Page 26 of The Half Sister

‘Actually, Ididknow everything by the time you took me on.’

Matt rolls his eyes in mock exasperation. ‘Or so you thought.’

‘I think you’ll findItaughtyouthings,’ says Kate with a cheeky glint in her eye. ‘Not the other way around.’

Matt laughs. ‘So, you’d do yourself out of a job? You’d take the worker over the slacker?’

‘Oi, just because I went to university doesn’t make me a slacker,’ says Kate, breaking away from Matt to tap in at the ticket barrier. ‘I worked my arse off when I was there.’

‘So, you’d definitely go for experience over education?’ asks Matt, as they jump on the escalator.

‘If that’s all that’s separating them, yes.’

‘Okay, on your head be it,’ says Matt. ‘Have you heard anything from your mum or Lauren?’

Kate tells him about this morning, and the DNA match that Lauren is claiming to have found. Just the thought of her putting their personal details online makes Kate’s chest tighten. How could she have been so stupid?

‘It might not be your sister’s finest hour,’ he admits. ‘But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the girl is who she says she is.’

‘How do you mean?’ asks Kate, desperate to find any other scenario than the one that’s whirring around her head, making her feel as if she’s going mad.

‘Well, there’s got to be some semblance of a match there, especially if they’ve used an ancestry website, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the players are playing by the rules.’

Kate looks at him confused. ‘So you’re saying there’s room for error?’

‘Put it like this; these big genealogy sites are not in the habit of making mistakes, otherwise we’d all be running around thinking our mother was our sister and our children weren’t our own.’

Kate can’t help but laugh. When he puts it like that...

‘So, it’s safe to say,’ he goes on, ‘that if you’ve uploaded your DNA, you’ll only be shown your proven matches.’

‘O-kay,’ says Kate hesitantly, unsure where he’s going with this, but open to all suggestions.

‘So essentially, the DNAhasto have been a match to have brought Lauren and this girl together. But – bear with me here – what if, crazy as it sounds, the girl has somehow cooked the results.’

‘By doing what?’ asks Kate, stopping stock still on the platform.

‘I dunno,’ says Matt, shrugging his shoulders. ‘She might have uploadedyourDNA, for example.’

‘What?’ shrieks Kate, the idea too far-fetched for her to take it even remotely seriously.

‘I’m just saying,’ says Matt. ‘There are other ways that a match could have occurred, without her actually being related to you.’

‘But why would anyone go to those kind of lengths?’ asks Kate, her investigative mind beginning to whir at the possibility.

‘They wouldn’t,’ says Matt decisively, as if sensing the runaway train Kate’s just jumped on. ‘And certainly not where you’re concerned because, let’s face it, you’re not exactly an intriguing dynasty that someone would commit forgery to be a part of.’

Kate playfully slaps his arm.

‘I’m just saying that it’s a possibility,’ says Matt. ‘That’s all. You might not want to take this girl at face value.’

She had no intention of doing so. ‘So how come you’re a genealogy expert all of a sudden?’ teases Kate, keen to inject some light-heartedness to lift her mood.

‘Aha,’ says Matt, tapping a finger to his nose conspiratorially. ‘Funnily enough, I had an interesting pitch come through from a freelancer today.’

‘If you’re prepared to tellmeabout it, it can’t bethatinteresting,’ says Kate sarcastically.

Matt smiles. ‘Well, it was a feature about police forces uploading DNA from unsolved crimes to genealogy websites in the hope of finding a match to their suspect.’

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