The Half Sister(95)

‘Legal advice, you mean?’ asks Justin, bringing her back.

Lauren nods. ‘I can stay with Mum for a bit, but it’s not ideal, especially in the current circumstances, and Kate’s not got enough room for us all.’

‘Well, if you need somewhere to stay, there’s plenty of room at mine.’

Lauren looks at him as if he’s mad. ‘I can’t move myself and three children into yours. This isn’t your problem.’

‘Your problems are my problems. I want to help you in any way I can, and if the apartment isn’t right, and I understand why it might not be, let me find you somewhere to rent whilst you’re sorting yourself out.’

‘I’m not working at the moment,’ says Lauren. ‘I can’t afford to rent anywhere.’

‘So let me help you then, at least until you’re back on your feet.’

‘Justin, that’s very kind of you, but honestly I don’t need you to—’

‘I want to,’ he says, taking her hand in his. ‘This could be a new beginning for both of us—’

Lauren’s phone interrupts him and she looks at him apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, I need to get this,’ she says. She walks out of the cafe, sidestepping the bodies that are dispersing from London Bridge station.

‘Hi,’ she says, as she teeters on the kerb.

‘Are you okay?’ asks Kate.

‘Getting there. You?’

‘Yeah, listen, something’s come up and I wondered if you could get across to Canary Wharf?’

Lauren instinctively looks at her watch, though she doesn’t know why. ‘What now?’ she says.

‘Yes, if you can. It’s important.’

It doesn’t occur to Lauren to ask any more questions. Mostly out of fear of what the answers will be. She’s not quite sure how much more she can take at the moment.

‘Listen, I need to go,’ she says to Justin when she walks back into the cafe.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asks. ‘Do you want me to come with you? I don’t want you having to face him on your own.’

‘It’s not Simon,’ she says. ‘It’s Kate. I’ll call you later.’

Lauren wonders, as she goes the three stops on the Jubilee line, what Kate has to say that’s so important. She hopes she’s not going to slate their father, because for the first time, Lauren doesn’t want to hear it. She’s spent all these years waiting for everyone else to feel the way she did, but now that they do, she wishes they didn’t. Kate, on the other hand, has had all the good things she thought about her father turned upside down. The irony of how they’ve changed sides isn’t lost on her.

Lauren walks into the intimidating lobby at the Echo offices fifteen minutes later, feeling instantly out of place. This isn’t where she wants to be, no matter how much she’d tried to convince herself that it was. It had felt so glamorous whenever Kate talked about it, but in reality, it feels threatening and highly pressured. Seeing Kate waving from the corner eases her anxiety.

‘What’s going on?’ she says as confidently as she can as she approaches the group of four.

‘Lauren, this is DS Connolly and DC Stephens,’ says Kate. ‘They’re . . .’

‘Thank you . . .’ says Connolly, cutting Kate off. ‘They’re just preliminary inquiries at the moment, Mrs Carter, but we’d like to ask you some questions all the same.’

‘Of course,’ says Lauren, looking at Kate wide-eyed, trying to read her mind.

‘They’re investigating the murder of a woman in Harrogate in 1996,’ says Kate quickly, in answer to her silent questioning.

Lauren’s palms instantly go clammy.

‘The article implies that you uploaded your DNA onto a genealogy site,’ says Stephens. ‘Did you know that you might have another sibling?’

‘N-no,’ stutters Lauren. ‘I was just doing it for a bit of fun, really. I didn’t have any expectations other than perhaps building our family tree.’

‘So you were surprised when Miss Linley showed as a match?’

Not remotely, she wants to say, but instead says, ‘Absolutely.’

‘So it didn’t occur to you that your dad, Mr Harry Alexander, might have fathered another child?’

‘No,’ she says, feeling sick. ‘Not at all.’

The two detectives look at each other, making Lauren feel as if they know everything already and are just seeing how long it takes her to admit it.

‘Did your father have any violent tendencies?’ asks DS Connolly, bringing her back.

‘Now, hang on a minute,’ says Kate, answering on Lauren’s behalf. ‘Whatever’s going on here has got absolutely nothing to do with my father.’

Lauren looks, panic-stricken, between her sister and the officer.

‘I’m sure it hasn’t,’ says DS Connolly. ‘But, as we said, we need to eliminate everyone from our inquiries.’

‘No,’ says Lauren, truthfully. ‘Never.’

Stephens jots down Lauren’s answer in his notebook.

‘I’m sorry, can you tell me more about what this is all about?’ says Lauren, finally finding her voice. She will not allow assumptions to be made about her father. She’s made enough of those for everyone.