She’s watching a saucepan of water boiling furiously, lost in the bubbles, when Simon comes into the kitchen.
‘Are you going to put anything in that?’ he asks, making her jump.
‘God, you scared me,’ she says, and he offers a self-satisfied smile.
‘Emmy’s up,’ he says, tilting his eyes to the ceiling.
She wants to say, Well, why didn’t you bring her down then? but thinks better of it. The last thing she needs is to rile him, which it seems she can now do even when she’s asleep.
She stiffens as he comes up behind her, reaching around to kiss her cheek. ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ he says. ‘Maybe we can recreate that dream you had.’
She drops two eggs into the saucepan, unable to think of anything worse. There used to be a time when she wouldn’t have let him leave the house in the morning without making love to her first. But that was before having children; when she had the energy and no inhibitions. If she can convince herself that’s the real reason, she can convince herself of anything.
As soon as she hears the front door close, she breathes a sigh of relief, but the problems of the day don’t offer much respite. She overboils the eggs and hopes that Noah and Emmy don’t notice that their soldiers can barely penetrate the yolks.
‘My egg’s not runny,’ is the last thing she hears Noah cry as she gently closes her bedroom door.
She calls Kate’s mobile, hoping that it goes to voicemail, but knowing that she’ll only have to summon the courage to call her again later if it does. She looks at the digital clock on her bedside; it’s not yet eight and she imagines Kate and Matt still nestled under the duvet together, probably making love, uninterrupted, in their swanky apartment. Kate will probably travel into town to meet a celebrity in a fashionable hotel for breakfast this morning before heading into the office to work on an exclusive for tomorrow’s front page. Lauren wonders what it must be like to lead such a glamorous life, with a husband you adore and nothing to tie you down. She tries to push the bubbling envy aside as the phone rings.
‘Hello,’ Kate finally answers groggily. Perhaps they’re not making love after all.
‘It’s me.’
‘Are you okay?’ asks Kate, her voice laced with concern. ‘Has something happened?’
‘No, why would you think that?’
There’s a momentary pause before Kate says, ‘Because you were out last night.’
Lauren’s shoulders slump forward. Rose had obviously beat her to it.
‘About that,’ says Lauren. ‘Did Mum say anything?’
‘Unfortunately, I went round there,’ says Kate.
‘Shit!’ says Lauren, under her breath.
‘So, do you want to tell me what’s going on?’
Lauren feels like a blunt instrument is being ground into her chest. ‘I’m sorry, I told her I was with you.’
‘I know,’ says Kate. ‘But we all know that you weren’t.’
‘Shit!’ says Lauren again.
‘If you’d given me the heads up, I might have been able to cover for you, but . . .’
‘Well, she did a good job of pretending,’ says Lauren. ‘Look, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to put anyone in an awkward position.’
‘No, but now that you have, do you want to tell me where you were?’
Lauren’s jaw tightens as her teeth grind against each other. ‘I don’t want you to get mad . . .’ she says, surprising herself that it still matters to her what Kate thinks. ‘But, it’s just that . . .’
‘You know this is never going to end well, don’t you?’ says Kate, cutting her off.
Lauren pulls herself up. How could Kate possibly know that she met Justin? Had someone seen them after all? Would that same person tell Simon? An icy terror courses through her veins, as she imagines what he might be capable of. The thought of him using the children against her makes it feel as if her heart’s stopped working.
‘Can I just explain . . .?’ says Lauren.
‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ says Kate. ‘You’re just going to have to find out the hard way.’
‘But you have no idea what it’s been like for me,’ says Lauren.
‘Listen, spare me the “woe is me” line. We’re all in the same boat, but if you want to see Jess for whatever reason, that’s up to you.’
‘Jess?’ Lauren exclaims. ‘But . . .’
‘Just know that it’s your problem when it all goes wrong, because it will all go wrong.’
Lauren’s brain feels as if it’s about to explode as she weighs up using Jess as her excuse for lying, wondering which is the lesser of two evils.
‘I’m sorry I lied,’ she says, opting to go with what Kate believes. ‘But I know you’d rather I didn’t see her.’
‘You can do what you like,’ says Kate. ‘But you need to be absolutely sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.’
She makes it sound as if Lauren’s doing something dangerous, but then she reminds herself that she wasn’t with Jess. The realization of who she was with chills her to the bone.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she says hesitantly.
‘I hope, for all our sakes, that you do,’ says Kate.
20
Kate
Being pregnant doesn’t feel how Kate thought it would. After the interminable wait to get here, she expected fireworks to be going off and an instantaneous rounding of her tummy. But at six weeks, all she feels is really nauseous and a bit weirded out that there is a human being growing inside of her.
She’s glad to be almost done for the day, but the rush hour has already started as she heads back to the office from her last appointment in Soho. The summer heat from above ground has turned the Underground into a furnace and the
