Page 18 of The Half Sister

‘I just wanted to say sorry. I should never have turned up like that yesterday, not without knowing what I now know.’

‘Which is?’ asks Kate hesitantly.

Jess looks down at the floor. ‘That...that my father is dead.’

‘H-how do you know that?’ Kate stutters, all too aware that she’d not divulged that information the day before.

‘Your sister told me.’

‘Lauren?’ says Kate, far louder than she’d intended. She looks around the vast lobby as a few heads turn in her direction. She suddenly wishes shewasdealing with the ghost of Elvis.

‘If I’d known that he wasn’t...here, I’d have never burst in on your family like that.’ Jess looks close to tears. ‘I was hoping to findhim.’

Kate feels a band pull tight around her abdomen and she’s reminded to try and stay calm, if not for herself, then for the baby she’s trying to grow. Taking Jess forcibly by the arm, she steers her towards the doors and out onto the street. ‘What do you mean Lauren told you he’d died? When? How?’

Jess looks at her, as if surprised she needs to ask. ‘Last night,’ she says. ‘I saw her last night.’

‘Wh-what?’ Kate can’t even begin to comprehend what she’s being told. ‘When?’

‘At her house.’

‘You...you went to her house?’ Kate feels all the air inside her rush out. ‘After you came to my parents’?’

Jess nods and looks away, as if it’s finally beginning to dawn on her that she might be speaking out of turn.

Kate puts her hand out to steady herself against the mirror-like glass of the building’s exterior. As she looks around, everything feels out of place, like she’s just landed from another universe. It’s as if she’s in a bottle and Jess’s distorted features are peering in, laughing and goading her.

‘I’m sorry, did she not tell you?’ asks Jess. ‘I assumed you would have spoken this morning.’

‘I need to go,’ says Kate, breathlessly, turning on her heels and heading back into the building. She’s grateful for the blast of cool air that hits her like a slap across the face, but she feels like Bambi on ice as she walks across the polished marble floor; her legs seemingly struggling to hold the rest of her body up.

She rushes from the lift onto the open-plan news and features floor. Her desk is, thankfully, a little removed from the main melee, nestled in a corner, overlooking Cabot Square twelve floors below. She grabs her phone and slings her leather bucket bag onto her shoulder.

‘I’ve got a lead I need to follow up,’ she calls out, to no one in particular. ‘I’m going to meet a source.’

There are murmurs of acknowledgement and a look of awe from Daisy.

Kate makes her way to the station, but as she’s about to go into the bowels of the London Underground, she stops to call Lauren, who picks it up on the first ring.

‘Hello?’ her sister says, tentatively.

Hearing her voice makes Kate want to climb down the telephone line and put her hands around her throat.

‘What the hell is going on?’ she almost shrieks. ‘Please tell me you know nothing more about this Jess girl than the rest of us do.’

There’s a deafening silence at the other end. ‘Lauren!’ barks Kate.

‘I’m with Mum,’ says Lauren quietly. ‘You’d better come over.’

9

Lauren

As soon as Lauren hears Kate’s key turning in the lock, she jumps up, wide-eyed, and starts chewing on the skin around her thumbnail.

Rose sits on the other side of the kitchen table, her face ashen, staring into space.

Lauren waits for the front door to shut, knowing that how it closes will offer a clue as to how mad Kate is. It bangs with such ferocity that it makes her shudder. This is going to be far worse than she could have ever imagined.

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