The Half Sister(76)
‘Why did you hate me so much?’
‘You know why.’ His voice is strained, as if he’s struggling to sound normal.
She moves around to face him, putting herself in the firing line, inviting him to take a shot.
‘What did you expect me to do?’ she says, taking hold of his hands.
‘It was supposed to be a joint decision,’ he chokes.
Her hands fall away from his and she’s unable to keep her brow from scowling. ‘It would have been if you’d have stayed around for long enough.’
He laughs unkindly. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘You abandoned me when I needed you,’ she says, conscious of the change in atmosphere. ‘I pleaded with you to talk to me, but you cut me off, as if I was dead to you.’
‘You were,’ he says, his face close to hers.
A tear unexpectedly falls onto her cheek and she quickly wipes it away.
‘I’m going to go now,’ she says, shaking herself down. ‘But know one thing; I never stopped loving you, and I honestly believe that if you’d stayed with me, our baby would be here today.’
He grabs hold of her arm as she moves past him, spinning her around. ‘You’d already got rid of it before I even had a chance to talk to you. What difference would I have made?’
‘What?’ exclaims Lauren, pulling back, away from his grasp. ‘What are you talking about? I begged you to come over, to talk to my parents. I swore to them that you’d stand by me, that we’d work it out, together, but you left me there to face it alone.’ The tears fall with no apologies and she pummels his chest with her closed fists. ‘I needed you, but you weren’t there. Why weren’t you there?’
Justin grabs hold of her flailing arms and stares intently into her eyes. ‘I was told you’d already had an abortion,’ he says loudly. ‘That’s why I left you. You took away our right to choose together.’
‘No, no, no,’ Lauren cries, shaking her head manically. ‘That’s not what happened. You left me before I had made a decision. And without you there I just couldn’t . . .’
The pair of them lock eyes, their pupils dilated with shock as they both suddenly realize that they were played off against one another in a wicked game of he said, she said.
Justin takes her head in his hands and kisses her hard, as if trying to quell the years of hurt and frustration that had built up between them.
‘I swear to you—’ starts Lauren, breaking away from him.
He kisses her again and she responds; his tongue, his touch, his smell, taking her back to the happiest and saddest time in her life.
‘I have never stopped loving you,’ he breathes, as his lips and fingers trail her neck, his feather-like touch setting her skin alight.
‘Make love to me,’ she whispers tearfully.
He picks her up and she wraps her legs around him, their kissing not stopping until he lays her gently on his bed. She can feel his weight on top of her, his desire evident.
‘Are you sure?’ he says.
She nods, just like she did the last time he asked that question twenty-two years ago.
35
Kate
‘I need the copy for the glamour model piece,’ shouts Lee across the news floor.
Kate looks at the clock on the wall – it’s after seven and she’s not yet had time to focus on what matters most. Instead she’s having to file a depressingly predictable interview about a forty-year-old’s fifth boob job. She’s either getting too cynical or too long in the tooth to want to be writing such an inane piece.
‘It’s coming across now,’ she calls back.
As soon as she hits send, she picks up her phone and takes it with her to the stairwell, where she’ll be afforded marginally more privacy.
‘Hi Nancy, it’s Kate – I just wondered if you had any results on those DNA samples I sent over last night.’
‘Oh hi, Kate – not just yet, but we’re getting there. I hope to have them in the next few hours.’
‘Great, let me know as soon as they’re in, will you?’
‘Will do,’ says Nancy, before hanging up.
Kate taps her phone on her chin as she wonders what she’s going to do with the results if they go the way she’s expecting them to.
Her mother certainly won’t be surprised – she’ll just be shocked that Kate’s gone to such lengths to get to the truth, though if she’d been honest in the first place, Kate wouldn’t have felt the need to have done it. But Lauren is going to be stunned by the turn of events – Jess too, no doubt.
Once again, Kate is ashamed to admit that she’s relieved that her father isn’t here to witness Jess’s arrival. If he was truly in the dark about what Rose had done, how would he feel to know that the wife he’s loved and adored for forty years has been unfaithful and disloyal in the cruellest of ways.
What had happened to make her mother cheat on the best husband she could have ever wished for? What could he possibly have done to justify her actions?
If he was still here, Kate would ask him. She stares down at her bag on the floor and wonders if she still can.
She hurriedly swings the oversized bucket bag onto the desk and rummages through it, unable to believe that she’d forgotten the letter that she’d taken from her parents’ wardrobe. Caught up with an electricity bill and a used tissue, the envelope, that might hold the answers or at least go some way to explaining the situation they now all found themselves in, is stained from the lipstick in her purse that has no lid. The symbolic weight of the blood-red blotted paper sits heavily on Kate’s shoulders as her eyes scan the page.