The Half Sister, page 4
Jess bites down on her lip and Lauren immediately feels remorseful. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘I know what you meant,’ says Jess tearfully. ‘I just thought it might have been the moment that he told the truth. That he might have redeemed himself and confessed the secret he’s been hiding for twenty-two years.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Lauren. ‘It was very quick, and he never regained consciousness. If it’s any consolation, none of us got to say goodbye.’
Jess sniffs and puts her head in her hands.
‘You look like me,’ blurts out Lauren. She’d not meant to say it out loud.
‘I know,’ says Jess, looking up, with the tiniest hint of a smile.
‘Did you ever meet him? Do you remember anything about him?’ asks Lauren.
Jess stands up and walks to the front window. The light is fading and the street lamp outside the house is burning with a low orange light.
‘No.’
Selfish relief rushes out of Lauren’s body as her overactive imagination is silenced. She was worried that Jess would have memories that she didn’t want to hear. She couldn’t bear to think about her father bouncing her up and down on his knee, or taking her to the zoo with another woman.
‘I can’t believe he’s gone,’ says Jess, as another tear falls onto her cheek. ‘I had so many questions to ask him. So many things I wanted to say.’
Lauren forces herself to stay where she is, even though every natural fibre in her body makes her want to reach out to the broken young girl in front of her.
‘Could your mother not help you?’ asks Lauren. ‘Might she be able to fill in some of the gaps?’
Jess pulls herself up, taking a deep breath. ‘She might, if I knew who she was. I was given up for adoption when I was a baby.’
A heaviness weighs down on Lauren’s chest at the thought of what this young woman has been through. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.
‘Don’t be,’ says Jess, with a hollow laugh. ‘It was for the best. For whatever reason, my birth parents obviously didn’t feel they could care for me in the same way that someone else could. And I’m truly grateful to them for that. I’ve had a good life, probably better than they could ever possibly have given me. My adoptive parents were amazing. I couldn’t have asked for a better start in life. They’ve given me the best of everything.’
Lauren smiles, consoled by the image of a baby being rocked in the arms of parents who really loved and wanted her. A couple who had fought long and hard, with a courage and determination that most birth parents didn’t need to possess, because everything they’d wanted had come naturally to them. People like her father, who’d had a baby with reckless abandon, but who was too cowardly to take responsibility for it.
Shame threatens to overwhelm her as she contemplates how he could have let his own flesh and blood go through the trauma of an adoption, just because he wasn’t man enough to tell his wife what was going on. Who knows what might have happened if he had? Perhaps the three girls could have grown up as sisters, rather than endure the shock of finding each other twenty-two years later.
‘I’m so pleased to hear that,’ says Lauren eventually.
‘If only I’d found him earlier,’ says Jess, blowing her nose into a tissue. ‘I had so many things to ask him. Now I’ll never get the chance.’
‘You can ask me,’ says Lauren, softening to Jess’s plight. ‘I might not have all the answers, but I can certainly try and build you a better picture of who he was.’ Though even as she’s saying it, she wonders how well she really knew her father after all. Her childhood memories of him jar noisily against those from her adult years.
Lauren remembers the night a woman came to the door, crying hysterically and demanding to see him. Her mother had done all that she could to placate her, even offering to make her a cup of tea, but she wouldn’t believe that Harry wasn’t home. ‘I must speak to him,’ she’d shouted. ‘I keep calling, but he’s refusing to talk to me.’ In Rose’s infinite wisdom, or perhaps naivety, she’d tried to assure the woman that he was very busy at work and had hundreds of distressed spouses desperately in need of his time and expertise, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.
‘She’s still there,’ Lauren had called out to her mum, whilst looking onto the street below from behind the net curtains in her bedroom.
‘Come away from the window,’ Rose had remonstrated. ‘Your dad will deal with it when he comes in.’
Had Harry told Rose about this neurotic client of his? Warned her even, that she might show up at their home, because that’s the kind of woman she was? Had they laughed about it together, as he’d regaled Rose with the juicy stories of his day? Or was his wife sitting downstairs, alone with her thoughts, and wondering if this was more than a manic plaintiff in a divorce case?
The memory throws Lauren back out with a jolt and she’s almost surprised to find Jess still sitting in front of her. An overwhelming sense of guilt consumes her as she imagines how differently this could have all played out.
‘Do you think he even knew I existed?’ asks Jess, looking at Lauren square-on.
Lauren’s stomach turns as her brain rapidly takes her back, offering her distorted flickering images and barely audible soundbites of a time that she’d tried so hard to forget. There are raised voices and a palpable sense of disappointment and betrayal, though whether they’re coming from Harry, Rose or her imagination isn’t clear.
‘Yes, I think he knew you existed,’ Lauren says carefully.
‘And you?’ Jess presses. ‘Have you always known I was out there?’
Tears prick Lauren’s eyes. ‘Yes,’ she says, swallowing the lump in her throat. ‘I’ve just been waiting for you to show up.’
6
Kate
‘Wow!’ Matt exhales the next morning, as he sips his coffee whilst leaning against the kitchen worktop. ‘So, do you think there’s anything in it?’
Kate looks at him as if he’s crazy and forces a laugh. ‘I don’t think so, do you?’
‘So, you don’t think your dad . . .’
She switches the food blender on full power, drowning out his absurd words. There’s no part of her that wants to drink the celery, kale and spinach smoothie that’s being spun around the glass jug. But if it stops Matt from going there, then she’ll gladly down three pints of it.
As much as Kate had tried to stop thinking about the woman who called herself Jess, her face seems to be indelibly printed on the inside of her eyelids. As soon as she’d closed her eyes last night, there she was, goading her.
She’s hit by the sudden recollection of her dream, which until that very moment had buried itself within her subconscious. How do dreams do that? How does an inane thought or action the next day recall such a vivid collection of images, so real and lifelike that it feels as if you’ve been thrown straight back into them?
Kate can see Jess’s pinched face in all its clarity, mocking her from afar, as she taps on her watch – a ticking timebomb. They’re at a party, it’s her father’s sixtieth, though he’d died at fifty-nine, and she can see him dancing, surrounded by his family and work colleagues, having the time of his life. Kate had wanted to freeze-frame that moment, because she knew that she was about to stand on the stage and deliver the truth about the much-loved man, stunning the party into silence.
She kept looking at Jess as she made her way to the microphone, silently begging her not to make her do this. But Jess just tapped at her watch again and smiled, leaving Kate in no doubt that if she didn’t do it, Jess would.
‘Ahem,’ she said over the loudspeaker, into a room that suddenly resembled London’s O2 arena. ‘Excuse me.’
The music ground to a halt and the lights went up, illuminating every inch of the vast space. Kate looked down at her mum and dad, who smiled up at her, their arms wrapped around one another. She cleared her throat and tried to speak, but couldn’t, and stumbled towards the edge of the stage, desperate to reach her parents before they realized what was happening. She felt herself fall and the next thing she remembers is being held by Matt.
‘You were having one hell of a nightmare last night,’ he says now, as the blender grinds to a halt.
‘Was I?’ says Kate, her grief suddenly magnified by the memory of the dream. She can recall her father so clearly – see him standing there, smiling up at her, willing her on – how could he not be here in real life? It makes her want to clamber back into her night-time vision so she can see him, touch him, smell him. The realization that that will never happen again snakes around her heart.
Matt puts his mug in the sink and takes her in his arms, folding himself around her, and she wishes she could stay here all day. Protected from the outside world, keeping their baby safe. How ironic, she thinks. That I want nothing more than for this baby to have a life, yet I’m already scared I won’t be able to shield it from what life may have in store.
‘Will you be okay?’ Matt asks, as if he can hear the exhausting thoughts that are filling her brain. He knows her so well that he probably can.
She gives a little nod into his chest.
‘Do you want to talk to me when you’re ready?’
She looks up at him, smiling gratefully. ‘Thank you.’
‘Look after yourself,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’
She doesn’t want him to go, because when he does, she’s going to be forced to face the day and the very real problems that Jess’s appearance has caused.
She waits until she’s had a shower and done her make-up before making the call, her confidence strangely bolstered by a flick of mascara and swipe of lipstick. As Lauren’s phone rings, Kate’s still inspecting herself in the mirror, leaning in closer to retrieve the gloopy residue that sits in the corner of her eye.
‘Hey, it’s me,’ she says, over-cheerfully.
‘Hi.’ Lauren sounds wary and Kate can’t blame her.
‘Look,’ says Kate. ‘I’m sorry about how I acted yesterday. I said some unfair things that I really didn’t mean.’
‘About how Jess turning up suited me?’ Lauren says pointedly.
‘Mmm, yes, I don’t know why I said that.’
‘So how are you feeling today?’ asks Lauren.
‘Honestly? Like shit. I dreamt about it all night and when I woke up this morning, I honestly thought Dad was still alive and that woman was a character from my worst nightmare.’
‘I had a pretty rough night as well,’ admits Lauren.
‘Have you spoken to Mum?’
‘Not yet, you?’
‘No, I think it might be better if you have a chat with her first, just to see how she’s feeling.’
As much as Kate tries to ignore it, it pains her that that is the natural default setting of their family dynamic. It had become even more so since Lauren had had children. Kate supposes that’s what happens when a woman’s daughter has her own babies; the two of them instinctively come together, as if it’s an exclusive club that only those who have borne a child can be members of. Kate caresses her stomach, as if hoping to find a bump there. She can’t help but feel disappointed when she doesn’t.
‘Yeah, I think you’re right,’ says Lauren. ‘I was going to pop round there once I’ve dropped Noah off at school.’
‘Okay, let me know how it goes, will you?’
‘Are you not going to talk to her yourself?’ her sister asks.
‘I will do later,’ says Kate. ‘But I’m at work all day, and anyway, I’m sure that now we’ve all had a chance to think about it, we know that what that woman said yesterday was just completely farcical.’
‘So, you don’t believe her?’ asks Lauren.
Kate feels her hackles rise, unable to believe that Lauren would even feel the need to ask.
‘Of course not!’ she exclaims. ‘Why, do you?’ There’s a delay at the other end, just a few seconds, but it’s enough to give Kate a clue as to what’s coming.
‘I . . . I just think we should listen to what she has to say,’ says Lauren hesitantly.
Now it’s Kate’s turn to go quiet, as she tries to make sense of what Lauren’s suggesting.
‘I just think we should hear her out,’ Lauren goes on. ‘You never know, she might have unequivocal proof.’
‘And this is how you’re going to approach it with Mum, are you?’ asks Kate eventually.
‘Well, I’ll play it by ear,’ says Lauren.
‘May I make a suggestion?’ says Kate, unable to keep the frustration from her voice.
‘Sure.’
‘This woman—’
‘Jess,’ cuts in Lauren.
‘This woman,’ repeats Kate, ignoring her, ‘turns up, out of nowhere, at our family home, claiming to be our father’s daughter.’
‘Yes,’ says Lauren.
‘And your immediate thought is that it might be true?’
‘Well, yes,’ says Lauren. ‘Isn’t it yours?’
‘No!’ exclaims Kate. ‘See, this right here is what I’m talking about. It wouldn’t occur to me to believe it, not for even a second, yet you, having had time to sleep on it, have decided that it’s a possibility. That’s the difference between you and me, Lauren. I trusted Dad with all my heart, and I will continue to do so until my dying day. No matter what that woman may say, or what you may think.’
‘Well, then I think you’re deluded,’ says Lauren, under her breath.
‘Just do yourself a favour,’ says Kate, forcing herself not to rise to the bait, ‘don’t ever let Mum know your true feelings. The man she loved and lived with for the past forty years has been suddenly taken away from her. We might think we know what that must feel like – he was our father after all – but I don’t think we can possibly imagine how it must feel to lose your life partner, the person you woke up to every morning, the person you shared your innermost thoughts with—’
‘But—’
‘She won’t thank you for it,’ says Kate. ‘And she might never forgive you for it either.’
‘So, you think we should lie to her,’ says Lauren. ‘Just to keep her memory of Dad preserved.’
‘I won’t need to lie,’ says Kate abruptly. ‘Because the father I remember is the father I had. Nothing you or anyone else says will ever change that.’
‘We can’t just ignore what Jess is saying. If what she’s saying is true, it might just make the pain of losing Dad that little easier to bear.’
‘You’re willing to believe her because you think it’ll somehow ease our grief?’ Kate exclaims incredulously.
‘I just think that it might give us all some perspective, especially Mum, who’s not been herself since he’s been gone. If she realized that maybe he wasn’t the man she thought he was, she might not feel his loss so profoundly.’
‘Now who’s deluded?’ hisses Kate.
‘You never know,’ says Lauren. ‘Jess might even bring us closer.’
‘Over my dead body.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ says Lauren, before hanging up.
7
Lauren
Lauren was going to tell Kate that she’d seen Jess, but their conversation hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped. She doesn’t know why Kate is so adamant in shutting herself off to the possibility that their father might not have been all that they thought he was. She naively hopes that their mother isn’t going to be quite so opposed to the idea.
‘Hi, it’s only me,’ she calls out, at pains to sound normal as she lets herself into her parents’ semi-detached home. A familiar warmth immediately wraps itself around her, the smell of baking merging with the dulcet tones of BBC Radio 2’s Ken Bruce, as he quizzes a contestant on PopMaster. This is Lauren’s safe place, though she has to admit it doesn’t feel quite so dependable since her father’s been gone. It shouldn’t make a difference, not in the scheme of things, not when she hadn’t confided in him about what was going on with Simon. But still, if she was honest, she’d known that if it ever hit the fan, like really kicked off, her dad would have been the first in line to protect her.
‘I’m in here,’ says Rose, sticking her head around the kitchen door. Lauren gently puts the car seat down, with a sleeping Jude inside, and carries Emmy, who’s kicking her little legs with excitement, down the hallway towards her Nana.
‘Hello, my precious girl,’ says Rose as she discards her oven glove and takes Emmy in her arms. Lauren looks at her quizzically, noting that nothing about her mother is any different. She looks just the same as she looked yesterday, before a girl arrived claiming to be her dead husband’s lovechild.
‘You okay?’ she asks hesitantly.
‘Absolutely,’ says Rose, and Lauren hears that lilt in her voice that gives the game away. She’s far from okay.
‘Listen, I just wanted to talk about Jess and what happened,’ says Lauren. ‘I can’t imagine how you must be feeling about it all.’
‘I’m fine, absolutely fine,’ Rose insists. ‘Now, what does this baby girl want for breakfast?’ She tickles Emmy and the little girl squirms delightedly in her arms.
Lauren could leave it. She almost feels compelled to, so that they can go back to pretending that they’re just like every other family. But this isn’t about them. This is about Jess, and Lauren knows that she has set something in motion that she can’t stop.
‘We need to talk,’ says Lauren, more assertively.
‘Honestly darling, there’s really no need. I’m absolutely fine.’
Lauren swallows and picks an imaginary piece of fluff off her trouser leg. ‘But it’s not just about you or us,’ she says, without looking up. ‘This is about a woman who thinks . . .’
Rose goes to her daughter and cups her face. Emmy giggles and reaches out with her own hand to touch her mother’s other cheek. The two women can’t help but smile. ‘Your father was a good man,’ says Rose earnestly. ‘Don’t let a stranger destroy your faith in him.’
‘But she’s not a stranger,’ says Lauren, pulling away. ‘And whilst I can understand you not wanting to have anything to do with her, I want the chance to get to know her. I want the children to get to know her.’
