Page 73 of The Half Sister

‘She said she needed to go for work,’ says Lauren, with the merest hint of a smile playing on her lips. ‘But I have a feeling that it was a bit of a ruse on her boss’s part.’

Kate feels dizzy, and an overwhelming heat begins to envelop her. ‘Oh yeah,’ she manages, hoping that it sounds nonchalant, but if Lauren knows her as well as she should, the waver is immediately obvious.

‘Yeah, it sounds to me as if something’s going on,’ she says. ‘She seems pretty excited...’

Lauren is still talking, but although Kate can see her lips moving, she can’t hear anything she’s saying – her ears momentarily not working, as if to protect her from the truth.

‘I need to go,’ she says, interrupting Lauren mid-flow. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’

As soon as she’s in her car, hot tears spring to her eyes and her throat constricts as she battles to hold back the deluge she knows is imminent as soon as she acknowledges the facts. The screen on her phone looks blurry as she types ‘Where is the PM’s press conference today?’ into Google, hoping that she’d somehow misheard where Matt had said he was going earlier. Might he be heading toBrighton,BoltonorBurnleyperhaps? She knows she’s grasping at straws, but she so doesn’t want him to be in the same place as Jess. A tear escapes asBirminghamfills the search engine results page.

She doesn’t even remember thinking it, so is surprised to find herself driving through the Blackwall Tunnel; the gateway between south-east London and its north-eastern counterpart. It’s also the most direct route to Jess’s place, the address on her CV committed to Kate’s memory.

When she pulls up outside the shoddy-looking parade of shops, she doesn’t even notice the state of disrepair, or the hooded figures hanging around outside the Chinese takeaway. All she can see is number 193, and all she can think about is how she’s going to get inside it. She rings all four bells and waits for what feels like an inordinate amount of time before someone comes down the stairs.

‘Hey,’ says a man with dreadlocked hair and a roll-up between his lips. He holds out a twenty-pound note before quickly pulling it back. ‘No pizza?’

Kate holds up her arms and gives him a regretful look. ‘’Fraid not,’ she says. ‘Visiting Jess in Flat C.’

‘Oh man,’ he groans, before turning around and walking back up the stairs.

‘Jess, it’s me,’ she says, for effect, as she knocks on her flat door. She waits until she hears the one above her closing before lifting the wheel brace from her car boot out of her bag. Wedging the straight end between the door frame and the flimsy lock, she applies pressure until she feels it give, then uses her shoulder to push her way in.

Kate quickly evaluates the apartment, noticing that all four doors leading from the hallway are closed. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she knows she won’t find it behind the first door, which leads her into a windowless bathroom. The second is the living room, and ifshehad anything to hide, she wouldn’t put it in here. Her stomach is tied up in knots, a tangle of nerves that she usually only experiences when she’s sitting in Dr Williams’ office.

The next room, with clothes in the wardrobe and personal effects on top of a mismatched chest of drawers, is clearly Jess’s bedroom. Kate’s eyes are automatically drawn to the hairbrush and she takes a tissue from her bag to fold around the loose strands, which together with the DNA she’s taken from her parents’ house will determine, once and for all, whose daughter Jess is.

She pulls the drawers open, one by one, and furtively rifles through their contents. Jumpers, tops and underwear are displaced in her efforts to find...what? What is it she’s looking for that will give her the answers to the questions that are resounding in her head, such aswhyJess has targeted Matt and is clearly out to entrap him in her web of deceit?WhyLauren has been indoctrinated to believe that Jess is their father’s child. Whyshe, Kate, is the common denominator between the two people that Jess has chosen to prey on.

The last thought takes Kate by surprise; as if she’s only just made the connection. She falls down heavily onto the bed and screams, ‘What the hell is going on?’ banging her fists onto the mattress in frustration.

She takes deep breaths, forcing herself to stay calm and think logically. What if the DNA matchhasbeen falsified? Kate already knows it’s possible, even if Lauren is blissfully unaware of Jess’s duplicitous plan. She could easily have obtained Kate’s DNA if she’d wanted to; from a discarded water bottle or half-eaten sandwich. Christ, she might even have broken in and taken something from the flat. Kate shudders at the thought of Jess going through her and Matt’s belongings – the irony somehow lost on her.

But even if Jesshadused Kate’s DNA as her own, it would have shown that her and Lauren were sisters, not half sisters.Unless...says Kate to herself, unable to bat away the abhorrent possibility that maybeshe’snot her father’s daughter either.

‘No!’ she says aloud, refusing to give the thought room to breathe.

Jessmustbe their half sister, otherwise what’s the box of baby mementoes all about? And why was Rose’s reaction to it so extreme if she had nothing to hide? Kate’s head falls into her hands as she acknowledges the only other possibility; that if Jessisn’ther half sister, then not only are her mother and father exonerated, but the campaign that Jess has been inflicting on Kate’s loved ones is aimed solely at one person. Her.

Kate feels like she might be sick as she wonders why anyone would have such an axe to grind. Were there people in her past who hated her enough to go to such lengths?

She thinks about the stories she’s written and the enemies she may have made along the way, but apart from a few erstwhile PRs who’d lost their jobs for not managing to contain a juicy scoop on their client, there were few people in the entertainment world who would take umbrage to this degree. Even those she’d inadvertently got fired had eventually been lauded; the global superstar that had been pictured snorting cocaine off a naked woman’s breast had enjoyed his biggest album success the following year.Allpublicity was good publicity, it seemed.

She remembers the undercover sting she did on a group of far-right activists some years back, before she decided that showbusiness was a safer option. But aside from the initial death threat and a talking to by the police, she’d never heard anything more. She feels strangely comforted that the queue to witness her downfall is surprisingly short.

As she gets up from the bed, conspiracy theories abound, bogging Kate down with the what ifs, making her brain feel as if it’s banging against the inside of her skull in her efforts to work it all out. Hot tears of hurt and frustration run down her cheeks as she realizes how futile this all is.

She picks her handbag up from the hall floor, having resigned herself to at least telling Matt who his junior reporter really is. Once he knows that she’s lied about her past, he won’t hesitate to fire her, and that will leave Kate with one less problem to worry about.

As she walks down the hall, she absently turns the door handle to the only room she hasn’t yet been in. When she finds it locked tight, her interest is piqued. Adrenaline courses through her veins as she imagines what might lie beyond it. A grotesque image of her dad, gagged and bound to a chair, immediately flashes into her head – a recollection of another dream she’s recently had. Getting the wheel brace back out of her bag, she jimmies open the door with a renewed sense of purpose, desperate to see what Jess is so keen to keep hidden.

She feels for the light switch and peers around, through half-closed eyes, as if waiting for something to jump out at her. But instead of the dark dungeon-like room she’d expected, it’s oddly serene. A bed adorned with a pretty floral duvet cover and a scented candle stands unused on the bedside. It isn’t until Kate walks into the room that she sees a cot behind the door.

With her heart hammering through her chest, she reaches in to pick up a toy bunny rabbit that’s sat in the corner. Its floppy ears fall forwards and Kate absently runs its soft fur against the skin of her cheeks, her tears making its glass eyes glisten.

She still has the rabbit in her hand as she slowly opens the wardrobe doors, now more scared than ever of what she’s going to find. There, stacked in neat piles, are a dozen or so sleepsuits, perfectly folded muslin squares, an unopened pack of nappies, a breast pump – in fact, everything that a woman with a baby could possibly need. There’s just one problem; Jess isn’t a woman with a baby.

Kate tenderly runs a hand over her stomach, desperately trying to stay calm whilst she works out what all this means. Why would Jess have a locked bedroom, dedicated to a baby she doesn’t have?

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