Page 12 of The Half Sister

‘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 askme,’ 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. ‘Imustspeak 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 ifshedidn’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.

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