The Child (Kate Waters #2)(76)

The woman is Kate Waters. I feel like someone has hit me in the stomach when Harry introduces her. I hear myself gasp and turn it into a cough, so she won’t know. But she is looking at me as if a spotlight has been turned on. I wait for her to expose me. Even though I know she doesn’t know my real name. My mask feels so flimsy, I can sense it slipping away. But Kate Waters shows no sign of recognition.

I try not to react when she mentions Alice Irving. Move the conversation to a safer place.

That must be interesting, being a reporter, I can hear myself saying. God, I’m so obvious. She must know. She must see right through me.

If she does, she doesn’t show it. She goes along with my little game. She is a laugh, actually—she knows all about Malcolm Baker and Sarah S. even though she’s only just met us. Toni must have told her. Funny that, a bit like me and my books. An instant expert on someone else’s life. Dangerous to think you know too much, sometimes, because who really knows someone else? You can scratch the skin, but you never get to the meat of someone else. Into their bones.





SIXTY-ONE


    Kate


SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012

God, she’s slim, Kate thought when she saw her. Wish I could lose some weight.

“Emma,” Harry said. “I didn’t know you were in here. I was waiting for you at the table.”

“Sorry, I needed a quick pee. These long drinks go straight through you.”

“Hi, I’m Kate,” she said.

“Hi. Kate? I don’t remember a Kate in my class. Were you in the year above? Toni’s class?” Emma said.

“No, she’s a reporter,” Harry said. “Kate Waters.”

“I was talking to Toni about the Alice Irving story—the baby found in Howard Street—and she invited me to her reunion,” Kate explained.

The woman reacted to the news by avoiding eye contact.

Hiding, Kate thought. But hiding what?

“That must be interesting, being a reporter,” she said.

Kate looked at her. Classic distraction technique, she noted. She’d expected a comment or a question about Alice. That was the most interesting thing she’d said, wasn’t it? It was what everyone who lived round here was talking about. Not that she was a reporter.

“Er, yes, I get to meet all sorts of people. How about you? What do you do?”

“I’m a books editor,” she said

“Em works on celebrity memoirs,” Harry chipped in.

“Like a ghost writer?” Kate said.

“No, someone else is the ghost. I sit in my spare room and polish other people’s stories for them.”

Kate smiled. “I seem to be doing a lot of that as well. Are you sisters, then?”

Emma smiled back. “Sisters from another mother, we say.”

It was a bit of a struggle but Kate pushed on with the small talk.

“What a great job. Have you done anyone good?”

Emma listed a couple of big-name footballers and her current film star project as she rummaged in her handbag for her makeup and Kate made all the right noises.

“Must be fascinating seeing behind the public face,” she said.

“Yeah, fascinating and a bit scary at times,” Emma said.

“Scary?”

“Well, knowing what people are really like and then having to write them up as someone different. To match their public persona. It’s a bit of a responsibility when you suspect someone is a violent thug, say. Is it your lie or their lie?”

“God, that must be very difficult. Have you ever turned a commission down?”

“No, I need the money.” Emma laughed. A brittle laugh.

“Must be funny seeing all the old faces here tonight,” Kate said, moving on quickly.

“Yes, it’s been years. Decades.”

“You moved away, then?”

“Well, not far physically,” Emma said, exchanging a glance with Harry as she emerged from a cubicle, tucking her shirt in. “Our lives went in different directions, I suppose.”

“What’s it like coming back?” Kate said.

“Odd. A bit like being in a dream,” Emma said. “I look round the room and see faces I almost know. Familiar but I can’t quite place them. Then they say their name and they come back into focus. Do you know what I mean?”

Kate nodded, enchanted by the description.

“Harry persuaded me to come. She has far too much influence on me. Don’t you?”

Harry smiled at her friend. “Does you good to get out. And this is brilliant,” she said.

Kate smiled mischievously and added: “I wonder if Malcolm is here.”

Both the other women laughed.

“Bet he’s got a toupee and a gold medallion off the market,” Harry said.

“Bet he’s got a mistress and a midlife-crisis Harley,” Emma said. “Let’s go and find him, meet back here in half an hour, and report.”

Kate opened the door to let the party back in and shooed them out. “See you later. Good hunting.”





SIXTY-TWO


    Kate


SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012

She edged round the room to the bar to see how Joe was doing. He was leaning on the sticky counter, deep in mimed conversation with the barmaid, a woman in shoulder pads with too much hairspray.