The Foster Husband

by Pippa Wright

  ‘So it’s funny we haven’t seen each other at all since Lagos,’ Matt said. ‘I’ve been looking out for you.’

  ‘Have you? Well, Hitz is a big place, Matt, and I’m a busy person.’

  ‘It’s not that big,’ said Matt. ‘And no one’s that busy. I get the feeling you’ve been avoiding me, Basher Bailey.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’d think that,’ I said hastily. Because of course that is exactly what I had been doing ever since we got back. I’d sent Sarah to meetings when I knew he’d be there. I’d avoided the third floor entirely. I’d even gone so far as to take the stairs instead of the lift for a full month to ensure I wouldn’t bump into him, with the added and unexpected bonus of some impressive thigh-toning action.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Matt. ‘I suppose for you it’s normal to flirt with a guy and let him think he’s going to kiss you, and then when he turns his back for one minute you disappear off with another man?’

  ‘That is not at all what happened, Matt Martell,’ I snapped.

  ‘Really?’ he asked, his expression no longer amused. ‘Because I went to get you a drink and the next thing I saw was you sitting on the lap of some cameraman downing shots. And it didn’t look like you went home alone either.’

  I felt my mouth opening and closing in rage, unable to spit out the words. I don’t mind calling myself a party girl – I’m not about to deny it – but for Matt to use it against me like this, when he . . . when he . . .

  ‘How dare you question my morals, when you’re the one who had a girlfriend all along!’

  ‘When I had what?’

  ‘Oh did you think I didn’t know about Ailsa Logan?’ I demanded. ‘Well, I did, Matt. As soon as Chris and Danny told me about her I knew exactly what sort of man you were. It may surprise you to know that I’m not the sort of girl who messes around with a man in a relationship. I do have morals, no matter what you might think.’

  Matt raised a hand to the back of his neck, lifting his chin as if regarding the roof of the marquee. He let out a long, whooshing sigh.

  ‘Ah, Ailsa,’ he said. ‘So that was it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said triumphantly. That told you, Matt Martell.

  ‘And if I told you that I’d split up with Ailsa before I even started at Hitz?’ he asked, lowering his eyes to meet mine.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘That’s not what the others said.’

  Matt laughed, nodding towards the cameramen who stood, as ever, in a unified mass by the bar. ‘Those guys? Kate, I don’t even know them. Why do you think they’d know what’s going on in my private life?’

  ‘So you’re saying they were lying?’ I challenged him.

  He sighed again, ‘I’m saying they just didn’t know. Ailsa and I kept it pretty quiet that we’d split up – she didn’t want any bad publicity when she was about to renegotiate her Rise & Shine contract.’

  ‘If that’s the case, Matt,’ I said, feeling like a detective in a murder mystery, whipping out a crucial piece of evidence at the eleventh hour, ‘perhaps you could explain why you were seen with her at the British Television Awards just days before you came out to Lagos.’

  Matt whistled through his teeth. ‘You’re thorough, aren’t you, Basher Bailey? I like that about you. You don’t let things go. If you must know, I agreed to go to a few events with Ailsa after we split up, just to stop people asking her questions. It was all pretty amicable between us, so it was no big deal. Do you reckon you can stop interrogating me now?’

  ‘I wasn’t interrogating you,’ I said in a small voice. My bubble of self-righteous fury was deflating rapidly. Of course this could easily be another smooth Martell line; I wasn’t about to trust him entirely. But I had to admit his explanations did have the ring of plausibility.

  Matt pulled a phone out of his suit pocket. ‘Do you want to call Ailsa?’ he asked, scrolling through the list of names on the lit-up screen and holding it towards me. ‘Ask her yourself?’

  ‘No!’ I exclaimed, pushing the phone away.

  He laughed and put it back in his pocket. ‘Then maybe let your guard down just a touch?’

  He nudged me with his elbow. I pushed back.

  ‘I’m glad to hear you’re a girl with morals,’ he said, his lips twitching with amusement. ‘I’d hate to think I might have tried to kiss a girl without them.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ I started, but before I could say anything more there was a sudden commotion behind me.

  A surge of Hitz staffers ran across the dance floor in the direction of the Christmas tree, which was swaying dangerously, as if a high wind had burst through the marquee. I could hear shouting and shrieks. Above the heads of the newly formed crowd, red-manicured hands grasped at the branches. Sarah was making her bid for glory – before the party was an hour old.

  Matt started laughing. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Is this your mission? To climb the Christmas tree?’

  ‘I didn’t think she’d try it so early,’ I gasped. The tree bowed down towards the dance floor and the crowd ebbed back, out of the way of its wildly swinging branches. The shaking suddenly doubled: Sarah had been joined on the tree by the security guard. I saw him grab her hands and try to pry them off. Decorations began crashing to the ground.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Matt. ‘What was she thinking?’

  ‘It’s a dare, Matt,’ I said defensively.

  ‘I know that, but the security guard. She needed a distraction first. She didn’t think it through.’

  ‘I suppose you’d have planned it a lot better?’

  ‘Of course I would,’ he grinned, leaning down to whisper in my ear. ‘We would. That’s why you’re going to win this one.’

  By now Sarah had been wrestled to the ground, where she struggled with the security guard, who was bellowing into his headset. The cameramen ran to her rescue, although Jay was restrained by Danny, who pulled him away. After a few minutes of confusion, Sarah was dragged up, both arms pinned to her sides by the security guard.

  ‘Okay, Kate,’ Matt hissed, ‘this is your moment. I’ve got your back.’ He took hold of my hand and led me round the back of the crowd that was still gathered around the commotion. No one saw us pass; all eyes were still on Sarah, who was loudly protesting her innocence and claiming to have slipped and simply fallen on the tree by accident.

  I barely had time to notice how strange it was to be holding hands with a man whose presence, until that evening, I’d been actively avoiding. Matt was right; this was my best chance at getting to the top of the tree without anyone seeing. The security guard was marching Sarah towards the door, his face grimly set. Richard stepped in front of him to intervene on her behalf, trying to calm the situation.

  The tree was upright again, invitingly unattended.

  I snuck around behind it. Trying to climb up the front of the tree had surely been Sarah’s first mistake. From underneath the tree looked enormous. It was enormous. What had I been thinking? But I had a reputation to uphold. Also, Matt Martell was watching. I had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t so much watching my back as watching my backside as I grasped the highest branches I could reach and hauled myself up. I hadn’t considered that I’d be scaling a tree when I’d chosen such a short dress for the evening. The tree lurched from side to side and I glanced at Matt in panic – he gave me a thumbs up.

  ‘No one’s looking,’ he hissed.

  Why hadn’t I ever considered before the extremely agonizing spikiness of a Christmas tree? The vicious needles pincushioned my hands and the tree wobbled precariously as I scrabbled for a pain-free hold. As my hands flailed amidst the branches I grabbed onto a steel wire that secured the tree to the floor, but my hands slipped and the wire burned a hot line across my palm like a festive Chinese burn. Ow! I clamped my legs around the tree trunk and felt the needles dig into my thighs. This was harder than it looked. At last I managed to get one of my feet onto the lower branches and push myself up – much easier than trying to drag myself by my arms. From there it too
k only minutes – teeth clenched to ignore the pain – before I got within reach of the top.

  Sarah had decreed that just climbing the tree didn’t count. The winner had to retrieve the white and silver angel that was attached to the topmost branch or the climb was invalid.

  I looked down to where Matt stood, half-hidden behind the tree. He wasn’t looking up, though. His attention was caught by something happening on the dance floor. So much for looking out for me, I thought. I should’ve known I couldn’t rely on him.

  I reached up to where the angel sat, balanced on the highest branch. She was tantalizingly close. I stretched my fingers and grabbed onto the hem of her dress. I pulled. She stayed firm. I pulled harder. She didn’t budge. Was she superglued on there or what?

  The tree lurched again, bowing down towards the crowd. I looked down and saw that no one was looking at Sarah now. All eyes were on me. Fuck.

  ‘Get it, Bailey!’ shouted a voice. Then other people joined in. ‘G’wan, Kate, get the angel!’

  Emboldened by their cheers, I took another reckless lurch towards the top. The dance floor seemed to swim before my eyes as the tree rocked from side to side. I could just see a blur of faces; it was impossible to distinguish any one in particular, apart from Matt, standing to the side. He was looking up now.

  ‘Come on, Basher,’ he shouted. ‘Show us what you’re made of.’

  With a final push I grasped the angel around the waist and yanked her fiercely upwards. She flew off the top of the tree, and I swung back horribly. Only the fact that I had my legs wrapped around the tree trunk saved me. The crowd cheered. Once I realized I wasn’t about to dash my brains out on the dance floor I felt a surge of elation. Victory was mine! I held the angel above my head in triumph.

  The crowd went wild. At least, the security guard did. I hadn’t spotted him breaking away from Sarah and Richard and storming to the bottom of the tree.

  ‘Get down from there, you silly bitch,’ he shouted, shaking the tree violently.

  ‘Oi, careful.’ Matt moved towards him, grabbing his collar. ‘You’re going to make her fall.’

  ‘She should’ve thought of that before she climbed the tree, shouldn’t she?’ snapped the guard. I wanted to climb down, but he was shaking the tree like a bear and I was afraid to let go of my hold on the trunk in case I fell.

  ‘Mate,’ began Matt, trying to pull the guard away from the tree.

  ‘Don’t “mate” me, you middle-class wanker,’ the guard exploded. Even from my vantage point at the top of the tree I could see that his face was purpling with anger. The guard abruptly let go of the tree and wheeled around towards Matt. Matt looked up to check I was okay, which meant he didn’t see the guard pull back his right fist.

  ‘Matt!’ I shouted, but it was too late. The security guard, enraged at the appalling behaviour of the Hitz staff, had taken it out on the head of marketing with an impressive haymaker.

  Matt staggered backwards, clutching at his jaw. I scrambled down the tree, ripping my tights to pieces on the branches. By the time I reached the bottom I looked like a Goth who’d been pulled through a shredder.

  The security guard was surrounded. Firstly by the cameramen, who’d formed a barrier around him, and then by a crowd of agog Hitz personnel. He kept trying to barge his way out, charging at weak points in the circle of watchers, like a goaded bull.

  ‘You bastard!’ Sarah shrieked at him from the fringes of the crowd, where Jay was holding her back. I started to feel a bit sorry for the guard. He probably thought he was in for a quiet night watching people get festively merry, not this carnage.

  Matt had collapsed into a chair, still nursing his jaw. I pushed my way through the people who’d gathered around him.

  ‘Matt, are you okay? I’m so sorry. It was all my fault.’

  He winced, but his eyes crinkled into a half smile. His teeth stayed clenched as he hissed, ‘Did you get the angel?’

  I held it up, still clasped in my hand like an Oscar statuette. ‘Course,’ I said proudly.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ he grimaced.

  ‘I’m not your girl,’ I said.

  ‘You will be,’ he said.

  10

  London

  ‘Take off your tights.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, take off your tights,’ repeated Matt, his face hard to read in the darkness of the back of the taxi.

  I may have made a mistake in telling Matt Martell that I liked how he took charge of a situation. It had felt impressive when he grabbed my hand and whisked me out of the emergency exit while the rest of the Hitz staffers were distracted by the police bursting through the front door of the marquee. A slight overreaction on the part of the security guards, but it would brilliantly bolster Hitz’s rock-and-roll reputation.

  My heels sank into the grass outside, but Matt didn’t let up his pace until we were safely out of the park and standing on the main road.

  ‘But . . . my bag, my coat!’ I wailed, rubbing my arms in the cold.

  Matt took off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders. ‘Don’t worry about it, Basher. Can’t you get Sarah to pick them up for you?’

  ‘What are we doing out here?’

  Matt pointed to the angel, still clutched in my hand as if I was holding the Olympic torch.

  ‘Do you really want to have to explain yourself?’

  ‘I would have dropped it before the police saw,’ I said.

  ‘And lose your trophy?’ Matt asked teasingly. ‘I couldn’t let that happen. Hang on.’ He stretched out his arm and a taxi appeared out of nowhere and pulled up alongside the pavement.

  I looked at Matt in awe. Getting a taxi in the middle of the Christmas party season was practically impossible. I wondered if he had some kind of magical aura that just made everything incredibly easy for him; he expected the world to arrange itself for his convenience and it did. No wonder he always seemed so confident and untroubled.

  As the taxi hummed through the streets, Matt’s face was briefly illuminated by flickering orange streetlights. He didn’t seem to be joking about the tights.

  ‘Er, I’m not taking off my tights,’ I said, nervously.

  ‘Calm down, Basher. I’m not threatening your virtue – I’m perfectly safe in taxis, you know.’

  ‘Then—’

  ‘Take a look at yourself,’ he said, pointing to my legs, which his jacket didn’t nearly cover.

  Of course my tights were ripped to ribbons, but I hadn’t fully appreciated until now that they also bristled with pine needles, poking out as if I had a serious problem with fierce green leg hair.

  ‘But I’ll be cold,’ I objected.

  ‘Are you seriously telling me those are keeping you warm? There’s more hole than tights.’

  I wriggled on the seat uncomfortably, which I regretted the moment a pine needle pierced the skin of my left thigh. I let out an undignified shriek.

  ‘Take. Them. Off.’

  ‘Well, you have to look the other way,’ I said, conceding defeat. Now I’d noticed the pine needles I couldn’t unnotice them; the adrenaline of our escape was wearing off and for the first time I was aware of just how uncomfortable I was in my pine-needle leggings.

  Matt laughed and turned his head to look out of the taxi window. ‘My eyes are averted, Miss Bailey. Your honour is safe.’

  I’m sure that somewhere in the depths of the internet there must lurk tights fetishists, people who find the sight of a gusset and reinforced waistband erotic, but it seemed unlikely that Matt Martell would be among their number. It wouldn’t have been so mortifying if I’d been wearing stockings – at least peeling off a single stocking has vaguely sexy connotations – but stockings make me feel insecure, constantly threatening to slip down to your ankles at the worst possible moment.

  I’ve always felt that wearing stomach-taming tights is better than sporting those gigantic Bridget Jones holding-in pants. At least you can wear some vaguely attractive underwear beneath a pair
of tights, and it’s usually easy to whip them off in the bathroom or somewhere out of sight if you think you’re about to get lucky. Trying to wrestle them off in the back of a cab, however, while a man you hardly know is almost certainly watching in the reflection on the window, is an entirely different matter.

  I slid my hands up either side of my skirt and hooked my fingers into the waistband. A firm grasp was what was needed here. I hoped I’d be able to slip them off in one seamless movement, but they don’t call them control tights for nothing. These babies weren’t going to give up easily; they clung to my hips like a welded-on chastity belt.

  ‘Need some help?’ Matt asked, his face still politely averted. But I could see his shoulders shaking and I had no doubt he was fully aware of my difficulties.

  ‘Don’t look!’ The fear that Matt might turn round and see the roll of stomach that was about to be released from the waistband gave me added strength, and in sheer desperation I lifted my hips off the seat and hauled the reinforced gusset down to my ankles. I kicked off my shoes and rolled the tights into a ball. Not sure where to put them, I slid them into Matt’s jacket pocket.

  ‘So are you cold now?’ asked Matt, turning back.

  ‘No,’ I said, pulling his jacket tighter around me.

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  I felt, with a shock, his marble-cold fingers sliding along the seat and onto my bare thigh. I watched his hand progress from the outside of my leg to the top of my knee. My hair fell over my face to cover my eyes; I wasn’t sure I’d be able to look directly at him without blushing furiously. He pushed his hand gently between my thighs and I found myself primly clamping my knees together to stop his progress.

  I could feel Matt’s breath by my ear. He whispered, ‘I’m getting a pretty good idea of how you managed to stay on that tree, Basher. Impressive thigh action.’

  I crossed my legs, trapping him further.

  ‘Like that, is it?’ he asked.

  He suddenly pulled his hand towards him, but as it was still trapped between my legs, I was swung across the seat. Before I realized what was happening, he was lying on top of me so I couldn’t move, his body heavy on mine.