The Half Sister(94)
‘And as I understand it,’ Stephens goes on, ‘Miss Linley has uploaded her DNA onto a genealogy website and has discovered that she has a half sister. Would that be Mrs Carter?’
Kate nods.
‘And yourself, of course, though I notice you’re not referred to in the article.’
Kate stays silent.
‘Were you perhaps not quite as accepting of the situation as Ms Carter?’
‘Well, it’s not exactly ideal,’ admits Kate, coughing to clear her throat.
‘That your father was her father?’
‘Yes,’ says Kate quietly. ‘It’s not easy to accept that your father could have had an affair.’
‘Especially difficult to discover this after his passing, I must imagine,’ says Stephens, almost to himself.
Kate bristles at his clumsy attempt at sincerity.
‘But you accept it to be the case?’ asks Stephens.
‘I can’t argue with science,’ she says, smiling tightly.
Stephens returns her smile, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
‘Do you have any reason to believe that your father knew of his third daughter’s existence?’
Yes. No. I don’t know. They all reverberate around her head on a loop, as her, Lauren’s and their mother’s different theories abound.
‘No,’ she says, because it feels the safest answer to give until she knows exactly what’s going on here. Relief floods through her as Matt returns and sits down next to her.
‘And you don’t remember the case of an abandoned baby when you were living in Harrogate at the time?’
‘No,’ she says honestly.
‘You would have been eleven or twelve?’ says Stephens, needlessly reminding her of her age.
‘That’s correct,’ she says.
‘And your sister, Lauren?’ says Stephens, referring to his notebook. ‘She’s a few years older than you.’
‘Yes, four.’ Kate is now worried that her answers are too short and clipped.
‘So, she might have some memory of it. Or indeed your mother, Mrs . . .’ He looks at his notebook. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your parents’ surname.’
‘Alexander.’
‘And Mrs Alexander is still in London?’ DS Connolly asks.
Kate nods.
‘Can I get an address for her please? We might need to ask her a few questions too.’
‘About what?’ says Kate, her hackles rising as well as her heart rate.
‘We just need to eliminate everyone from our inquiries,’ says Stephens, sounding as if he’s reading from a script for a TV show.
‘Inquiries for what?’ chokes Kate. ‘What is it that you’re investigating exactly?’
DS Connolly looks at her. ‘A murder, Mrs Walker. We’re investigating a murder.’
46
Lauren
‘I’m truly sorry,’ says Justin, taking Lauren’s hand in his as they sit in a cafe at the foot of the Shard. ‘I had no idea I was talking to him.’
‘Why would you?’ she says, as she swipes her tears away, not knowing whether she’s crying for her marriage or the new life she’s about to embark on. ‘It’s my own stupid fault. I should never have let him anywhere near my phone.’ Though even as she’s saying it, she knows she had no choice.
Justin looks at her intently. ‘You never know, it might be a good thing.’
Lauren laughs cynically. ‘How can two parents breaking up ever be a good thing?’
‘Because he’s a violent bully, Lauren! You and the children are so much better off away from him.’
Lauren nods. In her head she knows he’s right but, despite herself, in her heart she’s still not sure she completely agrees with him.
‘I want to look after you, Lauren. If you want that too.’
‘I’ve got a lot to sort out, both practically and emotionally,’ says Lauren. ‘But in time, yes.’
‘We can figure that out. But first things first,’ says Justin. ‘Where are you and the children going to live?’
Lauren looks at him wide-eyed, suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation she’s in. There were practical reasons she’d stayed in a marriage so toxic; having a roof over her children’s heads was one of them.
‘I’m going to have to take some advice,’ she says, feeling fresh tears spring to her eyes when she realizes that her one true advocate is no longer here. How she wishes she could roll back a year, to when her dad was still alive. Or even better, roll back twenty-two years, to a time when she was daddy’s girl just as much as Kate was. Before she fell pregnant, before Justin left her, before she gave up their baby and blamed her dad for it all. Now she’s discovered that the resentment she’s been carrying around for all that time was misplaced. Yes, he may have had an affair and yes, it seems he had a baby with another woman, but that didn’t detract from the father he was to her – the father he tried so very hard to be, if only she’d let him. And now it’s too late.
He will never know how much she wished she’d gone into the office with him whenever he asked, instead of crying at home and regretting saying no. He will never know how much she’d have loved him to pop round to her place on his way home from a football match, instead of always going to Kate’s. He will never know her regret at not telling him she loved him when she naively believed she had all the time in the world.