Lauren shakes her head disbelievingly. ‘You can’t be serious,’ she says, barely audible. ‘Is that how desperate you’ve become to keep Dad’s precious memory preserved? So much so that you’re going to pretend it’s Mum who was at fault?’
‘It’s a fifty-fifty chance, is all I’m saying,’ says Kate petulantly. ‘Why are you so quick to rule it out?’
‘Be-because, that’s preposterous!’ exclaims Lauren, finding her voice. ‘How could she possibly have concealed a pregnancy, a birth, a child . . .?’
‘She may not have shown,’ says Kate, quick to answer, as if she’s thought it all through. ‘She may have had the baby prematurely . . .’
‘But even if she’d managed to keep it from us,’ says Lauren. ‘There’s no way on earth Dad wouldn’t have known about it.’
Kate has clearly thought of that too. ‘Maybe, but if he knew it wasn’t his . . . who knows what arrangement they may have come to?’
Lauren’s eyes widen with bewilderment. ‘To have the baby adopted?’ she asks incredulously. ‘You honestly think they would have gone to those lengths to keep an affair secret?’
‘I think you’d be surprised how far Mum would go to keep this family together,’ says Kate.
‘This is insane,’ says Lauren, scratching her head. ‘You’re insane.’
A key turns in the front door. ‘What are you two up to?’ says Simon, coming into the room with an air of disdain about him.
‘Nothing,’ says Lauren, far too quickly to be innocent.
‘I suppose she’s telling you all about her day out,’ he says.
Kate looks to Lauren expectantly.
‘No,’ says Lauren, hoping that the retort will stop him from saying anything more. She doesn’t need to give Kate any more reason to get on her back right now.
‘Why didn’t you go?’ Simon says to Kate, despite Lauren looking at him with widened eyes. ‘Sounds like it would have been the perfect family day trip.’
‘Where did you go?’ asks Kate.
‘I erm, I saw Jess today,’ mumbles Lauren. She tries to pretend that she doesn’t see Kate’s hackles rise.
‘Oh,’ says Kate, tightly. ‘What for?’
God, she wished Simon hadn’t got her into this. ‘We just went out,’ she says. ‘That’s all.’
‘All the way to Harrogate,’ says Simon.
Lauren can feel Kate’s eyes immediately snap onto her and that panicky feeling returns, sucking the breath out of her.
‘Harrogate?’
‘Mmm,’ is all Lauren can say.
An ominous silence hangs heavily in the air before Simon sniggers and says, ‘Well, this is awkward,’ before falling down heavily on the sofa.
‘So, do you want to tell me what you and Jess were doing in Harrogate?’ asks Kate, her face flushed.
‘We were, erm, just checking a few things out,’ says Lauren, ushering Kate into the kitchen. ‘She had a day off, so we thought it was a good opportunity. She’s had to go into work now, by all accounts something came up, so we weren’t really up there very long at all.’ She’s well aware that she’s waffling, trying to downplay what really went on.
Kate’s gaze is unfaltering. ‘So what did the pair of you discover up there?’ she asks tightly.
Lauren shrugs her shoulders, aware that now is not the time to divulge what Carol had told them. It’s not as if it’s relevant anyway. ‘Nothing much,’ she says.
‘Perhaps if you’d invited me, I could have saved you the trouble,’ says Kate, scathingly. ‘I could have told you that Jess is not who you think she is.’
Lauren grits her teeth, refusing to rise to the bait again.
‘Where is she anyway?’ asks Kate, turning to leave. ‘I’m surprised that you didn’t want to bring her back to have tea with the kids, get them acquainted with their new aunty.’ Her tone is dripping with sarcasm.
‘As I say, she was called away on business,’ says Lauren.
‘What business is that, then?’ asks Kate.
Lauren wonders what difference it makes to Kate.
‘Her boss asked her to go to Birmingham with him,’ says Lauren.
30
Kate
Kate puts a hand out to steady herself on the wall as Lauren’s words reverberate around her head.
There was a part of her that had felt relieved to see the connection between Lauren and Jess in black and white on Lauren’s computer screen. She’d been comforted to know that whatever Jess was up to, Lauren wasn’t a part of it; that they weren’t colluding to bring Kate down. Because in her darker moments, that’s what she feared was happening.
But now, at the mention of Birmingham, Lauren’s sent her straight back there. If she’s aware of the fuse she’s just lit, she doesn’t show it.
‘What’s she gone to Birmingham for?’ croaks Kate.
‘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 to Brighton, Bolton or Burnley perhaps? 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 as Birmingham fills
