The Half Sister(6)

‘But if I could just—’

‘For God’s sake, he’s—’ starts Rose, before Kate grabs her mother’s wrist, cutting her words off.

‘. . . not the man you’re looking for,’ says Kate, feeling as if her airways are being crushed.

‘I just want him to know—’ starts Jess.

‘Get out!’ screams Rose, making Emmy jump and dissolve into frightened tears.

‘Look, I’m sorry, but you need to leave,’ says Simon, stepping forward and holding an arm out towards the hall.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Jess tearfully, as Simon ushers her into the hall. ‘I thought you knew . . .’

‘Just get out!’ Rose yells again.

A moment later the front door shuts and everyone takes a sharp breath, none of them wanting to be the first to speak.

Simon coming back into the room breaks the almost hypnotic spell that seems to have been cast.

‘Well, what the hell . . .?’ he smirks, stifling a laugh. Only he could make this worse.

Kate falls back onto a chair, feeling the air in her body rush out. She thinks of the embryo inside her and forces herself to take deep, steady breaths. In for three, out for four. But her chest constricts, making it feel as if it’s trapping what little air there is inside of it. She imagines blowing into a brown paper bag and closes her eyes as she pictures it inflating and deflating.

‘M-mum?’ stutters Lauren. ‘Are you okay?’

If Kate feels floored by the unwanted guest’s announcement, she can’t even begin to think how her mother must be feeling. Rose’s eyes are glazed. ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ she says eventually. Her voice is barely more than a whisper and she coughs to clear her throat.

‘So you don’t know who she is?’ asks Lauren.

Rose numbly shakes her head.

‘Well if you ask me,’ says Simon, ‘there must be something in it. You don’t just interrupt some random family’s Sunday lunch and deliver a bombshell like that.’

‘I have no idea what she’s talking about,’ says Rose. ‘It doesn’t even make sense. None of what she said makes any sense.’

Kate’s head is in her hands as she contemplates what just happened, knowing that if she says the wrong thing or asks the wrong question, she won’t ever be able to retract it.

‘Mum, could it be . . .?’ starts Lauren, looking to Rose, who turns to her with a face like thunder.

Kate looks to her mother and sister, their expressions mirroring each other’s; their eyes wide with fear and confusion, their lips pinched tight as if they’re biting down on the words that are threatening to spill from their mouths.

‘Could it be what?’ asks Kate.

‘Nothing,’ snaps Rose. ‘The girl’s got her wires crossed. It’s as simple as that. There’s no other explanation.’

Kate doesn’t know whether her mother is speaking about Lauren or the young woman who’s just turned up claiming to be her father’s daughter. Her father’s daughter. Just hearing those words in her head makes Kate’s throat clench as it battles the tears that are teetering behind her eyes.

For once in her life, she agrees with her mother – it’s just not possible. Harry was devoted to his family and devoted to her. She was Daddy’s little girl and they were like two peas in a pod, in every way, except for their looks. Where Kate had inherited her mother’s auburn hair and fair skin, that freckled whenever she so much as looked at the sun, Harry could be seen in Lauren’s wide-set eyes, straight narrow nose and one-sided dimple. The blonde hair that they’d once shared had grown more ashen on Harry in his later years, but he’d always looked distinguished – like the man she knew him to be. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was distinguished in an entirely different way? Conspicuously marked with the stigma of another family; a family he had kept secret from the rest of the world.

Her mind races back to the time when Jess would have been born. She looked young – early twenties maybe? Which would have made Kate barely a teenager. Those were the years when, during the school holidays, she used to accompany her father to his office, where he worked as a lawyer. She was adamant she’d follow in his footsteps, convinced she wanted to right people’s wrongs.

‘You’re a real-life superhero,’ she’d once said, watching in awe as he spent the morning fighting for a mother’s custody and the afternoon negotiating a fair divorce deal for a husband who had been cheated on.

He’d smiled modestly at her through crinkled eyes, but she knew her words mattered to him. As did everybody else’s whose lives he touched. He wasn’t how lawyers are so often cast; the epitome of a vulture preying on the vulnerable. He was an upstanding citizen who treated each and every one of his clients like a good friend. He had always been a superhero in Kate’s eyes.

Yet now, she dares to contemplate the possibility that he might have been the very opposite.

‘Why didn’t you tell her he was dead?’ asks Lauren, almost accusingly.

It takes a while for Kate to realize that she’s talking to her.

‘Because it’s none of her goddamn business,’ Kate snaps. ‘Though I suppose if it were up to you, you’d sit her down, make her a cup of tea and tell her the whole story.’