The Half Sister(41)
‘Yes,’ says Kate. ‘Do you want to give it a go?’
‘Absolutely,’ says Daisy, smiling enthusiastically. ‘If you think I’m capable.’
‘I tell you what,’ says Kate, looking at her watch. ‘I’m going to go to the pub for a bit. Give me a call and let me know what you come up with once the pics are in. That way, if there any problems, I can come back to the office.’
‘Okay,’ squeaks Daisy.
It isn’t quite the evening Kate had envisaged, but if it means she can get off work early, she’ll take it. She certainly knows someone who will be pleased with the change of plan.
She calls Matt as she’s walking up the street towards his office, sidestepping the suits that move towards her like ants as they spill out from the high-rise towers and disperse in different directions, most with the sole purpose of finding the nearest watering hole. She wills him to pick up – although there are only a handful of pubs Matt would head for, in this heat she’d rather not have to do a solitary pub crawl to find him. It goes to voicemail and when she reaches his building she tries again, but still there’s no answer.
She sits on a stone bench, reaching surreptitiously into the cereal box in her bag and lifting out a handful of dry cornflakes, unable to determine if the odd sensation in her tummy is hunger or nausea. If she can’t reach Matt soon, she might pop to the Tesco on the opposite corner of the square for some ginger biscuits. She’d once run a feature on how Kate Middleton had allegedly relied on them to get her through the severe sickness she’d endured with each of her pregnancies, and if it was good enough for royalty . . .
Her thought process is interrupted by Matt emerging from the revolving door of his building, shielding his eyes from the glaring sun. Relieved to see his lop-sided grin, Kate moves towards him, holding her stomach with a protective hand as the tide of bodies moves against her. It doesn’t occur to her to wonder what he’s smiling about, though if it had, she’d probably hazard a guess that it’s the thought of her and the little life that they’re incubating.
But as she gets closer to him, something stops her dead, rooting her feet to the concrete. She wants to call out his name, to stop him in his tracks, but her throat is dry and contracting in an involuntary spasm. It’s as if she’s trapped in a nightmare. She wants to scream, but when she opens her mouth, no noise comes out.
She watches, open-mouthed, as the man she loves guides the woman who’s threatening to destroy her family across the concourse. He and Jess are close as they sidestep the horde and move in the direction of the footbridge and the bars of West India Quay. Kate stands there numbly, her brain blocking out the noise of everything but her own thoughts. It’s as if they’re scratching incessantly at a scab – pick, pick, pick – until they expose the wound. Only then do they throw her back out into the cacophony that surrounds her, raw and bleeding.
A text pings through on her phone and she looks at it as if through a blurry haze.
Had a couple of missed calls – all okay? Matt asks.
She looks up in disbelief as he walks away from her, his head lolling back as he laughs at something Jess says.
What the fuck? Kate asks herself, again and again as she follows them across the bridge. She quickens her step, not knowing whether she wants to catch them up or not, but her warped need to know what’s happening pushes her on.
They go into Brown’s restaurant on the quayside and Kate lingers outside, debating what she should do. If she applied her usual forthright mentality, she’d storm straight in there and call them out. After all, she has every right. But there’s a tiny part of her that is urging caution. That is trying to offer an explanation as to why her husband is sitting in a bar in Canary Wharf, entertaining the woman who claims to be her half sister.
Before she has a chance to think, they’re both coming back out again – Matt with his usual, a pint of beer, and Jess with a glass of rosé. Kate steps backwards, stumbling over her own feet, to hide behind a tree. Her heart is thumping and the bitter taste in her mouth is becoming increasingly difficult to swallow as she fights to come up with a logical reason why these two people are together.
Jess leans into Matt as he shows her something on his phone, and she throws her head back laughing. Kate watches with a growing sense of unease as Jess runs a hand through her blonde hair, looking at Matt, almost as if she’s in awe of him. He, in turn, smiles at Jess over the top of his pint glass. It’s the same playfulness that he used to look at her with; is it flirting, or a social nervousness? It would depend on how you want to take it, though Kate has never known Matt to suffer with the latter. If she didn’t know better, she’d think they were a couple in the early stages of courtship, when they hadn’t quite found that comfortable place where they could truly be themselves. It looks as though they are still testing each other out, seeing how far they should go.
She feels sick, unable to watch any longer as this girl, who she didn’t know existed until a few weeks ago, wrecks her world, piece by piece.
21
Lauren
It’s funny how you treat your phone differently when you’re doing something you shouldn’t be. Lauren used to leave it on the kitchen worktop whilst she bathed the kids, or in her bag in the hall when she went to bed. But now she keeps it on her wherever she goes and every time it makes a noise, her heart goes to her mouth.