The Foster Husband

by Pippa Wright

  ‘A grown-up?’ he scoffs.

  ‘You really are though, Eddy,’ I say. ‘You’re so sorted. How do you do it?’

  I can see that Eddy is a little bemused. ‘Everyone seems sorted from the outside, Kate,’ he says. ‘You seem sorted to me. Sad at the moment, but sorted in lots of ways. You should stop being so down on yourself.’

  That’s easy for Eddy to say. I expect if you opened him up to expose his darkest secrets they’d be something like ‘nicked a fiver off my mum when I was twelve’ or ‘failed to renew my car tax disc on time.’ No wonder it’s easy for him to open up about his emotions; they’re so simple and clear. He’s Mr Brightside; he always was, even when we were younger.

  I don’t even want to think what you’d find if you opened me up, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

  ‘You’re sweet, Eddy,’ I say.

  It’s weird, though, he’s spent all this time thinking I’m so sorted and glamorous, successful Kate in London. But really the one who’s got himself together – set up his own business, had two beautiful little girls, is at peace with himself – is the one who stayed in Lyme all along.

  He doesn’t seem to feel that restless need for change and improvement that has always driven me. To prove myself. To make everything better. To improve everyone around me. I had thought I was doing a good thing, trying to make the world a better place. What if really I’ve been doing the wrong thing all along, refusing to see the world as it is, to accept people the way they are instead of how I want them to be?

  ‘Kate?’ says Eddy. ‘You’re miles away.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Thinking.’

  ‘Look, it’s bound to be strange for you right now,’ says Eddy. ‘The end of a marriage is hard. I know you’re probably not ready for anything else. But I’m here for you as a friend, okay?’

  ‘Thanks, Eddy,’ I say. ‘You’re a good person.’

  He’s a better friend than I deserve.

  38

  London

  I’d been sitting on the edge of the bath staring at the pregnancy test in my hand for five minutes, willing it to form into the words that would change my life. Our lives. It wasn’t just a plastic stick, it was a magic wand.

  My period was two days late. I’d retched over my breakfast that morning, and my breasts were tender and painful enough that I had to hold onto them when I went down the stairs. These should have been encouraging signs, but I’d learned already the cruel irony that the symptoms of early pregnancy were pretty much indistinguishable from those I got before my period, so I wouldn’t allow myself to believe anything until that test was positive. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me, nothing at all. He just said something about not stressing too much, which was ridiculous. Hadn’t I chosen not to work for that very reason?

  The doctor said it would happen when I least expected it, which is what everyone used to say about falling in love. I supposed it might be true. It didn’t stop me wanting to punch the doctor in his smug, unconcerned face though. It didn’t stop me wanting to say, ‘If this goes on much longer I am going to have to turn into a sperm snatcher, because my husband will barely sleep with me as it is.’

  Matt and his super sperm. Oh yes, he’d had the tests too. Only after I’d badgered him for weeks. If I was being kind, which I was actually quite capable of being no matter what my husband said, I would have acknowledged that he was terrified by the tests. He knew how much this meant to me and he dreaded the possibility of being the one at fault. He should have been used to it.

  But oh no, Matt Martell, for whom everything always came easy, excuse the pun, turned out to have super swimmers. When the doctor told him the results, I swear I thought Matt was going to do a victory lap around the clinic’s waiting room, hands held high above his head.

  ‘Nothing wrong with these babies,’ he said, proudly, on the way home. ‘Nothing wrong at all.’ And when we got back, he initiated sex for the first time in weeks.

  I don’t think he realized that the only possible conclusion that left me with was that the person who had something wrong with them was me. It didn’t just taint the present, it stained backwards into the past. I found myself recalling all the times I’d taken risks, not bothered with the morning after pill, crossed my fingers after opening my legs and greeted the arrival of my period like a benediction. What if all along I hadn’t been able to have children? What if that proved I couldn’t get pregnant at all?

  I wasn’t reassured by the doctor. If there really was nothing wrong, then I’d be pregnant by now. I’d done everything right. Everything. There had to be a reason.

  ‘What do you want?’ Matt demanded, when I tried to talk about why it wasn’t happening for us. ‘We’ve had the tests, everything’s fine. You just need to stop obsessing about it.’

  So I stopped talking about it, which, as far as Matt was concerned, was the same thing.

  Now I think of it, I stopped talking about most stuff. Big stuff, I mean. There just didn’t seem to be much point. Matt seemed to take this as a good sign, and I could see that our superficial little chats over supper pleased him – what was on the television that night, the cute thing Minnie had done that morning, the latest client he’d brought to Hitz. It was all so much better than the angry resentment I usually served up.

  But then he started coming home later and later and I realized that he was avoiding me. It says a lot that by that time I didn’t really care. As long as we had sex when I was ovulating, he could do what he liked.

  I shook the stick, in case that might make it show its result earlier. And there it was. Not Pregnant. Again.

  The stick didn’t say ‘Again’. I should make that clear. But it might as well have done. It might as well have said ‘You, Kate Martell, are a complete failure. You can’t have a baby. Your husband thinks you’re going mad. You don’t have a job. You barely have any friends left.’ It would have been a lot to fit on a plastic stick, I admit. But just because it wasn’t there didn’t mean that I didn’t feel every word of it in my core.

  I heard my mobile start ringing in the bedroom, but I didn’t make any effort to answer. I felt too numb. And I wasn’t even sure my legs would carry me there. I knew who it would be anyway – Sarah.

  Her self-appointed pity mission had intensified in the last few weeks. Since I never came out, she’d invited herself over for a night of DVDs and popcorn, during which she’d drunk way too much and told me that she and Jay were having problems and she didn’t know if she loved him any more. I was sympathetic, but it felt as if there was a glass wall between us – I was sympathetic, but I didn’t tell her anything about me and Matt. To say it out loud, to tell her how strained everything had become, would be to make it real. And because I was keeping everything in, it made me seem distant. I could see it hurt her that I was so remote, but if I started crying I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop.

  I threw the test stick in the bin and covered it in tissue paper so that Matt wouldn’t see it. As if he ever investigated the contents of the bathroom bin. Judging by the old razor blades and empty shampoo bottles he left lying around the bathroom, he probably didn’t know there was a bin there at all. But it made me feel safer to know it was hidden. Maybe, too, I didn’t want to see it again myself.

  The cardboard packaging I took with me; I’d tuck it into my handbag and dispose of it later. I’d taken to hiding the packages from Matt since they only gave him ammunition against me, a reason to accuse me again of being obsessive and neurotic. The first time I just casually dropped the packet into next door’s recycling bin, but I hadn’t foreseen that this would cause an almighty row between the Palmers, since they already had four children and Mr Palmer had had a vasectomy. From that time onwards I had made sure to get rid of it further afield, in an anonymous municipal bin.

  My phone buzzed again to tell me I had a voicemail. Of course it was Sarah, who else was it going to be? If my phone rang these days it was always either my mum, Matt or Sarah. Where once I’d fielded hundre
ds of emails a day and spent half my life on the end of a phone, now the arrival of a single text could startle me.

  ‘Hey, Kate, it’s me. Just calling to say we’re going to be in the Crown tonight for a drink after work. Jay’s working, so maybe if you came we could go for pizza after? Everyone says they’d love to see you. Just let me know, okay?’

  She wasn’t really expecting me to turn up. She’d be waiting for my excuse. I didn’t dare confess that I’d become a little afraid of Soho. It was so full of people rushing to the next important meeting, everyone was busy, hectic, taking calls as they hurried along the pavements. I didn’t feel I belonged any more. I didn’t understand why Sarah wouldn’t take no for an answer – the more I refused her invitations, the more frequently they came, until I felt besieged by them.

  I texted back quickly – easier than phoning and getting dragged into a conversation.

  Sorry, got to make supper for Matt tonight. Lots of love.

  Her reply came immediately.

  Oh right, I thought he said he was out. My mistake. Next time. Xoxoxo

  Why would Sarah think that Matt was out? He hadn’t said anything to me about it, not that that was particularly unusual. He didn’t say much lately. We didn’t often eat together any more. I’d taken to eating earlier, and he often wasn’t home until nine. But he usually told me if he was going to be properly out for the whole evening, if only to save me the trouble of cooking for him.

  Suddenly I was furious. All my stale resignation drained away and in its place was cold rage. Who did Matt think he was? Taking me for granted like this. Not even bothering to tell me where he was going or what he was doing. Just expecting me to sit at home on my own, like always, waiting for him to come back whenever it suited him. But even in my fury I didn’t want to be the one who initiated an actual conversation. That might turn into an argument. And I might lose the argument. So instead I texted:

  ‘Sarah says you’re out tonight. Were you planning to tell me?’

  Of course Matt didn’t reply, which made me even angrier. By the time three hours had passed without a response, I was ready to explode, pacing the kitchen, running vicious conversations out loud with an imaginary Matt. Imaginary as in, he was here for me to converse with, unlike my actual husband who never was. Minnie cowered in her basket, but I was too furious to be able to stop myself.

  When four hours had passed, I got changed. I put on make-up. I blow-dried my hair. I took Minnie round to the Palmers’ house and asked them to look after her for a few hours.

  Fuck it. Two could play at that game. I was going out.

  39

  It’s not until I come out of the estate agents late one afternoon, having agreed a time for them to take new photos of the redecorated bungalow, that I realize the Christmas lights have gone up on Broad Street. They’re hardly going to rival the Regent Street display, but the twinkling snowflakes and trees look pretty in the fading light. The sight of them makes me stop for a moment in surprise. Christmas is coming. Soon. And then it will be a new year. I suppose I had forgotten that, while my own life might be on hiatus, for everyone else it is moving forwards just as it always has.

  I can’t help but think of last Christmas back in Belsize Park. Matt and I had decided to spend it just the two of us, no family visits, no belting down to the West Country on clogged dual carriageways, eating a giant grab bag of Maltesers and arguing about whether it would be quicker to freestyle it cross-country with the satnav. I always voted for sticking it out on the main roads, while Matt was like a shark and felt he had to keep moving at all times, even if that meant detouring at five miles an hour down a single-track road in the wrong direction. This time there would be no fights about our route; we’d made our excuses about always travelling for work and needing some time at home, and our families indulged the romantic whims of the newly-weds and made no objection.

  We didn’t get out of our pyjamas until twelve o’clock on Christmas Day. It surprises me to look back and realize this was before I got into cooking, and nearly everything we ate that day came from Selfridge’s Food Hall, where I’d spent a fortune on Christmas Eve on smoked salmon, ready-made blinis, stuffed turkey breasts and prepared vegetables, plus a football-sized pudding, even though the raisin is my sworn enemy and I knew I wouldn’t touch it. Tradition must be upheld. I have grown so used to thinking that cooking and domesticity is how I expressed my commitment to our marriage that it’s almost shocking to remember that our perfect Christmas – only a year ago – involved no more effort from me than waving my credit card at a shop assistant and getting a taxi home.

  Of course I was flush with redundancy money then, and sure a new job must be round the corner, so it was different. Everything was different. We stayed in bed all morning, opening presents, eating toast and half watching – Matt’s choice – Dan Akroyd falling all over the place with a side of salmon tucked into his stained Santa suit in Trading Places. Matt declared this a tradition that must endure for all Martell Christmases evermore. Neither of us could have imagined we would have only one.

  I shake my head, trying to rid myself of thoughts of Matt. That part of my life is over now and I shouldn’t dwell on it. I realize I have been staring into the window of Boots, where a woman turns and looks at me quizzically, as if I’m criticizing her arrangement of scented talcs into a festive tinsel-swagged pyramid. Startled into a response I give her an overly enthusiastic double thumbs-up, which just confuses her even more. I expect she thinks I’m being sarcastic.

  Minnie strains on her lead, impatient to get moving again instead of standing around in the cold. Suddenly she yanks away and leaps up on a man passing by.

  ‘Sorry!’ I exclaim, but when I look up I see that it is just my dad.

  ‘Well, well,’ he says. ‘My two favourite girls. What are you up to?’

  ‘Oh, just things,’ I say. Now that the bungalow is all but finished, my sense of guilt about doing nothing has redoubled. If a new year is coming, it’s going to have to bring with it some resolutions. If only I could work out what they should be.

  ‘Tell me you haven’t started your Christmas shopping?’ Dad sighs, looking into the window, where the shop assistant is now winding fairy lights around the triangular stack of talcum powder. ‘Your mum’s on at me to write a list – I told her, just get me what you got me last year. And I’ll get you all what I got you.’

  I smile. ‘Dad, don’t pretend you do your own Christmas shopping.’

  He looks embarrassed. ‘Your mother likes doing that sort of thing,’ he says.

  ‘Does she?’ I ask, raising an eyebrow.

  Dad harrumphs crossly, tucking his chin into his chest. ‘Look, Kate, we may not have one of those modern marriages, like you young people, but it works. Your mother and I are very happy.’

  His words seem to hit me in the solar plexus like a physical punch. Who am I to judge their marriage? They’ve made it work for over thirty years. I couldn’t even manage two. I must look stricken because Dad starts to look apologetic, his cheeks flushing in the cold.

  ‘Now, don’t tell your mother,’ he says, suddenly conspiratorial. ‘She thinks I’ve just popped out for stamps, but actually I wanted to get away from your sister’s bloody fiancé for a while. Keeps ruddy going on about mission statements and training away-days. I can’t bear it.’

  Poor Dad. He looks worn out from resisting the twin forces of Ben and Prue on their mission of modernization.

  Dad sighs. ‘I’m too old to be making changes like this. Just makes me want to leave them to it and, I don’t know, bugger off somewhere.’

  ‘Go back to being a roadie?’ I tease.

  He looks thoughtful, as if he’s actually taking me seriously and is considering offering his services to Lady Gaga first thing tomorrow morning.

  ‘I do miss the travel,’ he says wistfully. ‘Anyway, I was going to sneak to the pub for a quick one. Why don’t you come with me?’

  I feel oddly shy at the idea. Me and Dad having a d
rink, just the two of us? He usually can’t pass the phone to Mum fast enough when I call from London. He must be feeling really bad about that marriage comment to even suggest it.

  But he looks sincere, waggling his eyebrows in the direction of the pub in comedy ‘Shall we?’ fashion.

  ‘I don’t know what Young Entrepreneurs South West would have to say about this, Dad,’ I say, linking arms with him. ‘Is this the behaviour of a thrusting captain of industry?’

  He grins. ‘Screw ’em.’

  Sometimes it’s hard to remember that Dad was once a roadie – he’s so gentle and affable now, all twinkly eyes and bushy beard – but my first memories are of him roaring drunk, shouting and singing, while Mum shushed me and told me to go back to sleep. He hardly ever gets drunk these days, but the legacy of his years on the road is that he can drink more than anyone I know.

  His first pint barely has time to wet the glass before he’s finished it. And he’s at the bar ordering a second while I’m still sipping my white wine. It feels decadent drinking in the middle of the day. When I lost my job I made myself two strict rules. No daytime television and no drinking until Matt was home. I will admit that often meant I greeted my husband at the front door with a wine bottle in hand. And when Sarah pointed out to me that wasting hours on the internet was my generation’s version of daytime television my achievement in never watching Cash in the Attic did seem less impressive.

  But still. I’d never wanted to be one of those people you saw staggering out of the pub in the middle of the afternoon, having totally lost sight of the normal rhythm of the working day, hungover by supper time.

  Dad comes back from the bar and settles himself in the chair opposite with a contented sigh.

  ‘Drink up!’ he says, nodding at my wine glass as he raises his pint at me in a toast. ‘It’s Christmas.’

  ‘It’s November,’ I say.