The Foster Husband

by Pippa Wright

  ‘Dean,’ I grabbed his arm. ‘Slender Dee. That’s the important one. Get him to the party and you can delete this picture off my phone yourself.’

  ‘I’m on it, Kate,’ promised Dean, and scuttled off down the corridor towards the artists’ dressing rooms, casting backwards glances at me as if he hoped I’d burst into flames.

  Next to me Matt rubbed his chin, considering me with a look that was somewhere in between admiration and horror.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re a tough woman, Kate Bailey.’ He smiled.

  ‘I know how to get the job done, you mean,’ I said. ‘Nothing to it. You could’ve done it yourself if you’d only known Dean’s weak spot.’

  ‘Ouch!’ He laughed. ‘I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable threatening a man’s marriage just to get results.’

  ‘Puh, I’d never have shown Marie that picture, and even if I did she wouldn’t have cared less. She’s under no illusions about who she married. She used to work in Production herself before she had children. She knows what it’s like.’

  ‘You’re pretty cynical, aren’t you?’

  ‘Cynical?’

  ‘Don’t you believe in true love?’ he asked, raising a mocking eyebrow.

  ‘True love?’ I scoffed. ‘Not between Dean and Marie, I don’t.’

  ‘What about for you?’

  I scowled at him.

  ‘Look, Matt, I really don’t have time for this. I’ve got to get back to the running order now that I’ve finished sorting out your little problem.’

  ‘About opening the bar—’

  ‘Matt Martell, if you ask me that again, I’ll send a compromising picture of you to your girlfriend, even if I have to pose for it with you myself.’

  I turned on my heel and stormed out of the bar. Behind me I heard Matt call out, ‘I don’t have a girlfriend.’

  5

  There’s no need for an alarm clock when you have a dog, I’ve found. I wonder if I could market the woken-by-puppy alarm? It’s indisputably more pleasant than the shrilling of a mobile phone next to your ear, though maybe not everyone would want to be jolted from sleep by a cold, wet nose on whichever part of their body is sticking out from under the duvet. In favour of my scheme is the fact that Minnie keeps time remarkably well; she likes me to be up by seven every morning or she makes her protests known. Now we’re beginning to feel settled at Granny Gilbert’s I’ve managed, a few times, to let her into the garden and sneak back to bed for a while, but Minnie does not approve of this laziness and will return persistently, like a living snooze button, to make sure I get up properly.

  This morning I let her out and stay up, leaving the back door open while she snuffles around. Minnie leaps into the tiny patio garden with enormous enthusiasm every single day, as if it’s the very first time she’s ever encountered this incredibly exciting space. As if the decaying rose bushes and mossy patio tiles are a wonderful surprise, instead of exactly as she left them the day before. There is probably a great lesson there, if I could be arsed to learn it. But frankly I need a cup of coffee before I start tackling the grand existential questions of life. While I wait for the kettle to boil, I switch on the radio: Granny Gilbert’s ancient Nineties sub-woofer monster with its double-cassette player for the recording of mix-tapes that I am quite sure she never once considered making.

  Of course I miss Granny Gilbert; I used to come here every day after school while Mum and Dad were still at the office. She used to look after Prue, too, when Prue was a baby. But she was ill for so long before she died, and so confused with it, that it was as if we did our grieving while she was still alive. For the last six months she wasn’t even living in the bungalow; she had to go into a home in Bridport where they could give her round-the-clock care. If Granny Gilbert had been aware of what was happening to her, she’d have hated it. She’d have railed at the nurses, refused to leave her home, demanded to be allowed to feed herself. I suppose the only good thing about any of it was that by then, whatever was left of my mother’s mother was entirely unresisting and uncomplaining. Which was how we knew that she wasn’t really there at all.

  The estate agent said that having someone living in the house might make all the difference to selling it. Not that there has been a single viewing since I moved in. Maybe seeing the house being used as a home, instead of as a mausoleum, will be what finally sells it. He did ask, hopefully, if I was going to be doing any redecoration while I was staying, as if I could effortlessly effect some Grand Designs-style transformation of an undesirable bungalow into a sumptuous show home. It would be hard to know where to even start. With the entirely blue bathroom, from tub to tiles right down to the colour-coordinated guest soaps in cellophane wrappers that have sat on the bathroom shelf since I was at school? With the rag-rolled walls of the kitchen – a paint effect that I’m told was quite the Farrow & Ball design statement of its day when Mum helped Granny Gilbert do it in 1986?

  I’m contemplating what one would do about the swirly Artex living-room ceiling when I realize that the strange shrill noise I’ve been ignoring must be Granny Gilbert’s phone. Or, more to the point, my phone. I hadn’t even known it was connected. The house has been standing empty for so long I assumed it must have been cut off.

  ‘Hello?’ I answer warily, expecting it to be some kind of telemarketer.

  ‘Hello yourself,’ says my sister. ‘Am I interrupting another hectic day? Got meetings lined up, people to see?’

  ‘Very funny, Prue. What do you want?’

  ‘Why would I want anything?’ she asks, affronted. ‘Can’t I just give my sister a call to see how she’s getting on? To see how things are?’

  I’m instantly on high alert.

  ‘Oh, right. Well, in that case I’m fine, thanks. It’s good of you to ask.’ Also extremely unlike you to ask, Prue, I think.

  ‘Fine?’ asks Prue. ‘Just fine? Are you maybe . . .’ I hear her pause, and I know, without even being able to see her face, that this is a significant pause. A pause with an as-yet-unspecified purpose. ‘Are you maybe a little lonely?’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. I’m not sure what the trap is but I know there must be one. This is Prue. There is always a trap.

  ‘Really? Because, wow, I don’t know how I’d feel living in that sad old bungalow all by myself, with no one around to talk to, ever.’

  ‘I’m fine with it, actually, Prue, just fine,’ I say. ‘I like living alone. I don’t expect you’d understand since you’ve never even moved out of home.’

  ‘No.’ She laughs but it’s a forced laugh; she doesn’t like being reminded that she has never lived anywhere else but at Mum and Dad’s. Even though she’s the one who insisted she will only leave home when she gets married, it somehow doesn’t fit with her forward-thinking ambitious-young-businesswoman image. ‘No, I suppose you have lived by yourself before. But not for a long time. Not since you met Matt.’

  My teeth are clenched, but I still spit out a bland reply, ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘But maybe there’s nothing more lonely than living with someone when the love has gone,’ offers Prue.

  ‘Fucking hell, Prue, what is this?’ I snap. ‘Have I just received a call from Dial-a-Cliché? Is there an actual reason you’ve rung me at stupid o’clock, or did you just want to make me feel even worse about everything than I already do?’

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ says Prue with infuriating calm. ‘I was just calling because I’m worried about you. I know you think I don’t care, but I do.’

  A lump rises in my throat. Even though I’m still suspicious of her motives for this unexpected call, lately even the most perfunctory offer of sympathy has me fighting back tears. ‘Thanks, Prue. Sorry if I’m being snappy. It’s just a difficult time.’

  ‘And a lonely one,’ she prompts persistently.

  ‘Okay, perhaps a very little bit lonely,’ I finally concur, defeated into agreement.

  ‘I knew it. It’s good you’re admitting it at last. So wh
y don’t you bring your lonely self over for supper tonight? I’m cooking.’

  It’s not the most appealing invitation I’ve ever had, but let’s face it, it’s the only Saturday night invitation I’m likely to get in my self-imposed state of seclusion. ‘Thanks, Prue, that would be nice.’

  ‘Good. Be here by seven. Bring wine – white, four bottles. I’ve told Teresa at the wine shop which ones to put by, you can pick them up later.’

  See? Of course there was an agenda here. I am willing to bet they’ll be the most expensive wines Lyme has to offer.

  ‘By the way,’ Prue continues casually, ‘Ben’s coming.’

  ‘Really?’ I haven’t yet met my sister’s new boyfriend, and suddenly I feel much more interested in the evening ahead.

  ‘Yes, really. For some unfathomable reason, he actually wants to meet you,’ says Prue.

  ‘He’s coming all the way from Bristol?’

  ‘Yes, from Bristol, where else would he be coming from?’

  ‘Don’t get chippy, Prue, it just seems like a long way to come for supper. Is he staying over?’

  Granny Gilbert’s phone is connected to the wall by a long curly wire. I stretch it to its fullest as I hold the kettle under the running tap while Prue continues to talk.

  ‘Certainly not!’ says Prue, adding proudly, ‘He’s staying at the Alexandra; I got him a room for half price because of his connection to Baileys’.’

  The way Prue speaks of my family’s business is as if it’s some great colossus of commerce, instead of the three of them letting holiday cottages and running tourist events in a sleepy Dorset backwater. Prue’s always had bold schemes for Baileys’, despite Mum and Dad’s lack of interest in becoming bigger, and has signed herself up to all sorts of mental local business organizations to further her ambitions. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was at some Young Entrepreneurs South West event that she first met Ben.

  ‘Nice,’ I say, flicking the kettle on. The Alexandra is the poshest hotel in town, and Prue knows I know it.

  ‘They appreciate which way the wind’s blowing,’ says Prue.

  ‘Er, what?’

  ‘Now that Ben’s getting involved in Baileys’,’ she says. ‘They know we’re going to be sending a lot of business their way. They’ll want to keep us sweet, I can tell you.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. Prue’s plans for domination of the Lyme Bay area could not be of less interest to me. ‘Why couldn’t he stay with you?’

  I hear Prue inhale sharply before she answers. ‘You know how I feel about that sort of thing,’ she says primly.

  ‘Well excuse me for suggesting that your boyfriend might possibly stay the night. It’s not completely outside the realms of possibility.’

  ‘Not everyone, Kate, has your London ways,’ she snaps back, sounding seventy-five instead of twenty-five. ‘I’ll see you at seven.’

  And then she hangs up.

  Once, just once, I would like to have a conversation with Prue that doesn’t end like this.

  6

  Lagos, Nigeria

  ‘Here she is.’

  ‘Someone get Kate a drink, would you?’

  ‘Why don’t you do it, Danny, you plonker?’

  ‘Jay, it’s a free bar, anyone can go up. You don’t get extra chivalry points for it.’

  If you want to know how to spot a group of cameramen at fifty paces, though I can’t imagine why you would unless it was to avoid them, allow me to tell you what to look for. Firstly, they will be dressed identically, although they would be very offended to hear anyone say so. Being freelancers, they consider themselves individuals, mavericks even, but when you see them en masse their protests of individuality are like listening to a flock of flamingos affecting outrage that you can’t tell them apart: ‘But I’m a totally different kind of pink, and my legs are miles longer than his – and what? You think just everyone has a beak like this?’ When it comes to the plumage of a cameraman, think dark T-shirt, combat shorts, usually camouflage (with plenty of zips for kit) and trainers.

  And, in the case of this lot, they will stick together at all times, sharing laddish banter and in-jokes while trying to cop off with girls from the Production team. And, I can’t deny it, frequently succeeding. Sarah had had a dalliance with at least two of these cameramen in the recent past and, in the interests of full disclosure, I will admit to a night spent with Chris after an event in Ibiza in the summer. But, frankly, you show me the Production girl who hasn’t slept with a cameraman at one point in her career and I will show you a massive liar. It’s practically part of the job description.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, pushing my way past them towards the bar. The room was heaving now that the show was over, and Dean had excelled himself by dragging the talent to the party, as promised. ‘I’ll get it myself. Sarah, what are you having?’

  ‘Bottle of Star,’ she called, having ‘accidentally’ got stuck in the crowd right next to Jay, one of her cameraman conquests. He turned his shoulders towards her, blocking out his identikit friends. She lowered her eyes bashfully, and then looked back up at him through her lashes. I rolled my own eyes, guessing a replay was imminent.

  Chris, obviously thinking that I, too, might be keen to revisit the past, broke away from the group to come and stand next to me at the bar. I craned my head over his shoulder to check out the VIP area, which was nothing more than a corner of leather sofas on which, I was glad to see, Slender Dee had been seated, awaiting the arrival of the governor.

  ‘Hey, Kate,’ Chris said, nudging me to get my attention. It hardly sounded like a declaration of true love.

  I wondered if it was because Matt’s words had hit a raw nerve that Chris seemed so much less attractive than he had done in Ibiza. There was a time when the very sight of him, muscles flexed on his camera platform, his dirty-blond surfer boy hair in his eyes, had made my stomach flip over. Now I felt nothing more than a kind of indignant boredom at Chris’s assumption that we’d just pick up where we’d left off.

  I often wondered if my love life was confined to shortlived work flings because of my job – all the travelling, late nights and unpredictable hours were hardly conducive to domestic bliss – or if I had somehow chosen the job in order to avoid being settled in any way. Work was always my excuse to stay out of anything serious. I’d always preferred to keep my relationships short and easy – much like myself, ho ho.

  But a girl can tire of the production merry-go-round. And I don’t just mean when she runs out of options and is reduced to recycling available cameramen. Maybe I was getting old. But thirty wasn’t old. Not compared to someone like Dean, who was still running around snorting coke with the riggers backstage and fooling around behind his wife’s back when he’s pushing fifty. I mean, that’s old and pathetic.

  ‘Hey,’ said Chris, again. Mr Romance. It’s not as if I felt he had to get down on one knee or write me a poem, or compose a song in my honour, I just felt like it would be good if he showed even a little effort. Standing next to me and repeating ‘hey’ until I got drunk enough to let him snog me was hardly appealing, and it certainly wasn’t true love.

  There was a stir over in a corner of the room, and the crowd of cameramen moved for a moment, as one, like a shoal of fish, for long enough for me to glimpse the governor entering the room, outfitted in a beige uniform that was ostentatiously draped with swags of gold braid. His teenage daughter held his hand, her skinny frame swamped in a patterned dress, biting her lip nervously in anticipation of meeting her hero.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, grabbing two bottles of Star off the bar and handing one to Sarah as I left Chris looking baffled.

  It was a mere two minutes’ work to introduce the governor and his daughter to Slender Dee, and I left them happily chatting in the VIP area, which suddenly looked more impressive for being surrounded by the governor’s security detail. Dean nodded over to me anxiously from the buffet table where he was ‘working’, i.e., getting drunk with some artists, and I mimed deleting the phot
ograph from my phone. He smiled back nervously, not quite trusting me. I’d never send anything like that to Marie, but maybe I didn’t need to – maybe just the threat of it would make him keep it in his pants tonight.

  Now, at last, I could relax. The show was over, the de-rig had begun, in just – I looked at the clock on my phone – in just nine hours I’d be on a plane home. And until then, I had a lot of drinking to do. The cameramen had parked themselves at a table and looked as settled as if they’d moved in for the night, leaning back in their chairs, empties already piling up. Sarah had moved off to sit in a far corner with Jay, knees touching as they sat opposite one another, talking intently. Leila was slumped on one of the white leather sofas, smiling benevolently at no one in particular. Danny was giving the eye to one of the singers from Gabon, a beautiful woman in a green printed dress who held herself elegantly on a high stool by the bar. I wondered when Danny would realize that she, like Slender Dee, was blind, rather than playing hard to get.

  Matt was still working. I guessed that the people he was talking to must be the Airtel VIPs, judging by his pretty convincing look of absolute fascination at everything they said. He was aided in this by his height – he had to be well over six foot – which meant he had to incline his head to listen to most people. It lent every conversation a confiding air, a sense of real attentiveness, when he was probably bored rigid and wondering when they’d leave the party they’d paid for. Matt saw me looking and gave me a wink over the heads of the sponsors. I smiled back and turned towards the bar again.

  I was halfway across the room, squeezing myself past the Lagos glitterati and Nollywood stars, feeling deeply underdressed in comparison with their platform shoes and towering headpieces, when I felt a tug on my sleeve. What now? The sponsors may have thought this was their party, but as far as I was concerned, it was my reward for two weeks’ hard slog and I wasn’t about to be dragged into more work issues.