The Half Sister, page 18
She needs to stop that story from running, knowing that if it does, it will destroy her family once and for all.
29
Lauren
Lauren’s just put Jude to bed when the doorbell goes, and she knows that at gone 10 p.m., the only person she’s going to answer the door to is Simon, who she assumes has forgotten his key. She does a cursory look out of the front bedroom window and is dismayed to see Kate standing on the pavement below. After the day she’s had, she doesn’t need this right now.
‘Hello,’ she says wearily, as she opens the door.
‘I need to talk to you,’ says Kate, stepping straight into the hallway.
Lauren probably has things she should tell her, but she’s tired.
‘Can we do this tomorrow?’ she says, looking at the time on her phone to emphasize the point.
‘There’s something you need to know about Jess,’ blurts out Kate, seemingly unable to hold it in.
Lauren can’t help but roll her eyes. ‘Seriously, Kate, can’t you give it a rest?’
‘I’ve been checking her out,’ says Kate, almost triumphantly. ‘And she’s not who she says she is.’
‘I don’t think even she knows who she is,’ says Lauren.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Kate goes on. ‘She’s lying to you, me, everyone. Jess Linley isn’t even her real name. She’s nothing but a fraud.’
The words slice through Lauren as if cutting the very strings that are holding her up. She doesn’t want to believe it. She refuses to believe it.
‘I assume you’ve used your usual unethical methods to find this out,’ asks Lauren, hoping to expose a weak link in the information that Kate thinks she’s garnered.
‘Does it matter?’ asks Kate. ‘All you need to know is that Jess is up to something and you shouldn’t trust her as far as you can throw her. She’s playing us.’
‘What is wrong with you?’
‘Me?’ exclaims Kate. ‘You’re the one who wants to believe everything she’s telling you.’
‘Is this the person you’ve become?’ says Lauren. ‘Forever the cynic, not wanting to believe anything anyone tells you.’ She laughs falsely. ‘D’you know what? I used to think your job made you better than me. That working amongst people deemed to be important made you more important by default. But I’m glad I’m me, because all your job has done is make you a mistrusting egotist who doesn’t want to see the good in anyone.’
‘I’m a journalist,’ says Kate scathingly. ‘I seek out the truth, and if you’re threatened by that, then that’s your problem.’
‘Well whatever you think you’ve uncovered, I’m sure there’s a very good reason for it.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Kate laughs bitterly. ‘She’s got plenty good enough reasons. The first being that she’s obtained a job under false pretences.’
Lauren feels a pang in her chest, not only at the revelation, but also because she’d not got around to finding out what exactly Jess did for work. All she knows is that she’s doing a job she loves in Canary Wharf. It shames her that Kate appears to know more than she does. ‘Why would she need to do that?’
‘You tell me,’ says Kate. ‘But she claims she’s graduated from university.’
‘That’s right,’ nods Lauren.
‘Except she didn’t study there; she worked there.’ Kate offers a cynical laugh. ‘In the cafeteria.’
Relief floods out of Lauren. Kate has clearly got her facts wrong. ‘That’s not Jess,’ she says, happy to set her straight. ‘She got a first-class honours degree.’
‘Is that what she told you?’ asks Kate, with a wry smile.
Caught like a rabbit in headlights, Lauren doesn’t know which way to turn. Her need to believe that Jess has told her the truth is far stronger than having to admit to Kate that she’s been taken for a fool.
‘Why is it so hard for you to take people at face value?’ asks Lauren. ‘To accept that she’s Dad’s daughter?’
‘Because I don’t think she is,’ says Kate.
Lauren rolls her eyes and walks over to her laptop, perched on the end of the sofa. She hits a few buttons and turns the screen towards Kate. There’s no denying that the first match under Lauren’s profile page on the genealogy website is Jessica Linley – Half sister.
‘Happy now?’ asks Lauren. ‘What more proof do you need that Dad wasn’t the man you thought he was?’
‘That doesn’t prove she’s his daughter.’
‘For God’s sake, Kate!’ exclaims Lauren. ‘How many other options are there?’
‘One,’ says Kate, locking eyes with her.
Lauren looks at her, open-mouthed. Is Kate honestly suggesting what Lauren thinks she is?
‘Whilst you’re so quick to judge Dad, assuming he’s the one who’s been unfaithful, has it not occurred to you that Jess might be Mum’s child?’
Lauren shakes her head disbelievingly. ‘You can’t be serious,’ she says, barely audible. ‘Is that how desperate you’ve become to keep Dad’s precious memory preserved? So much so that you’re going to pretend it’s Mum who was at fault?’
‘It’s a fifty-fifty chance, is all I’m saying,’ says Kate petulantly. ‘Why are you so quick to rule it out?’
‘Be-because, that’s preposterous!’ exclaims Lauren, finding her voice. ‘How could she possibly have concealed a pregnancy, a birth, a child . . .?’
‘She may not have shown,’ says Kate, quick to answer, as if she’s thought it all through. ‘She may have had the baby prematurely . . .’
‘But even if she’d managed to keep it from us,’ says Lauren. ‘There’s no way on earth Dad wouldn’t have known about it.’
Kate has clearly thought of that too. ‘Maybe, but if he knew it wasn’t his . . . who knows what arrangement they may have come to?’
Lauren’s eyes widen with bewilderment. ‘To have the baby adopted?’ she asks incredulously. ‘You honestly think they would have gone to those lengths to keep an affair secret?’
‘I think you’d be surprised how far Mum would go to keep this family together,’ says Kate.
‘This is insane,’ says Lauren, scratching her head. ‘You’re insane.’
A key turns in the front door. ‘What are you two up to?’ says Simon, coming into the room with an air of disdain about him.
‘Nothing,’ says Lauren, far too quickly to be innocent.
‘I suppose she’s telling you all about her day out,’ he says.
Kate looks to Lauren expectantly.
‘No,’ says Lauren, hoping that the retort will stop him from saying anything more. She doesn’t need to give Kate any more reason to get on her back right now.
‘Why didn’t you go?’ Simon says to Kate, despite Lauren looking at him with widened eyes. ‘Sounds like it would have been the perfect family day trip.’
‘Where did you go?’ asks Kate.
‘I erm, I saw Jess today,’ mumbles Lauren. She tries to pretend that she doesn’t see Kate’s hackles rise.
‘Oh,’ says Kate, tightly. ‘What for?’
God, she wished Simon hadn’t got her into this. ‘We just went out,’ she says. ‘That’s all.’
‘All the way to Harrogate,’ says Simon.
Lauren can feel Kate’s eyes immediately snap onto her and that panicky feeling returns, sucking the breath out of her.
‘Harrogate?’
‘Mmm,’ is all Lauren can say.
An ominous silence hangs heavily in the air before Simon sniggers and says, ‘Well, this is awkward,’ before falling down heavily on the sofa.
‘So, do you want to tell me what you and Jess were doing in Harrogate?’ asks Kate, her face flushed.
‘We were, erm, just checking a few things out,’ says Lauren, ushering Kate into the kitchen. ‘She had a day off, so we thought it was a good opportunity. She’s had to go into work now, by all accounts something came up, so we weren’t really up there very long at all.’ She’s well aware that she’s waffling, trying to downplay what really went on.
Kate’s gaze is unfaltering. ‘So what did the pair of you discover up there?’ she asks tightly.
Lauren shrugs her shoulders, aware that now is not the time to divulge what Carol had told them. It’s not as if it’s relevant anyway. ‘Nothing much,’ she says.
‘Perhaps if you’d invited me, I could have saved you the trouble,’ says Kate, scathingly. ‘I could have told you that Jess is not who you think she is.’
Lauren grits her teeth, refusing to rise to the bait again.
‘Where is she anyway?’ asks Kate, turning to leave. ‘I’m surprised that you didn’t want to bring her back to have tea with the kids, get them acquainted with their new aunty.’ Her tone is dripping with sarcasm.
‘As I say, she was called away on business,’ says Lauren.
‘What business is that, then?’ asks Kate.
Lauren wonders what difference it makes to Kate.
‘Her boss asked her to go to Birmingham with him,’ says Lauren.
30
Kate
Kate puts a hand out to steady herself on the wall as Lauren’s words reverberate around her head.
There was a part of her that had felt relieved to see the connection between Lauren and Jess in black and white on Lauren’s computer screen. She’d been comforted to know that whatever Jess was up to, Lauren wasn’t a part of it; that they weren’t colluding to bring Kate down. Because in her darker moments, that’s what she feared was happening.
But now, at the mention of Birmingham, Lauren’s sent her straight back there. If she’s aware of the fuse she’s just lit, she doesn’t show it.
‘What’s she gone to Birmingham for?’ croaks Kate.
‘She said she needed to go for work,’ says Lauren, with the merest hint of a smile playing on her lips. ‘But I have a feeling that it was a bit of a ruse on her boss’s part.’
Kate feels dizzy, and an overwhelming heat begins to envelop her. ‘Oh yeah,’ she manages, hoping that it sounds nonchalant, but if Lauren knows her as well as she should, the waver is immediately obvious.
‘Yeah, it sounds to me as if something’s going on,’ she says. ‘She seems pretty excited . . .’
Lauren is still talking, but although Kate can see her lips moving, she can’t hear anything she’s saying – her ears momentarily not working, as if to protect her from the truth.
‘I need to go,’ she says, interrupting Lauren mid-flow. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’
As soon as she’s in her car, hot tears spring to her eyes and her throat constricts as she battles to hold back the deluge she knows is imminent as soon as she acknowledges the facts. The screen on her phone looks blurry as she types ‘Where is the PM’s press conference today?’ into Google, hoping that she’d somehow misheard where Matt had said he was going earlier. Might he be heading to Brighton, Bolton or Burnley perhaps? She knows she’s grasping at straws, but she so doesn’t want him to be in the same place as Jess. A tear escapes as Birmingham fills the search engine results page.
She doesn’t even remember thinking it, so is surprised to find herself driving through the Blackwall Tunnel; the gateway between south-east London and its north-eastern counterpart. It’s also the most direct route to Jess’s place, the address on her CV committed to Kate’s memory.
When she pulls up outside the shoddy-looking parade of shops, she doesn’t even notice the state of disrepair, or the hooded figures hanging around outside the Chinese takeaway. All she can see is number 193, and all she can think about is how she’s going to get inside it. She rings all four bells and waits for what feels like an inordinate amount of time before someone comes down the stairs.
‘Hey,’ says a man with dreadlocked hair and a roll-up between his lips. He holds out a twenty-pound note before quickly pulling it back. ‘No pizza?’
Kate holds up her arms and gives him a regretful look. ‘’Fraid not,’ she says. ‘Visiting Jess in Flat C.’
‘Oh man,’ he groans, before turning around and walking back up the stairs.
‘Jess, it’s me,’ she says, for effect, as she knocks on her flat door. She waits until she hears the one above her closing before lifting the wheel brace from her car boot out of her bag. Wedging the straight end between the door frame and the flimsy lock, she applies pressure until she feels it give, then uses her shoulder to push her way in.
Kate quickly evaluates the apartment, noticing that all four doors leading from the hallway are closed. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she knows she won’t find it behind the first door, which leads her into a windowless bathroom. The second is the living room, and if she had anything to hide, she wouldn’t put it in here. Her stomach is tied up in knots, a tangle of nerves that she usually only experiences when she’s sitting in Dr Williams’ office.
The next room, with clothes in the wardrobe and personal effects on top of a mismatched chest of drawers, is clearly Jess’s bedroom. Kate’s eyes are automatically drawn to the hairbrush and she takes a tissue from her bag to fold around the loose strands, which together with the DNA she’s taken from her parents’ house will determine, once and for all, whose daughter Jess is.
She pulls the drawers open, one by one, and furtively rifles through their contents. Jumpers, tops and underwear are displaced in her efforts to find . . . what? What is it she’s looking for that will give her the answers to the questions that are resounding in her head, such as why Jess has targeted Matt and is clearly out to entrap him in her web of deceit? Why Lauren has been indoctrinated to believe that Jess is their father’s child. Why she, Kate, is the common denominator between the two people that Jess has chosen to prey on.
The last thought takes Kate by surprise; as if she’s only just made the connection. She falls down heavily onto the bed and screams, ‘What the hell is going on?’ banging her fists onto the mattress in frustration.
She takes deep breaths, forcing herself to stay calm and think logically. What if the DNA match has been falsified? Kate already knows it’s possible, even if Lauren is blissfully unaware of Jess’s duplicitous plan. She could easily have obtained Kate’s DNA if she’d wanted to; from a discarded water bottle or half-eaten sandwich. Christ, she might even have broken in and taken something from the flat. Kate shudders at the thought of Jess going through her and Matt’s belongings – the irony somehow lost on her.
But even if Jess had used Kate’s DNA as her own, it would have shown that her and Lauren were sisters, not half sisters. Unless . . . says Kate to herself, unable to bat away the abhorrent possibility that maybe she’s not her father’s daughter either.
‘No!’ she says aloud, refusing to give the thought room to breathe.
Jess must be their half sister, otherwise what’s the box of baby mementoes all about? And why was Rose’s reaction to it so extreme if she had nothing to hide? Kate’s head falls into her hands as she acknowledges the only other possibility; that if Jess isn’t her half sister, then not only are her mother and father exonerated, but the campaign that Jess has been inflicting on Kate’s loved ones is aimed solely at one person. Her.
Kate feels like she might be sick as she wonders why anyone would have such an axe to grind. Were there people in her past who hated her enough to go to such lengths?
She thinks about the stories she’s written and the enemies she may have made along the way, but apart from a few erstwhile PRs who’d lost their jobs for not managing to contain a juicy scoop on their client, there were few people in the entertainment world who would take umbrage to this degree. Even those she’d inadvertently got fired had eventually been lauded; the global superstar that had been pictured snorting cocaine off a naked woman’s breast had enjoyed his biggest album success the following year. All publicity was good publicity, it seemed.
She remembers the undercover sting she did on a group of far-right activists some years back, before she decided that showbusiness was a safer option. But aside from the initial death threat and a talking to by the police, she’d never heard anything more. She feels strangely comforted that the queue to witness her downfall is surprisingly short.
As she gets up from the bed, conspiracy theories abound, bogging Kate down with the what ifs, making her brain feel as if it’s banging against the inside of her skull in her efforts to work it all out. Hot tears of hurt and frustration run down her cheeks as she realizes how futile this all is.
She picks her handbag up from the hall floor, having resigned herself to at least telling Matt who his junior reporter really is. Once he knows that she’s lied about her past, he won’t hesitate to fire her, and that will leave Kate with one less problem to worry about.
As she walks down the hall, she absently turns the door handle to the only room she hasn’t yet been in. When she finds it locked tight, her interest is piqued. Adrenaline courses through her veins as she imagines what might lie beyond it. A grotesque image of her dad, gagged and bound to a chair, immediately flashes into her head – a recollection of another dream she’s recently had. Getting the wheel brace back out of her bag, she jimmies open the door with a renewed sense of purpose, desperate to see what Jess is so keen to keep hidden.
She feels for the light switch and peers around, through half-closed eyes, as if waiting for something to jump out at her. But instead of the dark dungeon-like room she’d expected, it’s oddly serene. A bed adorned with a pretty floral duvet cover and a scented candle stands unused on the bedside. It isn’t until Kate walks into the room that she sees a cot behind the door.
With her heart hammering through her chest, she reaches in to pick up a toy bunny rabbit that’s sat in the corner. Its floppy ears fall forwards and Kate absently runs its soft fur against the skin of her cheeks, her tears making its glass eyes glisten.
She still has the rabbit in her hand as she slowly opens the wardrobe doors, now more scared than ever of what she’s going to find. There, stacked in neat piles, are a dozen or so sleepsuits, perfectly folded muslin squares, an unopened pack of nappies, a breast pump – in fact, everything that a woman with a baby could possibly need. There’s just one problem; Jess isn’t a woman with a baby.
29
Lauren
Lauren’s just put Jude to bed when the doorbell goes, and she knows that at gone 10 p.m., the only person she’s going to answer the door to is Simon, who she assumes has forgotten his key. She does a cursory look out of the front bedroom window and is dismayed to see Kate standing on the pavement below. After the day she’s had, she doesn’t need this right now.
‘Hello,’ she says wearily, as she opens the door.
‘I need to talk to you,’ says Kate, stepping straight into the hallway.
Lauren probably has things she should tell her, but she’s tired.
‘Can we do this tomorrow?’ she says, looking at the time on her phone to emphasize the point.
‘There’s something you need to know about Jess,’ blurts out Kate, seemingly unable to hold it in.
Lauren can’t help but roll her eyes. ‘Seriously, Kate, can’t you give it a rest?’
‘I’ve been checking her out,’ says Kate, almost triumphantly. ‘And she’s not who she says she is.’
‘I don’t think even she knows who she is,’ says Lauren.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Kate goes on. ‘She’s lying to you, me, everyone. Jess Linley isn’t even her real name. She’s nothing but a fraud.’
The words slice through Lauren as if cutting the very strings that are holding her up. She doesn’t want to believe it. She refuses to believe it.
‘I assume you’ve used your usual unethical methods to find this out,’ asks Lauren, hoping to expose a weak link in the information that Kate thinks she’s garnered.
‘Does it matter?’ asks Kate. ‘All you need to know is that Jess is up to something and you shouldn’t trust her as far as you can throw her. She’s playing us.’
‘What is wrong with you?’
‘Me?’ exclaims Kate. ‘You’re the one who wants to believe everything she’s telling you.’
‘Is this the person you’ve become?’ says Lauren. ‘Forever the cynic, not wanting to believe anything anyone tells you.’ She laughs falsely. ‘D’you know what? I used to think your job made you better than me. That working amongst people deemed to be important made you more important by default. But I’m glad I’m me, because all your job has done is make you a mistrusting egotist who doesn’t want to see the good in anyone.’
‘I’m a journalist,’ says Kate scathingly. ‘I seek out the truth, and if you’re threatened by that, then that’s your problem.’
‘Well whatever you think you’ve uncovered, I’m sure there’s a very good reason for it.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Kate laughs bitterly. ‘She’s got plenty good enough reasons. The first being that she’s obtained a job under false pretences.’
Lauren feels a pang in her chest, not only at the revelation, but also because she’d not got around to finding out what exactly Jess did for work. All she knows is that she’s doing a job she loves in Canary Wharf. It shames her that Kate appears to know more than she does. ‘Why would she need to do that?’
‘You tell me,’ says Kate. ‘But she claims she’s graduated from university.’
‘That’s right,’ nods Lauren.
‘Except she didn’t study there; she worked there.’ Kate offers a cynical laugh. ‘In the cafeteria.’
Relief floods out of Lauren. Kate has clearly got her facts wrong. ‘That’s not Jess,’ she says, happy to set her straight. ‘She got a first-class honours degree.’
‘Is that what she told you?’ asks Kate, with a wry smile.
Caught like a rabbit in headlights, Lauren doesn’t know which way to turn. Her need to believe that Jess has told her the truth is far stronger than having to admit to Kate that she’s been taken for a fool.
‘Why is it so hard for you to take people at face value?’ asks Lauren. ‘To accept that she’s Dad’s daughter?’
‘Because I don’t think she is,’ says Kate.
Lauren rolls her eyes and walks over to her laptop, perched on the end of the sofa. She hits a few buttons and turns the screen towards Kate. There’s no denying that the first match under Lauren’s profile page on the genealogy website is Jessica Linley – Half sister.
‘Happy now?’ asks Lauren. ‘What more proof do you need that Dad wasn’t the man you thought he was?’
‘That doesn’t prove she’s his daughter.’
‘For God’s sake, Kate!’ exclaims Lauren. ‘How many other options are there?’
‘One,’ says Kate, locking eyes with her.
Lauren looks at her, open-mouthed. Is Kate honestly suggesting what Lauren thinks she is?
‘Whilst you’re so quick to judge Dad, assuming he’s the one who’s been unfaithful, has it not occurred to you that Jess might be Mum’s child?’
Lauren shakes her head disbelievingly. ‘You can’t be serious,’ she says, barely audible. ‘Is that how desperate you’ve become to keep Dad’s precious memory preserved? So much so that you’re going to pretend it’s Mum who was at fault?’
‘It’s a fifty-fifty chance, is all I’m saying,’ says Kate petulantly. ‘Why are you so quick to rule it out?’
‘Be-because, that’s preposterous!’ exclaims Lauren, finding her voice. ‘How could she possibly have concealed a pregnancy, a birth, a child . . .?’
‘She may not have shown,’ says Kate, quick to answer, as if she’s thought it all through. ‘She may have had the baby prematurely . . .’
‘But even if she’d managed to keep it from us,’ says Lauren. ‘There’s no way on earth Dad wouldn’t have known about it.’
Kate has clearly thought of that too. ‘Maybe, but if he knew it wasn’t his . . . who knows what arrangement they may have come to?’
Lauren’s eyes widen with bewilderment. ‘To have the baby adopted?’ she asks incredulously. ‘You honestly think they would have gone to those lengths to keep an affair secret?’
‘I think you’d be surprised how far Mum would go to keep this family together,’ says Kate.
‘This is insane,’ says Lauren, scratching her head. ‘You’re insane.’
A key turns in the front door. ‘What are you two up to?’ says Simon, coming into the room with an air of disdain about him.
‘Nothing,’ says Lauren, far too quickly to be innocent.
‘I suppose she’s telling you all about her day out,’ he says.
Kate looks to Lauren expectantly.
‘No,’ says Lauren, hoping that the retort will stop him from saying anything more. She doesn’t need to give Kate any more reason to get on her back right now.
‘Why didn’t you go?’ Simon says to Kate, despite Lauren looking at him with widened eyes. ‘Sounds like it would have been the perfect family day trip.’
‘Where did you go?’ asks Kate.
‘I erm, I saw Jess today,’ mumbles Lauren. She tries to pretend that she doesn’t see Kate’s hackles rise.
‘Oh,’ says Kate, tightly. ‘What for?’
God, she wished Simon hadn’t got her into this. ‘We just went out,’ she says. ‘That’s all.’
‘All the way to Harrogate,’ says Simon.
Lauren can feel Kate’s eyes immediately snap onto her and that panicky feeling returns, sucking the breath out of her.
‘Harrogate?’
‘Mmm,’ is all Lauren can say.
An ominous silence hangs heavily in the air before Simon sniggers and says, ‘Well, this is awkward,’ before falling down heavily on the sofa.
‘So, do you want to tell me what you and Jess were doing in Harrogate?’ asks Kate, her face flushed.
‘We were, erm, just checking a few things out,’ says Lauren, ushering Kate into the kitchen. ‘She had a day off, so we thought it was a good opportunity. She’s had to go into work now, by all accounts something came up, so we weren’t really up there very long at all.’ She’s well aware that she’s waffling, trying to downplay what really went on.
Kate’s gaze is unfaltering. ‘So what did the pair of you discover up there?’ she asks tightly.
Lauren shrugs her shoulders, aware that now is not the time to divulge what Carol had told them. It’s not as if it’s relevant anyway. ‘Nothing much,’ she says.
‘Perhaps if you’d invited me, I could have saved you the trouble,’ says Kate, scathingly. ‘I could have told you that Jess is not who you think she is.’
Lauren grits her teeth, refusing to rise to the bait again.
‘Where is she anyway?’ asks Kate, turning to leave. ‘I’m surprised that you didn’t want to bring her back to have tea with the kids, get them acquainted with their new aunty.’ Her tone is dripping with sarcasm.
‘As I say, she was called away on business,’ says Lauren.
‘What business is that, then?’ asks Kate.
Lauren wonders what difference it makes to Kate.
‘Her boss asked her to go to Birmingham with him,’ says Lauren.
30
Kate
Kate puts a hand out to steady herself on the wall as Lauren’s words reverberate around her head.
There was a part of her that had felt relieved to see the connection between Lauren and Jess in black and white on Lauren’s computer screen. She’d been comforted to know that whatever Jess was up to, Lauren wasn’t a part of it; that they weren’t colluding to bring Kate down. Because in her darker moments, that’s what she feared was happening.
But now, at the mention of Birmingham, Lauren’s sent her straight back there. If she’s aware of the fuse she’s just lit, she doesn’t show it.
‘What’s she gone to Birmingham for?’ croaks Kate.
‘She said she needed to go for work,’ says Lauren, with the merest hint of a smile playing on her lips. ‘But I have a feeling that it was a bit of a ruse on her boss’s part.’
Kate feels dizzy, and an overwhelming heat begins to envelop her. ‘Oh yeah,’ she manages, hoping that it sounds nonchalant, but if Lauren knows her as well as she should, the waver is immediately obvious.
‘Yeah, it sounds to me as if something’s going on,’ she says. ‘She seems pretty excited . . .’
Lauren is still talking, but although Kate can see her lips moving, she can’t hear anything she’s saying – her ears momentarily not working, as if to protect her from the truth.
‘I need to go,’ she says, interrupting Lauren mid-flow. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’
As soon as she’s in her car, hot tears spring to her eyes and her throat constricts as she battles to hold back the deluge she knows is imminent as soon as she acknowledges the facts. The screen on her phone looks blurry as she types ‘Where is the PM’s press conference today?’ into Google, hoping that she’d somehow misheard where Matt had said he was going earlier. Might he be heading to Brighton, Bolton or Burnley perhaps? She knows she’s grasping at straws, but she so doesn’t want him to be in the same place as Jess. A tear escapes as Birmingham fills the search engine results page.
She doesn’t even remember thinking it, so is surprised to find herself driving through the Blackwall Tunnel; the gateway between south-east London and its north-eastern counterpart. It’s also the most direct route to Jess’s place, the address on her CV committed to Kate’s memory.
When she pulls up outside the shoddy-looking parade of shops, she doesn’t even notice the state of disrepair, or the hooded figures hanging around outside the Chinese takeaway. All she can see is number 193, and all she can think about is how she’s going to get inside it. She rings all four bells and waits for what feels like an inordinate amount of time before someone comes down the stairs.
‘Hey,’ says a man with dreadlocked hair and a roll-up between his lips. He holds out a twenty-pound note before quickly pulling it back. ‘No pizza?’
Kate holds up her arms and gives him a regretful look. ‘’Fraid not,’ she says. ‘Visiting Jess in Flat C.’
‘Oh man,’ he groans, before turning around and walking back up the stairs.
‘Jess, it’s me,’ she says, for effect, as she knocks on her flat door. She waits until she hears the one above her closing before lifting the wheel brace from her car boot out of her bag. Wedging the straight end between the door frame and the flimsy lock, she applies pressure until she feels it give, then uses her shoulder to push her way in.
Kate quickly evaluates the apartment, noticing that all four doors leading from the hallway are closed. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she knows she won’t find it behind the first door, which leads her into a windowless bathroom. The second is the living room, and if she had anything to hide, she wouldn’t put it in here. Her stomach is tied up in knots, a tangle of nerves that she usually only experiences when she’s sitting in Dr Williams’ office.
The next room, with clothes in the wardrobe and personal effects on top of a mismatched chest of drawers, is clearly Jess’s bedroom. Kate’s eyes are automatically drawn to the hairbrush and she takes a tissue from her bag to fold around the loose strands, which together with the DNA she’s taken from her parents’ house will determine, once and for all, whose daughter Jess is.
She pulls the drawers open, one by one, and furtively rifles through their contents. Jumpers, tops and underwear are displaced in her efforts to find . . . what? What is it she’s looking for that will give her the answers to the questions that are resounding in her head, such as why Jess has targeted Matt and is clearly out to entrap him in her web of deceit? Why Lauren has been indoctrinated to believe that Jess is their father’s child. Why she, Kate, is the common denominator between the two people that Jess has chosen to prey on.
The last thought takes Kate by surprise; as if she’s only just made the connection. She falls down heavily onto the bed and screams, ‘What the hell is going on?’ banging her fists onto the mattress in frustration.
She takes deep breaths, forcing herself to stay calm and think logically. What if the DNA match has been falsified? Kate already knows it’s possible, even if Lauren is blissfully unaware of Jess’s duplicitous plan. She could easily have obtained Kate’s DNA if she’d wanted to; from a discarded water bottle or half-eaten sandwich. Christ, she might even have broken in and taken something from the flat. Kate shudders at the thought of Jess going through her and Matt’s belongings – the irony somehow lost on her.
But even if Jess had used Kate’s DNA as her own, it would have shown that her and Lauren were sisters, not half sisters. Unless . . . says Kate to herself, unable to bat away the abhorrent possibility that maybe she’s not her father’s daughter either.
‘No!’ she says aloud, refusing to give the thought room to breathe.
Jess must be their half sister, otherwise what’s the box of baby mementoes all about? And why was Rose’s reaction to it so extreme if she had nothing to hide? Kate’s head falls into her hands as she acknowledges the only other possibility; that if Jess isn’t her half sister, then not only are her mother and father exonerated, but the campaign that Jess has been inflicting on Kate’s loved ones is aimed solely at one person. Her.
Kate feels like she might be sick as she wonders why anyone would have such an axe to grind. Were there people in her past who hated her enough to go to such lengths?
She thinks about the stories she’s written and the enemies she may have made along the way, but apart from a few erstwhile PRs who’d lost their jobs for not managing to contain a juicy scoop on their client, there were few people in the entertainment world who would take umbrage to this degree. Even those she’d inadvertently got fired had eventually been lauded; the global superstar that had been pictured snorting cocaine off a naked woman’s breast had enjoyed his biggest album success the following year. All publicity was good publicity, it seemed.
She remembers the undercover sting she did on a group of far-right activists some years back, before she decided that showbusiness was a safer option. But aside from the initial death threat and a talking to by the police, she’d never heard anything more. She feels strangely comforted that the queue to witness her downfall is surprisingly short.
As she gets up from the bed, conspiracy theories abound, bogging Kate down with the what ifs, making her brain feel as if it’s banging against the inside of her skull in her efforts to work it all out. Hot tears of hurt and frustration run down her cheeks as she realizes how futile this all is.
She picks her handbag up from the hall floor, having resigned herself to at least telling Matt who his junior reporter really is. Once he knows that she’s lied about her past, he won’t hesitate to fire her, and that will leave Kate with one less problem to worry about.
As she walks down the hall, she absently turns the door handle to the only room she hasn’t yet been in. When she finds it locked tight, her interest is piqued. Adrenaline courses through her veins as she imagines what might lie beyond it. A grotesque image of her dad, gagged and bound to a chair, immediately flashes into her head – a recollection of another dream she’s recently had. Getting the wheel brace back out of her bag, she jimmies open the door with a renewed sense of purpose, desperate to see what Jess is so keen to keep hidden.
She feels for the light switch and peers around, through half-closed eyes, as if waiting for something to jump out at her. But instead of the dark dungeon-like room she’d expected, it’s oddly serene. A bed adorned with a pretty floral duvet cover and a scented candle stands unused on the bedside. It isn’t until Kate walks into the room that she sees a cot behind the door.
With her heart hammering through her chest, she reaches in to pick up a toy bunny rabbit that’s sat in the corner. Its floppy ears fall forwards and Kate absently runs its soft fur against the skin of her cheeks, her tears making its glass eyes glisten.
She still has the rabbit in her hand as she slowly opens the wardrobe doors, now more scared than ever of what she’s going to find. There, stacked in neat piles, are a dozen or so sleepsuits, perfectly folded muslin squares, an unopened pack of nappies, a breast pump – in fact, everything that a woman with a baby could possibly need. There’s just one problem; Jess isn’t a woman with a baby.
