Kate shrugs her shoulders.
‘I thought that if we had something in common, a shared interest, that it might bring us closer together.’
‘So what has any of this got to do with the girl?’ asks Kate impatiently.
‘I thought it would be a good idea to look back over our heritage and find out more about who we really are,’ Lauren continues. ‘It’s ironic really, to feel compelled to do something like that after losing the very person who could answer all our questions for us.’
‘Isn’t it?’ snipes Kate.
‘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
