The Half Sister, page 6
‘Anyway,’ Lauren goes on, ‘I registered with a website that finds your ancestors and distant relatives and . . .’
Kate sits more upright in her chair, whilst Rose seems to crumple in hers.
‘So, you’ve made a clumsy attempt at tracing our family tree and ended up with a woman who claims to be related to us.’ Kate exhales, showing visible signs of relief. ‘There are a lot of lonely people out there looking for a family, any family, to attach themselves to. This woman must have thought she’d struck gold when she found you.’
Lauren offers a tight smile. ‘I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.’
‘Why not?’ asks Kate. ‘We all know that there’s absolutely no way that Dad would ever have had an affair, least of all one that resulted in a child.’ She looks to Rose and laughs, but Lauren can hear that it’s hollow. ‘Right, Mum?’
Rose starts at the sound of her name and looks around, as if seeing the scene for the first time.
‘Dad would never have had an affair, would he?’ Kate pushes. ‘It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.’
Rose’s hands are shaking so violently that Lauren puts her own hand on top of them.
‘Well, how else do you explain it?’ asks Lauren.
‘There’s nothing to explain,’ says Kate. ‘This is just a classic example of how badly managed these websites are. It’s just names in a hat that anyone can pick up and run with. I can’t believe you’ve allowed yourself to be taken in by it.’ She looks at Lauren scathingly.
Lauren swallows hard, wondering what part of this Kate is missing. ‘It’s not just names,’ she says bluntly. ‘It’s moved on from family trees. This is about science – this is about DNA.’
Kate looks at her blankly, her mouth slowly dropping open.
‘This isn’t a case of mistaken identity,’ Lauren goes on. ‘Or some fly-by-night who fancies their chances at infiltrating a random family. I uploaded my DNA profile.’
Kate stands up, looming over Lauren and Rose, gripping hold of the table that sits between them. ‘Mean-ing?’ she says in two slow syllables, her eyes flickering rapidly.
‘Meaning, Jess also uploaded her DNA profile, and we’re a match.’
Rose lets out an involuntary sob and puts a tissue to her mouth to absorb the sound. But little Emmy has already heard it and looks at her grandmother, perplexed, before standing herself up and waddling over to her, as if she knows that something’s wrong. The innocence of the moment makes Rose cry even more.
‘So, you knew she was coming,’ hisses Kate.
‘No, I didn’t know she was coming,’ says Lauren, the words catching in her throat. ‘I just knew that we’d been matched when she sent me an email.’
‘Saying what?’ demands Kate, her features twisted with anger.
‘It was just a couple of lines about who she was and that she’d been looking for her dad for a long time.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I . . . I went back to her to say that I was shocked, but happy to hear from her and gave her our names. That’s all. The next thing I know she’s at the house.’
‘So, you didn’t give her our address?’
Lauren looks at her, shocked. ‘Of course not! I was intending to tell you both in the fullness of time. I just hadn’t found the right moment.’
‘So that’s it, is it?’ snaps Kate. ‘We’re all supposed to believe that she’s Dad’s secret daughter?’
Lauren has to stifle her surprise at Kate’s reticence to accept the scientific proof. Her sister is an intelligent woman, who never misses an opportunity to belittle her with her career achievements, so why is she finding this so hard to grasp?
Whilst Lauren worked twelve-hour shifts on nigh-on minimum wage, Kate had gleefully regaled her with her regular jet-setting jaunts to meet the stars. If she wasn’t in LA interviewing A-listers, she was on tour with pop stars. Lauren has lost count of how many times Kate had attended the red carpet at the Oscars, but she knows that she was loaned a couture dress on every occasion. Lauren doesn’t even own a dress, aside from her midwife’s uniform, as Simon only likes her to wear trousers these days.
‘But Kate’s life just looks more exciting,’ Rose had said, in an attempt to pull Lauren out of a downward spiral of low self-esteem when she was eight months pregnant with her third child. ‘What you do is far more worthwhile.’ But it didn’t feel like it, at two o’clock in the morning, when sick and hungry children had not yet let her sleep and she’d received a picture of Kate in a stunning red dress, holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and some kind of award in the other.
Woo-hoo! Guess who’s showbiz reporter of the year?!? she’d written on the group text.
Naturally, it was their father who had replied the fastest. That’s my girl!
Lauren looks at Kate now and battles the inferiority complex that always hits her whenever her sister’s in the room. ‘It is what it is,’ she says, and immediately regrets how laissez-faire she sounds.
‘It is what it is?’ repeats Kate irritably.
‘I didn’t mean to sound so glib,’ says Lauren. ‘But it’s up to each of us, as individuals, what we choose to do next.’
‘And you choose to do what?’ asks Kate.
Lauren clears her throat. ‘I’d like to get to know her, and I’d really like you to get to know her as well.’
Kate tsks and Rose looks from one daughter to the other. ‘You can’t honestly expect me to take on your father’s child with another woman.’
‘If that’s even who she is,’ says Kate.
‘For God’s sake,’ snaps Lauren. ‘Listen to the pair of you. We’re talking about a young woman who is trying to find her way in life. Trying to find where she belongs. Imagine looking for your father for years, only to find him ten months too late.’
‘Well, she doesn’t belong here,’ says Rose defiantly. ‘This is my family and I will not let some interloper come in and destroy it.’
‘I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you, Mum,’ says Lauren, going to Rose and crouching next to her. ‘But this doesn’t have to mean that everything will change. We’ve still got each other and you’re right, no one should ever be able to take that away. But getting to know Jess and letting her into the fold might do us some good.’
‘Well, you can count me out,’ says Kate acerbically.
Rose gets up, throwing Lauren’s hands off her lap. ‘I can’t believe you would do this,’ she says. ‘Why couldn’t you just leave things be? You had no right.’
‘She has a right to know her family,’ says Lauren, incensed. ‘To know where she’s from. Are you honestly going to deny her that?’
‘She’s not from here,’ screeches Kate. ‘And she’s not my family – she never will be.’
Lauren refuses to let the tears fall. Why is everybody conspiring against her, when all she ever wanted to do was bring her family closer together?
10
Kate
Kate is still seething as she sits on the train back to Canary Wharf, unable to believe her mother’s reluctance to stand up for their father, and Lauren’s naivety. The man opposite looks at her oddly and she glares back with a look of defiance, but then she realizes that her lips are moving, so if she’s not been mouthing her dissension, she’s been saying it. She wonders which would have made her look madder.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ she says out loud as the train sidles into North Greenwich station. She knows that despite the call of the office – she’s got a thousand and one things she should be getting on with – she’s not going to be able to ignore the pull of her flat and what’s hidden there.
She’d not wanted to root around in the eaves cupboards to find it – she didn’t think she would ever need to, but now that Jess has turned up, she doesn’t feel she has a choice.
She knows where it will be; in the furthest, darkest corner, and she crawls behind the wall of their spare bedroom, using the torch on her phone to guide the way.
This box belongs to Kate Alexander.
Top Secret – Do Not Enter.
The words are written in faded black marker across the taped-down lid. Kate can’t remember the last time she would have looked in here – probably just before she sealed it up, which must have been when they upped and left Harrogate to move to London twenty-odd years ago. The brown masking tape comes away easily, its underside having long lost its stickiness. That unmistakeable mustiness of nostalgia permeates her nostrils as she lifts the lid – the sight of a Polly Pocket diary almost making her cry, as its very existence transports her to a place and time she’s long forgotten. She can hear TLC’s ‘Waterfalls’ playing on the CD player in her bedroom, smell her mum cooking a roast dinner and see herself snivelling into her pillow because Freddie Harris had chucked her. They’d seemed like such desperate times back then, but now, with the benefit of hindsight, it was nothing compared to being a grown-up and all that it entails.
She reaches under the teddy she’d named ‘Bert’, who she’d refused to go to sleep without until Lauren had called her a crybaby. Her eyes pass fondly over the cards that the aforementioned Freddie had written her, as an eleven-year-old, when he’d still been in love with her. She’d like to pore over them, and feel the intensity of that first love, but they’re not what she’s here to look at. She’ll do that another time.
She can see the smaller white box under the oversized quill pen that her father had claimed he’d found in the bowels of his chambers in London.
‘That’ll be from one of the barristers that used to walk the floors in the fifteenth century,’ he’d enthused.
‘I doubt quill pens were even invented then,’ Lauren had haughtily remarked as she passed by.
‘Of course they were,’ said their father, laughing.
‘Well then I bet barristers hadn’t been invented then,’ she’d quipped, ever ready with a cynical comment, especially where their father was concerned. Why had there been so much animosity between them?
Kate carefully lifts the smaller box out and lays it on the carpet, as if psyching herself up to open it. She knows what’s inside it; she just can’t remember the details. She takes a deep breath, not knowing whether she wants to be proved right or wrong as she lifts the lid.
The romper looks just as pink as she remembers it, though she’d forgotten about the white embroidered rabbits that hopped across its chest. She picks up the velvet-soft teddy bear that sits nestled in the corner and instinctively holds it against her cheek. Did he hold the key that would unlock their family’s secret?
She is suddenly struck by a recollection, so vivid that it’s overwhelming. She’s standing on the landing, at the bottom of the loft ladder, listening to her dad huffing and puffing.
‘Have you found them yet?’ she’d called up to him.
‘Nope,’ he’d shouted back, the insulation making him sound as if he was speaking from inside a box. ‘I’m telling you, they’re not up here. Call down to your mother.’
‘Mum!’ Kate had yelled over the bannister. ‘Dad says the Christmas decorations aren’t up there.’
‘Of course they are,’ Rose had said in a sing-song voice, breaking away from the duet she was performing with Bing Crosby in the kitchen. ‘They’re in the back corner; there’s a couple of bags and a few boxes of red and green baubles.’
‘Mum says they’re red and green and in the corner,’ Kate called up the ladder.
‘I’m telling you, they’re not up here,’ he’d said, exasperated.
‘Can I come up?’ asked Kate. ‘To help you look.’
‘Come on then,’ he’d said, appearing at the hatch with an outstretched arm.
She’d balanced on the beams as if her life depended on it, remembering her father’s warning years previously not to go up to the loft without him. ‘If you fall through the lagging you’ll end up in your mother’s lap in the front room,’ he’d said sternly.
Kate was sure that he was spinning her a yarn, but she wasn’t taking any chances as she slowly worked her way over to the corner.
Whilst Harry busied himself with trying to find the decorations, Kate had begun to open a few boxes and peer inquisitively inside. The quill pen had been sat on top of a pile of dusty law books. ‘Can I take this downstairs?’ she’d asked, holding it up.
‘Yes,’ Harry had said absently, without even looking at what she was referring to.
She’d pulled out a carrier bag that she’d spied stuffed down between two boxes and put the feathered nib in with the small box that was in there.
‘Have you found them yet?’ called out Rose. She’d sounded closer than the kitchen.
‘The only ones I can find are silver and purple,’ Harry replied.
There was a lengthy silence and Kate and Harry had looked at each other, as if they knew what was coming – trying not to giggle.
‘They’re the ones!’ Rose exclaimed.
Harry had clenched his fists in exasperation and mouthed a frustrated scream as he looked imploringly at Kate. ‘You said I was looking for red and green.’
‘I must have chucked them out,’ said Rose, blithely oblivious. ‘I bought silver and purple for last year – I remember now.’
Kate had gleefully covered her face with her hand, whilst her father had blown out his cheeks.
It wasn’t until later that day, when her dad had gone out to play golf, that she remembered the box in the bag that she’d brought down. She’d taken it to her mother, holding it open at arm’s length.
‘What’s this?’ she’d asked innocently.
Rose gave it a cursory glance. ‘I have no idea.’
Kate had opened the box and lifted a romper suit out, so tiny that it would have easily fitted one of the dolls that she’d only recently thrown out.
Rose had flown across the room, as if she’d sprouted wings, snatching the all-in-one out of her hand. ‘Where did you get this?’ she’d breathed, barely audible.
‘It was in the loft,’ said Kate. ‘Was it mine?’
‘No, no,’ said Rose, roughly pulling the box out of Kate’s hand and inadvertently dropping it to the floor. She’d scrambled to pick up the teddy that had fallen out of it, but hadn’t noticed the minute plastic tag that had slid under the oven. ‘It was Lauren’s,’ she’d said breathlessly, shoving the bear and romper back into the box.
‘And what’s this?’ asked Kate, picking up the piece of plastic that she could now see was a hospital ID tag.
‘Nothing!’ Rose barked, whipping it out of Kate’s hand and shoving it all into the cupboard where they normally kept the saucepans. ‘Now go,’ Rose had said, turning back around. ‘Run along and I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.’
Kate had watched, through the crack in the kitchen door, as her sobbing mother had gone into the sideway and thrown the box into the dustbin.
When she was sure the coast was clear, Kate had crept out there to retrieve the box and all its contents, and hid it under her bed. If it wasn’t for Jess, it would most likely have stayed hidden until a time when she might have wanted to show her own children something of the person she used to be. But now, that tag is ringing alarm bells in her head that refuse to be silenced.
She can see it, wrapped around the teddy bear’s foot, its numbers facing away from her. The significance of what those digits are, and what they might mean, weighs heavily on Kate’s chest. She has to be sure that she’s ready to face the consequences of what they’re going to reveal.
As she twists the tiny tag, the numbers blur as Kate squints, knowing that once she sees them, she will never be able to unsee them. Can she live with that? She tells herself to read the date from the left, but her eyes have already fast forwarded to the last two numbers; the year. She so wants it to be Lauren’s date of birth. It won’t help the predicament they find themselves in with Jess, but it would mean, for the most part, that her family is the one she thought it was; the one she now desperately wants it to be.
But the numbers burn indelibly onto her brain, like scores on a punch card.
15/09/96
It’s not Lauren. It’s not her. It has to be Jess.
11
Lauren
Lauren is driving around the South Circular, cursing every red light that stops her in her efforts to get Jude to fall asleep. He’d woken up amongst all the commotion at her parents’ house and despite being fed, winded, changed and rocked, he’s still screaming an hour later. She used to feel compelled to find a reason for her children’s distress, but since her mother had reassured her that ‘sometimes babies just cry because that’s all they can do’, Lauren had tried to be a little more relaxed. Though it isn’t easy when his cries are beginning to hurt her ears and little Emmy keeps repeating ‘poo poo’ over and over again.
Unable to bear it for a moment longer, she pulls into a petrol station, even though her tank is almost full, and climbs out of the car, slamming the door behind her. The silence that follows almost makes her cry, but the respite is only temporary, for as soon as she drowns out the demands of her children, her thoughts are dragged back to Jess, Kate and her mother.
Lauren knew it was never going to be easy to bring Jess into the fold, but she’d hoped that the way she’d done it would have been better received. Though she had to admit that she had had three months since Jess’s email to get used to the idea before she’d turned up at her parents’ house. Kate and her mother hadn’t even had time to take a breath.
Lauren had known she was potentially opening a can of worms by essentially inviting anyone with a tenuous family link to stake their claim. She’d thought she’d find nothing more than a great-grandfather’s cousin, so to find Jess was a shock she was still absorbing when she’d turned up at the house. Lauren wonders if Jess had known that, and decided to force her hand. But she wishes she hadn’t, as all it’s served to do so far is to make people say things and hear things they weren’t ready for.
‘Can I get some paracetamol please?’ she says absently to the man behind the counter. He reaches behind him for a box of tablets and hands them to Lauren.
