The Half Sister(39)
‘Shit!’ says Lauren again.
‘If you’d given me the heads up, I might have been able to cover for you, but . . .’
‘Well, she did a good job of pretending,’ says Lauren. ‘Look, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to put anyone in an awkward position.’
‘No, but now that you have, do you want to tell me where you were?’
Lauren’s jaw tightens as her teeth grind against each other. ‘I don’t want you to get mad . . .’ she says, surprising herself that it still matters to her what Kate thinks. ‘But, it’s just that . . .’
‘You know this is never going to end well, don’t you?’ says Kate, cutting her off.
Lauren pulls herself up. How could Kate possibly know that she met Justin? Had someone seen them after all? Would that same person tell Simon? An icy terror courses through her veins, as she imagines what he might be capable of. The thought of him using the children against her makes it feel as if her heart’s stopped working.
‘Can I just explain . . .?’ says Lauren.
‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ says Kate. ‘You’re just going to have to find out the hard way.’
‘But you have no idea what it’s been like for me,’ says Lauren.
‘Listen, spare me the “woe is me” line. We’re all in the same boat, but if you want to see Jess for whatever reason, that’s up to you.’
‘Jess?’ Lauren exclaims. ‘But . . .’
‘Just know that it’s your problem when it all goes wrong, because it will all go wrong.’
Lauren’s brain feels as if it’s about to explode as she weighs up using Jess as her excuse for lying, wondering which is the lesser of two evils.
‘I’m sorry I lied,’ she says, opting to go with what Kate believes. ‘But I know you’d rather I didn’t see her.’
‘You can do what you like,’ says Kate. ‘But you need to be absolutely sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.’
She makes it sound as if Lauren’s doing something dangerous, but then she reminds herself that she wasn’t with Jess. The realization of who she was with chills her to the bone.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she says hesitantly.
‘I hope, for all our sakes, that you do,’ says Kate.
20
Kate
Being pregnant doesn’t feel how Kate thought it would. After the interminable wait to get here, she expected fireworks to be going off and an instantaneous rounding of her tummy. But at six weeks, all she feels is really nauseous and a bit weirded out that there is a human being growing inside of her.
She’s glad to be almost done for the day, but the rush hour has already started as she heads back to the office from her last appointment in Soho. The summer heat from above ground has turned the Underground into a furnace and the labyrinth of tunnels becomes hotter and hotter the further down she goes, with the only relief being the whoosh of air that precedes the train. Though even that feels like she’s stuck in the diffuser of a high-powered hairdryer.
She gets caught up in the throng of people clamouring to get on the already packed carriage. There’s pushing, tutting and the occasional shout of, ‘Move the fuck down’, which, if it had been winter, would have been, ‘Can you move down please?’ The heat does funny things to you.
Kate clings on to the rail, eyeing the healthy-looking young guy who is slouched in the preferential seat for the elderly and pregnant. She fantasizes that in the weeks and months to come she’ll bare her bump and demand that he give up his seat, but right now, she looks like she’s just had a heavy lunch. She’d be happy if that was the truth, but she can’t remember the last time she had a decent meal, her insides unable to cope with the mere thought of carbohydrates and protein. So, to save herself from starving to death, and on Matt’s insistence, she’d taken to carrying a box of cereal around in her bag – the cardboard-tasting flakes being the only thing she can stomach right now.
She gets off at Canary Wharf and watches in awe as fellow commuters rush past her on the escalator. Men, with sweat staining their shirts, race up the steep risers towards civilization. The women take their time, preferring to be taken down in the apocalypse than display a wet patch on their blouse.
The coolness of the air-conditioned office building is a welcome relief, but as she’s waiting for one of the lifts, her phone rings.
‘Hello darling, it’s only me,’ says Rose. ‘I’m glad I caught you.’
Kate can’t help but sigh. ‘What’s up?’
‘Well, I just wondered if you’d spoken to Lauren at all.’
‘Not for a couple of weeks, no,’ says Kate.
‘It’s only that I wondered if there was a problem between you . . .’
‘I don’t know, is there?’
‘She won’t admit it to me,’ Rose goes on. ‘But I’m pretty sure she’s still talking to that girl, or maybe even seeing her.’
For a split second, Kate doesn’t know who her mother’s referring to, but then the cold hard realization hits her. She’d spent the last couple of weeks desperately trying to silence the noises in her head, refusing to let Jess infiltrate her thoughts, which had been easier to do without Lauren to constantly remind her. Though she had to admit that, even for them, two weeks was a long time to go without speaking and she missed her. Could she dare to hope that the next time they spoke, any thought of Jess being their half sister would be forgotten? It didn’t sound like it.