The Foster Husband (36 page)

Chris just grinned at me – in the fluorescent tube-lit bathroom I could see that his teeth had gone purple from the red wine and I wondered if mine were the same. Suddenly I didn’t
feel fun and exciting, I felt a bit sordid and sad. But I smiled back at Chris anyway – it wasn’t his fault.

He pulled a big old man’s-style handkerchief out of his jeans pocket and pressed it to my chest, dabbing at the stain. The three girls pushed past us to get out, leaving us alone in the
too-bright bathroom. I took hold of Chris’s hand, holding it there, his fingers brushing the tops of my breasts. He looked up at me, and then he kissed me.

It was as though something was unleashed in me – I don’t think I could truly say it was lust, because it was more like anger and rage and a bitter, bitter need for revenge. It is
cruel to say it, but Chris could have been anyone. I just needed to feel something – anything – that wasn’t betrayal and sadness and failure. I needed to blot out what was
happening, to replace it with something else.

I dragged him into a cubicle and he slammed the door behind us, locking it. His hands were all over me, pulling up my dress as he buried his face in my neck, breathing heavily. I kept my eyes
closed; I don’t know why. I wanted this, I knew I did. I’d started it.

The bathroom door opened with a blast of noise from the bar – music and laughter and shouting. Chris hooked his thumbs into my knickers and pulled them down to my thighs. I was horrified
to feel tears on my cheeks, and rubbed them away with the back of my hand before he could see. But he stopped for a second, and when I opened my eyes a fraction I could see he was looking at me
anxiously.

‘Just do it,’ I hissed.

I suppose we weren’t aware of how much noise we were making; let’s face it, when your judgement is sufficiently impaired to think that shagging in a toilet cubicle is a good idea,
you’re not really in a state to be worrying about what other people think. It is safe to say that, by this stage, I wasn’t thinking of very much at all.

But outside in the bathroom I heard voices and stifled laughter. Then someone started banging on the door. Chris froze.

‘Kate!’ called a voice from outside. The banging on the door got more fierce. ‘I know you’re in there.’

I looked at Chris in astonishment. How the fuck had Sarah found me?

Chris and I looked at each other in horror. I pushed him away from me, pulled my dress down, and kicked my knickers to the floor. Sarah kept banging on the door.

‘Kate! I know you’re there! Danny saw you going off with Chris. I’ve tried every bar in Soho.’

Chris’s eyes were wide with panic. But something steely and cold descended on me all of a sudden. Why should I feel guilty about this? What could Sarah possibly have to say to me that
would make me feel worse than I already did?

I reached for the bolt on the bathroom door. Chris tried to stop me but as he was also trying to simultaneously pull up his trousers he was ineffective. I opened the door.

Although I was aware that there were plenty of other people crowded into the bathroom to enjoy the show, I was focused only on Sarah. Her face was red and shiny, as though she’d been
running, and she looked on the verge of tears.

‘Chris,’ she spat, looking over my shoulder. ‘I might have known. You always were a vile little opportunist, only going after girls when they’re too drunk to say
no.’

I felt Chris shrink behind me, as if I might protect him from Sarah’s wrath.

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, concentrating on not slurring. I wanted to sound haughty, distant, superior. ‘As a matter of fact,
Sarah
, this was all my
idea.’

Sarah tried to take my arm, but I stepped backwards onto Chris, who yelped and fell down onto the toilet seat.

‘Don’t touch me,’ I hissed, flinching away from her reach. ‘Don’t you dare touch me. I know exactly what you’ve been up to – don’t think I
don’t.’

Sarah took another step towards me, her hands held out placatingly. ‘Kate, whatever you think I’ve done or haven’t done, I just think I should get you home, okay? You’re
not in any state to be out.’

‘Oh that’s right,’ I sneered. ‘I’m not meant to be out, am I? I’m just the boring little housewife who stays at home every night, cooking dinner. While you
fuck my husband.’

The crowd behind Sarah gasped. They were getting far more than they expected from a visit to the bathroom.

‘While I . . . fuck your husband?’ she asked, her voice faltering. Her hand rose to her chest in a masterful attempt to appear entirely innocent – who me? ‘Is that what
this is about?’

‘You thought I didn’t know,’ I said. I made my voice sound strong, but my legs were buckling and I was leaning on the side of the cubicle for support. ‘You thought
you’d carry on pretending to be my friend. When were you going to tell me? Were you going to wait until I was pregnant so you could really twist the knife?’

Sarah shook her head. She didn’t even try to deny it. She looked back over her shoulder at all the people trying to crowd into the bathroom.

‘Will you all just fuck off out of here?’ she shrieked. A few people looked guilty, but no one moved.

‘No, stay,’ I shouted. ‘I don’t care if they all know about it. I saw you. I saw you in Nan’s Fish Bar tonight. You were holding hands. You weren’t bothered
about hiding it then, were you? Own it, Sarah, own it. Admit it.’

Sarah’s eyes were suddenly full of tears. For one horrible moment I actually felt sympathy for her, before I remembered that she deserved to feel terrible.

‘You really thought . . .?’ She gestured limply towards the toilet, where Chris cowered in silence. ‘Oh God, Kate, what have you done?’

‘Don’t you dare judge me,’ I stammered, stuttering over my words with rage. ‘Don’t you
dare
. How can you stand there and judge me after everything
you’ve done?’

Sarah’s lip trembled. She dropped her voice to a near-whisper.

‘Kate, please, let’s not talk about this here. Let’s go home. I’ll get us a cab.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ I spat. ‘If you have something to say to me, you can say it here – in front of everyone.’

‘Yeah, sister,’ shouted a voice from the back of the crowd. I felt absurdly powerful. The audience was with me. I had the moral high ground. Even if I had just been caught shagging
in a toilet cubicle, I had turned it around.

I lost the moral high ground just slightly with a loud hiccup, but I thought I got away with it.

Sarah tried to keep her voice low, but everyone had hushed so much, so as not to miss a thing, that her words carried as clearly as if she’d spoken into a microphone.

‘Kate, nothing is happening between me and Matt. Nothing.’

‘Oh really,’ I sneered. ‘So you were just holding hands for no reason, were you?’

Sarah looked over her shoulder again, probably fearing the crowd was about to lynch her and brand a scarlet A onto her chest.

‘Really, let’s talk about this outside,’ she said.

‘No.’

Sarah sighed and her shoulders slumped. She pulled her bag across her body as if she was preparing to make a run for it.

‘Kate, I was holding Matt’s hand because he was crying. About you.’

I blinked at her.

‘And you expect me to believe that?’ I asked.

The faces of the crowd swivelled towards Sarah, like spectators at a tennis match.

‘Yes, I’ve been meeting up with him,’ Sarah confessed. ‘More than once.’

I knew it.

‘But only because both of us are so worried about you.’

‘How ridiculous,’ I said scornfully. ‘Are you actually trying to blame your affair on me?’

‘There is no affair!’ shouted Sarah. ‘Don’t you see, you fucking idiot? You’ve turned into a total crazy person. Matt and I have tried to be sympathetic –
it’s obvious you’re depressed—’

‘Matt and I?’ I sneered, in a sing-song voice. ‘Matt and I? Oh, how cosy it sounds.’

Sarah threw her hands up.

‘Kate, I don’t know how to get this through to you. But if I have to shout it in front of a room of fucking nosy strangers’ – she glared at the crowd behind her –
‘I’ll do it. You’ve gone completely insane about the most mundane things – fucking aprons and casserole dishes. You’re always angry, you never want to go out, you
won’t even consider getting a job, you’ve stopped speaking to me, to Matt, to anyone except that dog. You’re obsessed with getting pregnant.’

Behind me, Chris stood up in alarm. ‘You’re trying to get pregnant?’ he squeaked.

‘Fuck off, Chris,’ Sarah and I chorused.

He sat down again and dropped his head in his hands.

‘Kate,’ said Sarah. She was crying again. ‘I promise you, I promise. Nothing is happening with me and Matt. But we’ve both been so worried about you. Worried you’ll
do’ – she let out a loud sob – ‘something stupid.’

All at once it was as if I had been hit on the head by each of the bottles of wine I had drunk that night. My legs turned to water and I had to press my hands on either side of my head to stop
it from spinning.

‘Where is Matt?’ I whispered.

Sarah blinked away tears. ‘He’s gone home. He called me when he realized you weren’t there. Then Danny said he’d seen you outside the Crown with Chris. So I started
looking for you. Come on, Kate, it’s time to go home.’

‘I can’t go home,’ I said, starting to retch. ‘I can’t.’

I pushed Chris out of the way just in time to clutch the sides of the toilet seat as I threw up and threw up and threw up.

There was a collective ‘ew’ from the crowd, which seemed to disperse in an instant, my copious vomiting marking the tawdry ending of the floor show.

I felt Sarah rub my back as my stomach clenched and buckled.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ she said, over and over. ‘It’s going to be okay, Kate.’

But of course it wasn’t.

I stayed at Sarah’s that night. I heard her on the phone to Matt while I lay awake, staring at the ceiling of her spare bedroom, feeling the duvet lie on me as heavily as if it was made of
stone. When I got home the next morning the house was empty. Clearly he couldn’t face me. I didn’t blame him.

I wrote him a note:

And then I collected Minnie from the Palmers’ house and left for Lyme Regis.

I had thought my life would begin again when I’d finally put all my mistakes behind me, as if they had never happened. That with a fresh start and a clean slate and any
other cliché you care to use, I would move forwards confidently, with intent and self-awareness. I thought there was no place in my life for error, that making mistakes made you a bad
person. But now I think differently, that mistakes are what make us who we are. That the people who can love you despite your mistakes (maybe even because of them) are the people you can trust.

I don’t know what I had expected from telling the truth at last – that my family would cast me out in shame? Shave my head and parade me along the Cobb like the French women who
slept with German soldiers in the war? In my defence, I had never actually lied. Everyone just assumed, and it seemed easier to let them keep on assuming rather than to confess to my own tawdry
behaviour.

Of course my sister was furious, but as she hadn’t had much sympathy for me when I was supposedly the victim of a philandering husband, her lack of comforting words now I was revealed as
the philanderer was no great surprise. What did surprise me was her insistence that it wasn’t too late to do something about it. And Ben’s agreement. Neither of them could understand
why I was hiding away in Lyme Regis, interfering in their relationship instead of trying to put things right in my own. When my parents and Mrs Curtis joined the chorus of people telling me it was
time to face up to my mistakes, I could see I was going to get no rest in Lyme until I did.

More than that, I could see they wanted me to confront my past not as a punishment, but because they cared about me (even Prue), and wanted me to come to terms with what I had done. That moving
forwards without accepting my mistakes wasn’t worth anything.

I have an overnight bag packed, although I have no idea if I am going to stay the night in London. Or even where I might stay. It’s like a reversal of my flight from London, just one month
ago, except this time I have borrowed Mum’s car instead of taking the train. I want to be sure I can get away quickly if it all goes wrong.

As I drive through the New Forest, I make myself a deal that if it goes as badly as I expect, I am allowed to check myself into the most expensive hotel I can afford. One last hurrah with my
redundancy money. I will drown my sorrows with minibar cocktails and a sumptuous bubble bath that uses up all the complimentary toiletries. And if it goes really badly, I might even drown myself
for real.

It is time I faced up to the mess I left behind. Dad is right. Things won’t have sorted themselves out while I was hiding away in Lyme. It is up to me to sort them out, here and now. For
one moment, I think I might have to stop the car to be sick. I swerve into the outside lane, making the lorry behind beep angrily. Whatever, I think. Your mild annoyance is nothing compared to what
will be waiting for me at the end of this motorway. At least the distraction has stopped me feeling nauseous and I carry on driving.

I’ve often done my best thinking while driving. And my best singing, since there is nowhere better for truly venting your lungs on the high notes with no one to overhear you. But I’m
not singing on this journey, and not just because Mum’s CD selection is a little too heavy on the Michael Bublé for my tastes. This trip is just for thinking. I do not trust myself to
say the right thing unless I have prepared for it. I rehearse conversations over and over out loud, conversations in which I’m faced with fury or sadness or a door shut in my face. I consider
what I’ll do if there’s no one in. How long will I wait, parked outside? Will it make me look desperate? The truth is, I am desperate. Perhaps I shouldn’t be ashamed of it.
Perhaps it will help to demonstrate how far I am prepared to go to show I’m truly sorry.