‘I hope Harriet’s okay,’ she says to Finn. ‘I’m just trying to find her.’
The girl seems to be sizing Kate up, as if working out whether to believe what she’s saying.
‘We met when we were both working at the university,’ Kate goes on. ‘She told me that she lived here, but I haven’t heard from her since she left for London. I just wanted to make sure she was all right.’
‘I haven’t heard from her in a while either,’ says Finn.
‘But you’ve heard from her since she left here?’
‘I’ve only heard through mutual friends – I don’t have a phone.’ Finn says, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I can’t afford one.’
‘But she’s well, and chasing that dream of hers?’
‘I guess so,’ says Finn, looking around the desolate place. ‘Though I imagine after living here, anything’s a dream.’
‘And the baby?’ asks Kate, nodding in the direction of the curtain partition. ‘Is that yours?’
Finn looks at her wide-eyed and nods. ‘You won’t tell the authorities though, will you? They don’t know that I’m living here.’
Kate tilts her head, the journalist in her ever ready to pounce. ‘How do you mean?’ she asks.
‘Once I had the baby and turned eighteen, I had to leave foster care. Harry let me move in here with her, so that she could keep an eye on me.’
‘In this room?’ exclaims Kate. ‘The three of you were living in this one room?’ She looks around; the double bed, oven, fridge, sink and chair she’s sitting on take up all the available floor space.
‘The curtain helps,’ says Finn, as if it’s a luxury item. ‘This place is a palace compared to our last foster home.’
‘So you’d been in foster care a while?’ asks Kate.
Finn nods sadly. ‘Most of my life. I was adopted when I was two – that’s when I met Harriet – when I went to live with the Oakleys. They adopted her at the same time. She’s four years older than me, so became the big sister I never had.’
‘So neither of you knew your birth parents?’ asks Kate, hoping that by making it sound more generic, Finn won’t find it an odd question.
‘No, we were both given up at birth,’ says Finn, and Kate gasps inwardly, relieved to know that if her dad is Jess’s father, he hadn’t been leading a double life. She hates herself for doubting him.
‘We went into the foster system pretty quickly and thought all our prayers had been answered when the Oakleys took us in, but it wasn’t to be.’
‘Why?’ asks Kate. ‘What happened?’
‘Our dad, Bill, got really sick about a year later. He had terminal lung cancer and when he died, his wife Patricia had a mental breakdown.’
‘I’m really sorry to hear that,’ says Kate. ‘That must have been terrible.’
Finn nods. ‘It would have been if I didn’t have Harry, but from that moment on she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. We stayed in foster care together until she was eighteen and came here.’
‘What is this place?’ asks Kate. ‘Some kind of halfway house?’
‘Yeah, it’s supposed to ease us into independent living, but once you come here, you very rarely leave.’
‘Unless you’re Harriet,’ says Kate.
Finn smiles. ‘Unless you’re Harriet,’ she says, before her face suddenly clouds over with worry. ‘But they don’t know that she’s gone. You won’t tell them, will you? They’ll throw me out if they know she’s not living here, and she’ll get into trouble.’
Kate feels genuinely sorry for her, but her sympathy doesn’t run to Jess. Why should it? When she’s turned up out of the blue, wreaking havoc on her life. Everything she’s said has been a lie and everything she’s doing seems specifically targeted to inflict as much grief and pain as she possibly can.
‘So, what dream is she chasing in London?’ Kate asks casually.
‘Oh, she’s got big plans,’ says Finn, with a smile that creases her eyes. ‘She’s got a great job, a new boyfriend . . . As you probably know, Harriet goes for what she wants . . .’
Kate smiles tightly.
‘And usually gets it,’ says Finn, laughing.
Kate shivers involuntarily at the realization that it’s her family that she’s looking to get it from. Whatever ‘it’ is.
27
Lauren
Lauren’s in the shower, with shampoo in her eyes, when she hears the ping of a text on her phone. She grabs at the towel hanging over the glass screen in an attempt to clear her vision, but the soap is still smarting as she blindly reaches out of the cubicle to where she’d left her phone balancing on the basin. She can’t find it and risks a peek to give her some perspective. It’s not there.
‘Who’s Sheila?’ asks Simon.
She ducks her head back under the water, buying time. Shit!
‘What’s that?’ she calls out, as nonchalantly as she can manage, even though her insides feel like they’ve been set alight.
‘Sheila’s asking about tomorrow night,’ says Simon, the tone of his voice loaded with cynicism.
Lauren turns the thermostat to cold in the hope that it’s going to shock her brain into working. ‘One sec,’ she says, as she rinses the final traces of shampoo out.
The extra time that she thought she had is cut short when Simon turns the shower off and hands her a towel.
‘Let’s have a look,’ she says, holding out her hand, the water still dripping from her hair.
Simon places her phone purposefully into her palm, its content weighing more than the device itself. He stands there, unmoving, watching her.
‘Oh,’ she says, seeing the two worded message of Tomorrow night? ‘That’s Sheila from work.’
‘From the hospital?’ asks Simon.
She needs to think fast, but she feels wrong-footed, and vulnerable with no clothes on.
‘Yeah, one of the girls was asking if any of us were about to cover her shift.’
‘But you’re on maternity leave,’ says Simon gruffly.
‘I know, it was just a round robin, and I guess I must still be on the list. Sheila’s obviously checking that it’s tomorrow they were talking about.’
‘I’ve not heard you mention a Sheila before,’ says
