somehow we both find space for
pudding, too: a shared bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream, served with a warm salted caramel sauce that I expect to see again in my dreams.

I like talking like this, just being in the present moment, appreciating the food, with no agenda or issues bubbling under the surface. Mealtimes had become so fraught before I left London.

I was always so anxious to please, to know that Matt appreciated my efforts, understood the exact technique I’d used for the zabaglione. After all, wasn’t the cordon bleu course
I’d done for his benefit, too? Matt thought it was hilarious to buy me an apron with a Masterchef logo on it, and I laughed along with his impressions of the judges, though it seemed to me
that he wasn’t taking me very seriously. I didn’t find the culinary dramas of those contestants ridiculous – I cried along with them when their soufflés failed, when they
dropped the tray of cakes two minutes before service, when the lamb was cold and raw in the middle. I understood what it meant to put everything you had into a plate of food, to hold your breath
for the reaction of the person eating it. But unlike those chefs on the television, for whom the praise of the judges got greater with every episode, it seemed that the harder I tried, the less
Matt noticed. Or the less he cared, I should say. But isn’t that the same thing anyway?

And after a while he just stopped turning up at all.

London

Curled up on the sofa, my head resting on Matt’s knees, I let my eyes close. I don’t think he was really watching television either. I could feel his hand
gently stroking my hair. I wondered if it was a bad thing that the only time I felt really close to Matt these days was when we were silent like this.

Our conversations lately had taken on an almost sitcom feel; it was all ‘Hello, darling, how was work?’ ‘Fine thank you, darling, don’t you look nice?’ Skating
politely over the fact that I still hadn’t got a job and that Matt had given up asking me about it. Even though we were arguing less it made me feel worse, as if we’d become polite
strangers in a house share; considerately accommodating one another for reasons of domestic harmony rather than love.

‘This is nice,’ I murmured, as his fingers combed through the hair at my temples.

Matt grunted, which I took as agreement.

‘Matt?’ I plucked at a thin grey thread that was poking out from the seam of his trousers. It stayed firm.

‘Mmm?’

‘Matt, do you like that I’ve started cooking more?’ I twisted the thread around my fingers to get some purchase on it.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Who knew you had it in you? You do a great job.’

‘I like it,’ I said as the thread snapped. ‘I never thought I would, but I do. And it’s nice how the fridge is always full these days, isn’t it? And that there are
fresh flowers every week.’

‘Umm, yes,’ said Matt. I suspected he hadn’t noticed either of these things, but if I had to point them out to him, then so be it.

I sat up and crossed my legs on the sofa. ‘I just think the house is more of a home since I left Hitz,’ I said. ‘Don’t you? It’s more welcoming, not just the place
we dump our suitcases before the next work trip.’

‘The house is great, Kate,’ said Matt dutifully.

‘Only it’s made me think,’ I said. I twisted a strand of hair in front of my face.

Matt stretched an arm along the back of the sofa and leaned backwards into the cushions. A slow smile spread across his face. ‘Spit it out.’

‘What?’

‘You’re building up to something. I can tell.’

‘I’m just saying that I think there’s a silver lining to redundancy. It’s made me appreciate what we have at home. I’m really grateful for it.’

Matt raised an eyebrow. ‘And?’

I picked up a cushion and held it protectively against my chest.

‘And, well, okay, you know how I stopped taking the pill a few months ago . . .’

Matt looked incredulous, then delighted. ‘You’re pregnant?’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh my God, you’re pregnant!’

‘No!’ I said quickly. It broke my heart to see how Matt caught hold of himself, trying not to let me see his disappointment. But it also made what I wanted to say next that much
easier. Asking for things directly had never been one of my strengths.

‘No, of course you’re not. Bad timing,’ he said.

‘Do you think so?’ I asked, clutching my cushion more tightly and letting my highlighted hair fall across my face. ‘Because I was thinking that maybe . . . maybe not getting a
job is, I don’t know, a sign or something. That maybe I don’t need to get another job straight away.’

‘It’s not exactly straight away,’ said Matt. ‘It’s been six months.’

‘I know,’ I said, not rising to the bait.

‘I’m not having a go,’ Matt said. ‘I just mean that I know you miss work, it’s obvious.’

‘I don’t know if it’s work I’ve missed,’ I said, ‘or just having a purpose. What if I made my purpose something different from now on? If I’m going to
have to give up work for maternity leave anyway, why don’t I just take some time out now, while we’ve got the rest of my redundancy money to fall back on?’

Matt poured himself another glass of wine. The bottle was nearly empty now.

‘That money won’t last for ever,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with taking on a few projects here and there in the meantime? You don’t have to commit to a full-time
job again, I know it’s hard to find one, but are you sure you want to give up completely?’

I sighed. ‘It’s not giving up, Matt. It’s giving us a chance. Don’t you see? We hardly ever saw each other until I lost my job. We were always on different continents, in
different time zones. I couldn’t do that if we had a baby. I’m trying to think of the future here.’

Matt looked unconvinced, his forehead wrinkled in consternation.

‘Come on, Matt, you told me you wanted me to give my all to you, instead of to work. That’s what I’m trying to do.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Matt. ‘I didn’t mean you had to give up everything else. You love your work; you’ve always lived for it. I’m just worried you want
to have a baby for the wrong reasons.’

‘Don’t you
want
to have a baby?’ I snapped. ‘I thought this was what we both wanted?’