The Half Sister, page 2
She’d lost count of how many cups of tea she’d made him on a Saturday morning when Matt was invariably on a weekend shift, and Harry had taken it upon himself to fix a leak in the shower in his DIY-shy son-in-law’s absence. Kate had always managed to find a creaky door for him to oil, or a shelf to put up, despite being more than capable of doing it herself; the pair of them as good as each other for finding excuses to spend time together.
‘I thought I’d get out from under your mother’s feet for a bit longer,’ he used to say when he’d appear on her doorstep on his way back from watching Chelsea play at Stamford Bridge. By then Matt would be home, and they’d all sit and watch the late kick-off on the telly together.
‘Do you think you two will have kids one day?’ her dad had asked once, ever so casually. She and Matt had looked at each other as they weighed up whether to share their desperate struggle. If any member of the family were to know about it, it would only have been him, but then Kate thought of the sadness that would cloud his features as he contemplated his daughter’s childless future. She’d discreetly shaken her head at Matt and said instead, ‘We’d love them when the time’s right.’
‘I’m going to make sure that whenever it happens and whatever it is, it’s going to be a Blues fan,’ he’d said, smiling. ‘It’ll be chanting “blue is the colour, football is the game” before it can say “dada”.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Matt, a lifelong Arsenal fan, had said, laughing. ‘I’m all right with its first words not being daddy, but if you think for one second that its favourite colour is going to be blue instead of red, then I think we might have to put a restraining order in place.’
They’d all laughed together as Kate dared to imagine her father holding the hand of his grandchild, the pair of them wrapped in blue and white scarves as they made their way to the stands. The thought of it had made her want to cry even more than the prospect of it never happening. Now, though, the impossibility of both scenarios threatens to engulf her.
Kate takes her plate into the kitchen, unable to stomach her food or the conversation any longer. She stands facing the units with her hands spread wide on the worktop. Just count to ten, she can hear Matt’s voice saying.
It would be a hell of a lot easier if you were here, she replies silently.
She pictures him in the high-rise tower of the Echo’s offices, pacing up and down, raking a manic hand through his hair as he is forced to go to the wire on tomorrow’s front-page exclusive. Will the government insider get the names to him on time? Will the prostitute want more money, now that Real Madrid are rumoured to be interested in signing her one-night stand?
Despite both of them being in the business for over ten years, the pressure never lessens, and the reliable sources were proving to be ever more unreliable. That’s why Kate had opted to stay where she was, on the Gazette’s showbusiness desk, instead of rising up through the ranks where the stakes and stress increased tenfold. She chose not to acknowledge that the bigger reason for not putting herself forward for promotion was that she’d not expected to be there for that much longer. But that was four years ago, when she’d thought that she’d have to hand over coverage of the next Oscars because she’d be too heavily pregnant to fly to Los Angeles. She honestly hadn’t expected to be reporting on the fashion faux pas of Hollywood actresses ever again, but she’d been there for the last three years in a row, without even the merest hint of a bump.
‘Are you okay, darling?’ asks Rose, coming into the kitchen to fetch more gravy. ‘You look a little pale.’
For the briefest of moments, Kate considers telling her why she might look peaky, why her temper seems to be on a short fuse and why everything everybody’s saying seems to be rubbing her up the wrong way. But no, she and Matt had decided they’d do it together, when there was something to say, and anyway, Rose has already disappeared through the side door and into the garage.
‘I don’t like vegetables,’ says Noah, spitting out a mouthful of chewed-up swede as Kate walks back into the dining room.
‘Come on darling, just a few more for mummy,’ says Lauren patiently.
‘No! Vegetables are yucky.’
Lauren looks at Kate, as if to say, Aren’t you glad you’re not me?
You’re exactly who I want to be, Kate says to herself.
Over the years, she’s fallen into the trap of gauging everyone’s good fortune and sense of self-worth on whether they have children or not; using their ability to have a baby as some kind of currency that makes them rich beyond their wildest dreams. So in her eyes, Lauren is a multimillionaire. Though when she looks a little closer, she notices the finer details of what her sister’s life might really be like. For example, the fact that her husband has almost cleared his plate whilst she is yet to start her dinner, as she’s too busy cutting up carrots for eighteen-month-old Emmy, chasing the peas that Noah is flicking onto the table, and manoeuvring baby Jude’s hungry mouth onto her breast.
The juxtaposition of the scene and her selfish thoughts jolt Kate into action.
‘Here,’ she says, moving around the table to stand behind Emmy’s highchair. ‘Let me do that.’
Lauren gratefully gives her sister a child’s plastic knife and fork whilst throwing a sideways glance at her oblivious husband.
‘Thanks,’ says Lauren, as Kate cuts up Emmy’s vegetables before kneeling to retrieve the errant peas.
It somehow feels easier to be under the table than sat around it. A place to hide from all the words that are said and unsaid. Kate can hear them forcing a conversation, changing the subject to one that isn’t deemed to be in the least bit controversial, so that nobody gets on their high horse and threatens the equilibrium again.
She’s still on the floor when the doorbell rings, and Rose huffs before putting her knife and fork down. ‘Who can that be on a Sunday afternoon? Simon, be a love and go and get that, will you?’
Kate watches as Simon walks out of the room, and waits to hear his voice at the door. The conversation is muffled and she strains to hear, relishing his discomfort as he no doubt listens to a Witness regaling him about the power of Jehovah, or a landscaper who just happens to have finished a garden down the road and has a few pergolas and statues left over.
Emmy is hitting Kate on the head with her plastic bowl and she waits expectantly for more peas to rain down on her.
‘Oi, you little rascal,’ she laughs, grabbing hold of Emmy’s bare foot. Just feeling her soft skin in the palm of her hand makes Kate’s chest tighten and she swallows the tears that are prickling the back of her throat.
‘It’s someone looking for Harry,’ says Simon, as he walks back into the dining room with a young blonde woman behind him.
‘What?’ asks Rose abruptly, looking from the woman to Simon and back again.
Kate is still on her knees, surveying the scene across the top of the table.
‘Yeah, it’s actually Harry I’m after,’ says the woman. ‘Harry Alexander. Is he around?’
Kate feels her blood run cold as her brain struggles to comprehend what this woman might want. But whichever way she looks at it, asking for a man almost a year after his death can’t be a good thing.
‘Sorry, what is it we can help you with?’ asks Kate, rising to her full height.
The woman looks at her feet as they shuffle from side to side. ‘It’s probably best if I speak to Harry first,’ she says.
‘Well, he’s not here,’ says Kate tightly, her chest feeling like a coiled spring. ‘What is it you want with him?’
‘Are you Lauren?’
Kate feels her mum shift beside her, but Lauren, she notices, is stock still. Even her swaying to comfort the baby has stopped.
‘Sorry, who are you?’ asks Kate, ignoring the question.
‘I’m Jess,’ says the woman, before clearing her throat.
‘And what do you want with Harry?’ asks Rose shakily.
Jess eyes her warily. ‘I need to talk to him. It’s really important.’
Kate looks to Rose. ‘I’ll let him know you came by,’ she says, as her mother and sister’s heads turn in her direction. ‘What should I say it’s about?’ she goes on, ignoring their perplexed stares.
The woman looks down at the floor again, as if summoning the courage she needs to say what she’s about to say.
‘I’m his daughter,’ she says eventually. ‘Tell him his daughter came to see him.’
3
Kate
‘What?’ gasps Kate, as the room spins around her. She looks to her mother, who is standing open-mouthed, as if frozen in time. ‘But . . . but that’s not possible,’ she stutters, her voice sounding as if somebody has a hand around her throat.
‘I think you’d better leave,’ are the first words that Rose says. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you’ve no business coming here.’
‘My name’s Jess and I just want to see my father – that’s all.’
‘Well, he’s not here,’ says Kate, feeling ever more present. ‘You’ve come to the wrong place. You’ve got the wrong man.’
‘I’m sorry – I just wanted to—’ begins Jess.
‘You need to go – now!’ barks Rose, in a tone that Kate hasn’t heard before.
‘Can we not at least talk about it?’
‘There’s nothing to say,’ hisses Rose. ‘As my daughter says, you’ve come to the wrong place.’
Jess reaches into the handbag on her shoulder, pulls out a crumpled piece of paper and reads it. ‘It’s Rose, isn’t it?’ she says, extending her hand, but Rose doesn’t even flinch.
‘And you must be Kate, or are you Lauren?’ She attempts a smile.
Kate stands firm, her jaw set, staring at the woman who has just thrown a grenade into her world.
‘Look, I can see this is a huge shock to you all,’ says Jess. ‘And I’m sorry – I had no idea you didn’t know. Otherwise I would never have . . .’
Rose is beginning to shake, and Lauren sidles up beside her and puts a firm arm around her back.
‘You need to leave,’ says Kate, her voice belying the panic that is raging within her.
‘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.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ says Lauren.
‘It means that this would suit you, wouldn’t it?’ Kate glares at Lauren. ‘You’d love nothing more than to have Dad’s memory tarnished.’
‘Why would I want that?’ asks Lauren, fixing her sister with a cold hard stare.
‘Because then you’d feel justified for treating him with such contempt for all these years.’
‘Girls, girls, please,’ says Rose, who’s still visibly shaking and wringing her hands in her lap. ‘None of this is helping.’
‘So, what are we going to do?’ asks Lauren.
‘Nothing,’ says Kate.
‘Don’t you think she deserves to be heard?’ asks Lauren incredulously. ‘You can’t just dismiss what she said and ignore her.’
‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do,’ says Rose icily as she stares at her daughters.
4
Lauren
‘Well, what d’ya know?’ Simon smirks, as soon as Lauren has strapped all the children into the back seat of the car and gets into the front. She exhales, letting out the breath she feels she’s been holding in for an eternity. She doesn’t want to talk about it, but she doubts her husband will give her the choice. ‘Do you think there’s something to it?’ he asks.
Lauren turns to look out the window, watching the pavement fall away as Simon pulls off. Jess’s sudden appearance is hard enough for her to get her head around. She hasn’t got the energy to face an interrogation from her husband.
‘Who knows?’ she says quietly.
‘Who would have thought it?’ Simon says, chuckling to himself. ‘The man who spent his life dealing with everyone else’s infidelities was up to no good himself.’
‘It might not be all that it seems,’ she says. ‘We shouldn’t jump to conclusions until we know the facts.’
Simon snorts, and she knows he’s about to do exactly that. He’ll enjoy flying in the face of controversy, especially if it will give him a ringside seat.
‘All those times he spoke to me like I was a piece of dirt on the bottom of his shoe. All those times he tried to make me feel as if you were too good for me . . .’
Lauren bites down on her lip, to stop herself from saying, I am.
‘And all the while he was up there, in his ivory tower, he had a secret lovechild.’
Lauren takes a deep breath. It’s all very well having her own thoughts and feelings about her nearest and dearest, but she can’t bear to hear Simon saying them out loud. She’d never dream of airing her opinions on his own dysfunctional family, so she doesn’t expect, or want, to hear his views on hers. But she can sense he’s looking for a row, and she just doesn’t have the strength for another evening of arguments and sleeping on the sofa.
