The Foster Husband (30 page)

So why do those words keep coming back? Why won’t they leave me alone?

Matt said similar things to me, that I manipulated everything so that it was how I wanted. But like Prue, he never understood that it was for his own good. For
our
own good. But was it?
When I think about us lately, I have the strangest feeling: that while I was trying to get Matt to change, he was trying to change me too.

But those words sting more harshly even than that, because they’re pretty much exactly what Tim Cooper said to me just before I left Lyme for good.

That summer started early for all of us, in a bright, brilliant May of blue skies and sunshine. Exams were over, and while the rest of the school was shut indoors, staring out
of the window at the sea, we were free. There were parties nearly every night, and we’d meet up in the late mornings to dissect the evening before over bacon sandwiches and Cokes on the
seafront, playing frisbee down on the beach in the afternoon. I think we knew it was all about to be over – some of us had places at university, some of us were interviewing for jobs –
but in that early part of the summer, it was all about possibility; it felt like the sunny days would stretch out in front of us endlessly.

It is hard for me to remember if I was already desperate to leave Lyme. My memories of that first part of the summer are so golden that I have almost convinced myself I would have stayed there
happily for ever if things hadn’t gone wrong. But that can’t be right, since all the universities I applied to were in London. I remember dancing around the living room with Prue the
day I heard I’d got into Imperial, her joy, even at ten years old, less for my achievement than out of delight that she would soon have our shared bedroom to herself.

Some of the boys had cars now, crappy rustbuckets purchased with the proceeds of summer jobs, and the novelty of being driven around by friends rather than parents made us all shut our eyes to
the terrifying recklessness with which we hurtled around the country lanes. Nothing bad would happen to us – we were invincible, independent. While living at home with everything paid for by
our mums and dads, of course – we didn’t even know that this was something to be grateful for. Instead our parents were a terrible burden and we spent hours discussing how little they
understood our lives, and what it was to be young.

Adding to my giddy sense of freedom that summer was the fact that I’d dumped Tim Cooper. Yes, I, Kate Bailey, had broken up with the undisputed sex god of Lyme Regis.

He hadn’t seen it coming. Possibly because he’d been too busy looking in the mirror, but it wasn’t his vanity that had finished us off. It wasn’t just one thing; it was
everything. The protective way he hovered around me at parties, never joining in a conversation, just waiting for me to get bored or drunk enough to go upstairs with him; it began to annoy me. I
hadn’t noticed how little he contributed, as if his beautiful face should be enough of a reward for those of us near him. He was an object to be admired, and when my gaze turned elsewhere,
even momentarily, he was at first baffled, then angry.

And the more I pulled away, the closer he clung. Turning up at my house when I didn’t answer the phone, pinning Kerry Walker’s fifteen-year-old brother up against a wall for talking
to me. Once your party wasn’t considered a success until Tim and I had christened one of the bedrooms, now an evening was complete only once Tim and I had had a shouting match in your
kitchen, or back garden, or wherever I happened to be when Tim lost patience with waiting for me to turn to him, only him and no one else.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he bellowed. ‘What do you want?’

But I didn’t know what I wanted. I was seventeen, for crying out loud.

Though it was unknown to me then, some examination board somewhere was about to give me an A in English for my ability to debate the motivations of literary creations. I could see the subtext
and the foreshadowing in novels, accurately predict the weakness of character that would lead to disaster (it always ended in disaster for women in those nineteenth-century novels), but when it
came to myself I entirely lacked the emotional vocabulary to tell Tim what I wanted. I didn’t know how to establish a boundary between him and myself when I wasn’t sure if this new,
confident, popular me was really me, or just the temporary gift of Tim, as easily withdrawn as it had been given. And because I didn’t know how to discuss it, I ended it. Abruptly and badly.
Tim couldn’t believe it.

Nor could anyone else. There was a collective breath-holding from everyone around us for days. Tim Cooper had been dumped. One of the immutable laws of the universe had been broken – would
others follow? Would the sun start setting in the east? Would the waves stop rolling up onto the shingle?

He tried to get back together with me by blasting out No Doubt’s ‘Don’t Speak’ from his car stereo outside our house – don’t judge him too harshly, it was
1997 after all. It didn’t work, not least because Dad threatened to turn the hose on him if he didn’t fuck off out of our drive. And also because we were at that age where music really
means something, is your entire identity, and I couldn’t help feeling that if Tim had known me at all, he’d have tried to woo me back with a band I actually liked.

This is not to say I didn’t mourn the end of our relationship. Of course I did, I was a hormonal adolescent, so I seized on any excuse for dramatics. It was the perfect excuse to refuse to
eat for days, to sulk around the house and to claim that no one appreciated the depths of my suffering. But underneath, I at least had the self-awareness to realize that my overwhelming emotion was
one of relief.

And on the seventh day, I heard that Tim had shagged Manda Clarke up against a tree in the Undercliff. All was right with the world. He had moved on.

So when Dready Eddy announced that his parents were going away to Spain for a week, leaving him in charge of their enormous hillside house, I didn’t think twice about turning up at his
party, even though I knew Tim would be there.

Eddy’s parents were architects, which to we unsophisticated children of Lyme Regis, brought up before the advent of
Grand Designs
and its ilk, was an almost mystical profession.
Entering into their starkly modernist home, built high up on the hill, glass-walled and steel-timbered, was like stepping into the future. And in the future, of course, they played the Chemical
Brothers at ear-splitting volume, and had a dustbin full of ice and beer in the middle of the balcony.

Eddy was taking his duties as host pretty seriously, which is to say that he had moved all the furniture out of the way and was offering bucket bongs in the bathroom. Beyond that it was a total
free-for-all. I arrived at nine, backed up by Ellie Morrison and Jo Winters, who were ostensibly my greatest friends, but who couldn’t disguise the fact that they were buzzing with the
possibility of being self-appointed handmaidens to any Kate and Tim gossip that might occur that night, our first social encounter since we’d split up.

I considered myself lucky they’d come with me. I’d noticed that a few of my supposed friends had already started subtly distancing themselves from me, obviously hoping that doing so
might increase their chances of being the next girl Tim took to the Undercliff. Well, good luck to them, if that was what they really wanted. For me it was enough to be at a party without my usual
glowering shadow trailing me from room to room.

Of course the glowering shadow was already there, leaning against a kitchen counter, his arm around a triumphant-looking Manda Clarke. Once he was sure I’d seen him, he bent his head to
mash his mouth on hers, looking at me the whole time. I would like to say that I walked over there with total confidence and said hello, taking the moral high ground and being an adult about it.
But come off it, I was seventeen. Of course I didn’t. I ducked behind my hair, pretended I hadn’t seen him and went out onto the balcony instead to get drunk.

Eddy had set up speakers on the wooden decking and the bass pounded under my feet as I stepped outside, flanked by Ellie and Jo. It was still light enough to see the ocean, where the sun hovered
above the horizon, casting us all in its reddish glow. It was the magic hour, when everything looks illuminated and beautiful, before darkness and cold descend. Someone put a Bacardi Breezer in my
hand and I downed half of it in one go.

Ellie giggled in my ear about a tall boy who was sitting on a railing on the other side of the balcony – none of us had seen him before, which, in our incestuous small-town group of
friends, lent him an air of celebrity. Even though the balcony dropped at least twenty feet behind him, he sat on the railing with complete unconcern, swinging a beer bottle by its neck. I saw him
look over at us, and he caught my eye and smiled.

Eddy ambled over to us, affectedly casual, his dreads falling down over his face dangerously close to the glowing end of his spliff. ‘’S Will’s cousin, Max,’ he said,
nodding over at the new boy. ‘Come down from London – he’s at Imperial. Um, hey, isn’t that where you’re going, Kate?’

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, barely registering the fact that Eddy knew where I was going to university. I couldn’t have told you what he was doing after the summer if my life
depended on it. So the dark-haired boy over there was going to be at my university, was he? Interesting.

‘Ooh,’ said Jo. ‘He’s looking at you, Kate. It’s like it was written in the stars. How romantic.’

‘Shut up, Jo,’ I muttered, elbowing her in the ribs. ‘You’re so embarrassing.’

‘He’s coming over,’ she hissed.

‘I need another drink,’ I said, nonchalantly walking over to the dustbin full of ice where all the bottles were hidden. I bent down to pick up another bottle, and looked back over my
shoulder. ‘Anyone else?’

‘Yeah, great, thanks,’ said Eddy. ‘Beer, please, Kate.’

Ellie shook her head fiercely, indicating her Bacardi Breezer, which was nearly full. Her expression clearly said to slow down. Whatever; she wasn’t my mother. This was a party. It was
practically obligatory to get drunk.

‘I’ll have a beer, thanks,’ said Max. Our fingers touched as I passed him the ice-cold bottle, and I dropped my gaze, knowing he was still looking at me.

In my memory all the parties that summer meld into one – even this one. I can’t be sure how clearly I remember it now that I see it all through a haze of nostalgia. I do know that I
spent a lot of the evening talking to Max, but I can’t remember what we spoke about. I don’t suppose it matters, since frankly in those days all a boy had to do was have a Britpop
haircut and a decent pair of trainers and he was halfway there as far as I was concerned. With the glamour of coming from London, Max could have spoken to me about sewerage works or stamp
collecting and I’d have been impressed.

I do remember feeling like I was flexing my muscles, having a sense of myself as attractive, to this stranger, just for being myself. He didn’t know me as Tim Cooper’s girlfriend. He
didn’t even know who Tim Cooper was. I felt I was being granted a glimpse of my future self, the girl I might be once I’d left Lyme behind. All at once I couldn’t wait to escape
this golden summer. Life seemed to be beckoning to me from London, calling me away. Max was just the personification of everything that was waiting for me.

The rest of the group drifted back indoors as the night got colder, but the two of us stayed there, leaning against the balcony railings, talking, talking. Every now and then someone would
stumble out onto the balcony for a cigarette or a beer from the dustbin, but no one approached us.

I was going to kiss him. I was going to grab my future with both hands. But first I needed to go inside and use the bathroom.

Max helped me stand up, I told him my head was spinning, which wasn’t a total lie as I’d drunk way too much, but it was mostly an excuse to hold onto his hand, flexing my fingers
against his. I pulled away reluctantly and told him to wait there for me. He grinned and I felt my heart do a skip of anticipation inside my chest.

I slid open the glass doors back into the Curtises’ house and was hit by a wall of body heat and music now that the speakers had been moved inside. People were dancing, and Ellie was
asleep on the sofa. I stopped to check on her, but she pushed my hand away and rolled over, mumbling something about elephants. I couldn’t see Tim anywhere. Maybe he’d gone already. As
I walked through the room I felt like I was gliding above them all, aloof and apart. I had Max from London waiting for me outside. The future.

There were voices inside the bathroom and when the door opened a thick cloud of dope smoke rolled out, closely followed by one of the boys from the Lower Sixth.

‘He’s pulling a whitey,’ someone shouted, and I stepped quickly out of the way, just in time to avoid being splattered with vomit as he buried his face in a potted palm on the
landing.

‘Hey, Kate,’ called Eddy, from his position crouched by the bath, a cut-off Coke bottle suspended in the water. ‘Want some?’

‘She’s already getting some from what I heard,’ sniggered someone I couldn’t see.

‘Is there another bathroom?’ I asked, pretending not to have heard.

Eddy pushed his dreads off his face, and frowned as he tried and failed to focus on me. ‘Yeah, use the one in my mum and dad’s room. Top floor. No problem.’

The bathroom door swung shut again.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked the boy who’d puked in the plant pot.

‘It’s cool, I’m cool,’ he insisted, waving me away as he slumped against the wall. I shrugged and left him there, his head hanging between his knees.

The sound of the music was fainter as I went up the stairs to the top of the house. I could still hear laughter from the bathroom below, but up here it was hushed. Eddy’s parents’
room was almost monastic, all whites and greys, with a concrete shelf running above the bed. Expensive art books were arranged in tasteful piles, one each for Eddy’s mum and dad. It was so
different to my parents’ cluttered terraced home. This was just how I would have my bedroom when I was grown up, I decided. I couldn’t wait.