The Half Sister(23)

‘You’re okay though, right?’ he asks, stopping and turning to look at her.

Commuters tut as they’re forced to sidestep around them on the pavement.

Kate instinctively touches her stomach and nods.

‘Nothing’s happened?’ Matt presses.

She shakes her head. ‘I’m just tired.’

‘That’s all it is?’ asks Matt, in a way that suggests he thinks she might be hiding something.

‘Yes,’ she says, smiling at his concern. ‘That’s all.’ She links her arm through his, encouraging him to start walking again.

‘Mmm,’ he mutters, looking at her through narrowed eyes, as if he’s still not quite convinced.

‘Anyway, how’s your day been?’ she asks, eager to change the subject. ‘How did the interviews go? Find anyone suitable?’

Matt groans. ‘Everyone pre-lunch was a write-off, but there were one or two candidates this afternoon that are promising.’

‘Is that because you had a couple of drinks in you by then?’ she asks, laughing. ‘Did your beer goggles make them a more attractive proposition?’

Matt nudges her playfully with an elbow. ‘I’ll have you know I’ve remained sober all day, thank you very much.’

‘That’s unusual for you,’ Kate teases. ‘For a Monday.’

He smiles as he swings open the door into the station, holding it for an attractive woman and her canine companion. ‘Ah cute,’ he comments after her.

Kate raises her eyebrows. ‘Is that the dog or the human?’

Matt rolls his eyes. ‘So, there were two stand-out applicants this afternoon, but with very different backgrounds. One’s straight out of university, having graduated in journalism. The other left school at eighteen, took a work experience position at the local paper and never left. She’s having to supplement her minimum wage by working in a bar in the evenings and at weekends.’

‘Okay,’ says Kate.

‘So, who would you plump for?’

‘The one who’s working on a paper,’ says Kate, without hesitation.

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. She really wants it, so much so that she’s prepared to work for next to nothing. I assume she’s writing for the paper?’

‘Yeah, but only at a very local level.’

‘But that doesn’t matter, because you’ll be training her up anyway. You’ll want her to do things your way and it’ll be a hell of a lot easier teaching someone who’s willing to learn versus someone who’s spent the last three years in a classroom and thinks they know everything already.’

‘Speaking from experience, are we?’ he says, smiling.

‘Actually, I did know everything by the time you took me on.’

Matt rolls his eyes in mock exasperation. ‘Or so you thought.’

‘I think you’ll find I taught you things,’ says Kate with a cheeky glint in her eye. ‘Not the other way around.’

Matt laughs. ‘So, you’d do yourself out of a job? You’d take the worker over the slacker?’

‘Oi, just because I went to university doesn’t make me a slacker,’ says Kate, breaking away from Matt to tap in at the ticket barrier. ‘I worked my arse off when I was there.’

‘So, you’d definitely go for experience over education?’ asks Matt, as they jump on the escalator.

‘If that’s all that’s separating them, yes.’

‘Okay, on your head be it,’ says Matt. ‘Have you heard anything from your mum or Lauren?’

Kate tells him about this morning, and the DNA match that Lauren is claiming to have found. Just the thought of her putting their personal details online makes Kate’s chest tighten. How could she have been so stupid?

‘It might not be your sister’s finest hour,’ he admits. ‘But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the girl is who she says she is.’

‘How do you mean?’ asks Kate, desperate to find any other scenario than the one that’s whirring around her head, making her feel as if she’s going mad.

‘Well, there’s got to be some semblance of a match there, especially if they’ve used an ancestry website, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the players are playing by the rules.’

Kate looks at him confused. ‘So you’re saying there’s room for error?’

‘Put it like this; these big genealogy sites are not in the habit of making mistakes, otherwise we’d all be running around thinking our mother was our sister and our children weren’t our own.’

Kate can’t help but laugh. When he puts it like that . . .

‘So, it’s safe to say,’ he goes on, ‘that if you’ve uploaded your DNA, you’ll only be shown your proven matches.’

‘O-kay,’ says Kate hesitantly, unsure where he’s going with this, but open to all suggestions.

‘So essentially, the DNA has to have been a match to have brought Lauren and this girl together. But – bear with me here – what if, crazy as it sounds, the girl has somehow cooked the results.’

‘By doing what?’ asks Kate, stopping stock still on the platform.

‘I dunno,’ says Matt, shrugging his shoulders. ‘She might have uploaded your DNA, for example.’