The Half Sister, page 23
‘I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive you for what you did,’ he says, with his hands on his hips. ‘I hated you so much.’
Lauren silently pushes her chair away from the table and goes to join him, putting a hand on his back.
‘Yet here I am, seemingly still in love with you,’ he goes on.
‘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.
Dear Harry,
I know what I’ve done is wrong, but you left me with no choice. What else was I supposed to do? We can get through this – I know we can – it’s you and me together, with the girls. We’re a family and one day, in the not too distant future, I ask that you find it in your heart to forgive me, as I will forgive you.
All my love, as always,
Rose x
It creates more questions than answers, leaving Kate desperate to know what they needed to forgive each other for.
It didn’t look like it was going to be quite the evening she and Matt had hoped for, but as guilty as she feels, there’s even more important issues she needs to deal with right now.
I’m going to have to take a rain check on tonight, she texts, as she heads to the station. Something’s come up.
She jumps on the tube just as the doors are closing and finds herself squashed between two rotund men. Her only air channel is via their armpits, precisely at her nose height. She baulks at the odour emanating from them and is attempting to turn herself around when she feels a pull on her skirt. She can make out an anonymous hand appearing through the bodies, as if looking to be slapped down. But tracing it to its owner is like unravelling an eight-player game of Twister.
‘’Ere love, d’you wanna seat?’ comes a gruff voice through the limbs. The hand is still tugging on her skirt, desperately trying to attract her attention. ‘Move outta the way and let the lady sit down.’
She doesn’t know if she’s eternally thankful or mildly perturbed that it’s being directed at her. Still, she smiles gratefully at the man in a baseball cap, who gets up from his coveted seat and brings the roll-up from behind his ear into his mouth. Kate can feel the ripple of surprise as the juxtaposition of his manner and his deed seeps into people’s consciousness.
You should never judge a book by its cover, her father used to say, and it was a rule she tried to live by, revelling in the pleasant surprises that it often bestowed. But what happens when it’s the other way around? What happens when you’re taken in by a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Kate rings the doorbell of her parents’ home, not knowing if she wants her mother to be there or not. There’s no answer, so she lets herself in and calls out, just in case. There’s a stillness to the house that is only achieved when it’s empty.
She takes the stairs two at a time, taking care to step over the creaky floorboard on the landing – it’s a force of habit. She goes into her parents’ bedroom and heads straight for the wardrobe door, sliding it silently across. She moves the bag that’s standing in front of where she’d found the hat box. She knows, before she can even see, that the box is no longer there.
She frantically searches for it at the back of her mother’s shoe racks and delves behind her stacked jumpers. It’s got to be here somewhere.
Having exhausted the cupboards, Kate pulls on the handles of the dressing table, knowing that it’s nigh on impossible for the box to fit into its shallow drawers. She searches under the bed, before heading to the airing cupboard on the landing, wondering why her mother would find it necessary to move it. She reaches behind the neat piles of towels and runs her hands all around the pipework of the dark cupboard, burning her fingers on the hot water inlet.
‘Shit,’ she says aloud, though she’s not sure whether it’s because it hurt or because she’s frustrated.
The pole hook for the loft hatch stands in the corner and she snatches a glance at the square door in the ceiling of the landing. Could it be? Would her mother have gone to the trouble of putting the box up there? And if so, why?
As she slides the ladder down, she remembers how her father had told her many a bedtime story about the loft monster, who everyone feared, yet when they were asleep, he’d come down in the dead of night to make their family’s life easier. Kate would give her dad a sceptical sideways glance until the night she’d gone to bed without doing her history project.
‘It’s too late to do it now,’ her father had said as he’d tucked his distraught daughter in.
‘But I’m going to get a respect task,’ Kate had cried, unable to understand how she could have forgotten it. ‘My name will go in the report book.’
‘Well, maybe it’ll teach you to be more organized in future,’ he’d said.
The next morning, she’d gone down to breakfast to find the most intricate castle, made entirely out of recycled cardboard, sitting on the kitchen table. Foil-covered toilet roll holders had crenels cut into them for turrets and a string-operated drawbridge had been created out of a cereal box.
‘Where did this come from?’ Kate had asked, with tears of happiness rolling down her cheeks.
Her father had shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. ‘I have no idea,’ he’d said, flicking his broadsheet newspaper out in front of him. ‘Must have been the loft monster.’
Kate smiles as she climbs the ladder, amazed that she’d fallen for it for so long, but it seems that if it came from her father’s mouth, she believed it. The irony weighs heavy on her shoulders.
The rudimentary light casts an ominous glow over the eaves, as Kate carefully makes her way across the beams, bending down low to get into the far corner, where everything seems to be stored. Her back aches as she flashes her phone light into the dark, the need to stand up to full height overwhelming. She can see the hat box sitting on top of a larger box and she edges her way towards it.
‘Hello?’ comes her mother’s voice from somewhere beyond the hatch.
Kate’s head bangs on a beam in panic.
‘Hello, who’s there?’
Kate considers not answering, but contemplating her position, she doubts a stand-off would work in her favour.
‘Mum, it’s me,’ she calls out.
‘Kate? What on earth are you doing up there?’
She needs to think quickly. She looks at the box under her arm and a carrier bag of tinsel on the floor, wondering whether emptying the letters into a bag would be less conspicuous.
‘I’m . . . erm, I’m just looking for the baby clothes you kept of ours,’ she says. ‘I won’t be long, go back downstairs and put the kettle on.’
‘I’ll do no such thing,’ says Rose. ‘What are you thinking, going up there in your condition?’
Damn. ‘I’m pregnant, not disabled,’ says Kate.
‘Well you shouldn’t be doing it, especially if you’re alone in the house. Anything could happen. Come on down now. I’ll hold the ladder for you.’
Kate wonders what would be worse. Taking the letters and incurring the wrath of her mother if she discovers what she’s up to, or not taking them and never really knowing the truths they may hold. She feels she’s in too far not to at least take the chance.
‘I’ve got you,’ says Rose, as Kate backs herself down the ladder. ‘Pass me the bag.’
Kate holds on to it unwaveringly.
‘Give me the bag,’ repeats Rose. ‘You’ll be able to hold on better.’
There’s a tussle as they fight for the innocuous-looking carrier, and it knocks Kate off balance. There’re only a few more steps until ground level, but it could still cause some serious damage if she falls. She resignedly gives the bag up, but as Rose pulls it towards her, the letters spill out and fall onto the carpet. The two women look at each other, both seemingly too shocked to speak.
‘Wh-what’s going on?’ says Rose, bending down to pick them up. ‘What are you doing with these?’
Kate looks at the floor, her cheeks red with shame. ‘I just . . . I just . . .’
‘You just what?’ says Rose acerbically.
‘I just wanted to . . .’
Rose puts a hand to her head. ‘What are you looking for, Kate? What are you hoping to find?’
‘I just want to know the truth.’
‘And what are you going to do with it once you have it? When it’s not what you want to hear?’
‘Why did Dad need to forgive you?’ asks Kate, taking the carefully folded letter out of her pocket.
‘You had no right,’ says Rose, reaching out to grab it.
Kate holds it out of her reach.
‘Give it to me,’ says Rose. ‘It’s private.’
‘What did Dad need to forgive you for?’ Kate asks again.
‘You need to stop this now, for all our sakes,’ says Rose.
‘Jess is your child, Mum. I know that much. But what I don’t know is why you gave her up.’
Rose takes a sharp breath and holds a hand to her chest. ‘You need to leave this alone now, Kate.’
‘I won’t stop until I know the truth,’ says Kate.
‘Not even if it destroys this family?’ says Rose, staring intently at her daughter. ‘Not even if it destroys Lauren’s family?’
Kate looks at her, taken aback. Of all the people in this sorry state of affairs, her sister is the one least affected.
‘Lauren?’ asks Kate wearily. ‘What’s she got to do with any of this?’
Rose looks away, as if doing so will make it easier not to say anything.
‘What has Lauren got to do with it?’ Kate asks again, her voice rising.
Rose fixes her with a stare. ‘I wasn’t the one who was pregnant. She was.’
36
Lauren
‘Do you feel guilty?’ Justin asks, caressing Lauren’s hair as she lies on his chest.
It had felt as if the twenty-two years that stood between them last being together and now had evaporated into thin air. It was as if she was sixteen again, with the same hopes and aspirations of an unknown life before her. She’d lost herself in the idea that they could run away together, live somewhere on a remote island, where no one could find them. His question brings her back to earth with a bump.
‘Guilty? No. Scared? Yes,’ she says truthfully.
‘Scared?’ asks Justin, tipping her chin up to face him. ‘Of what?’
‘Of what I’ve done and what it means.’
‘What does it mean?’ he asks.
She props herself up on her elbow, exposing her breast, and hurriedly pulls at the sheet to cover herself up. Justin gently takes it away again.
‘It means that I’m an unfaithful wife and a selfish mother. It means that I’m no better than the husband I’ve grown to hate.’
She bats away the threat of tears. She will not play the victim. This was her decision, and she needs to take ownership of it.
‘Has he cheated on you?’ asks Justin, tracing his finger down the side of her face.
‘I don’t know,’ she says honestly. ‘But if he has, that’s not why I hate him.’
‘Does he treat you badly?’
She nods. ‘He’s not happy and he takes it out on me.’
‘Physically?’
‘Sometimes, but the emotional abuse is just as hard to take. But I won’t let him break me because I have the children to think about – they’re my world.’
‘Would you leave him?’ asks Justin earnestly.
She falls back onto the pillow and sighs. ‘If I was brave enough, but it would break the kids’ hearts and I don’t think I could ever do that to them.’
‘I thought that staying with my wife until my youngest left high school was the best thing to do,’ says Justin. ‘But in reality, it just prolonged the agony for all of us. The boys have both since told me that they wished we’d called it a day well before we did, to spare them all the arguments and uncomfortable silences.’
‘They sound like sensible kids,’ says Lauren.
‘They are,’ smiles Justin. ‘I’m very lucky.’
Lauren sits up and swings her legs onto the floor. ‘I should go. I need to get home before Simon does.’
Justin trails a finger down her spine, making her whole body tingle. ‘Where does he think you are?’
‘He doesn’t know I’ve gone anywhere. He’s working in town tonight on a shop fit and I’m hoping that he’ll be none the wiser when he comes in.’
‘Maybe he’s not where he says he is either,’ says Justin with raised eyebrows.
Lauren quickly steps into her jumpsuit, not wanting Justin to see any more of her than he has already.
‘Do you not think I’ve seen it all?’ he asks, as if reading her mind.
