‘I have never stopped loving you,’ he breathes, as his lips and fingers trail her neck, his feather-like touch setting her skin alight.
‘Make love to me,’ she whispers tearfully.
He picks her up and she wraps her legs around him, their kissing not stopping until he lays her gently on his bed. She can feel his weight on top of her, his desire evident.
‘Are you sure?’ he says.
She nods, just like she did the last time he asked that question twenty-two years ago.
35
Kate
‘I need the copy for the glamour model piece,’ shouts Lee across the news floor.
Kate looks at the clock on the wall – it’s after seven and she’s not yet had time to focus on what matters most. Instead she’s having to file a depressingly predictable interview about a forty-year-old’s fifth boob job. She’s either getting too cynical or too long in the tooth to want to be writing such an inane piece.
‘It’s coming across now,’ she calls back.
As soon as she hits send, she picks up her phone and takes it with her to the stairwell, where she’ll be afforded marginally more privacy.
‘Hi Nancy, it’s Kate – I just wondered if you had any results on those DNA samples I sent over last night.’
‘Oh hi, Kate – not just yet, but we’re getting there. I hope to have them in the next few hours.’
‘Great, let me know as soon as they’re in, will you?’
‘Will do,’ says Nancy, before hanging up.
Kate taps her phone on her chin as she wonders what she’s going to do with the results if they go the way she’s expecting them to.
Her mother certainly won’t be surprised – she’ll just be shocked that Kate’s gone to such lengths to get to the truth, though if she’d been honest in the first place, Kate wouldn’t have felt the need to have done it. But Lauren is going to be stunned by the turn of events – Jess too, no doubt.
Once again, Kate is ashamed to admit that she’s relieved that her father isn’t here to witness Jess’s arrival. If he was truly in the dark about what Rose had done, how would he feel to know that the wife he’s loved and adored for forty years has been unfaithful and disloyal in the cruellest of ways.
What had happened to make her mother cheat on the best husband she could have ever wished for? What could he possibly have done to justify her actions?
If he was still here, Kate would ask him. She stares down at her bag on the floor and wonders if she still can.
She hurriedly swings the oversized bucket bag onto the desk and rummages through it, unable to believe that she’d forgotten the letter that she’d taken from her parents’ wardrobe. Caught up with an electricity bill and a used tissue, the envelope, that might hold the answers or at least go some way to explaining the situation they now all found themselves in, is stained from the lipstick in her purse that has no lid. The symbolic weight of the blood-red blotted paper sits heavily on Kate’s shoulders as her eyes scan the page.
Dear Harry,
I know what I’ve done is wrong, but you left me with no choice. What else was I supposed to do? We can get through this – I know we can – it’s you and me together, with the girls. We’re a family and one day, in the not too distant future, I ask that you find it in your heart to forgive me, as I will forgive you.
All my love, as always,
Rose x
It creates more questions than answers, leaving Kate desperate to know what they needed to forgive each other for.
It didn’t look like it was going to be quite the evening she and Matt had hoped for, but as guilty as she feels, there’s even more important issues she needs to deal with right now.
I’m going to have to take a rain check on tonight, she texts, as she heads to the station. Something’s come up.
She jumps on the tube just as the doors are closing and finds herself squashed between two rotund men. Her only air channel is via their armpits, precisely at her nose height. She baulks at the odour emanating from them and is attempting to turn herself around when she feels a pull on her skirt. She can make out an anonymous hand appearing through the bodies, as if looking to be slapped down. But tracing it to its owner is like unravelling an eight-player game of Twister.
‘’Ere love, d’you wanna seat?’ comes a gruff voice through the limbs. The hand is still tugging on her skirt, desperately trying to attract her attention. ‘Move outta the way and let the lady sit down.’
She doesn’t know if she’s eternally thankful or mildly perturbed that it’s being directed at her. Still, she smiles gratefully at the man in a baseball cap, who gets up from his coveted seat and brings the roll-up from behind his ear into his mouth. Kate can feel the ripple of surprise as the juxtaposition of his manner and his deed seeps into people’s consciousness.
You should never judge a book by its cover, her father used to say, and it was a rule she tried to live by, revelling in the pleasant surprises that it often bestowed. But what happens when it’s the other way around? What happens when you’re taken in by a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Kate rings the doorbell of her parents’ home, not knowing if she wants her mother to be there or not. There’s no answer, so she lets herself in and calls out, just in case. There’s a stillness to the house that is only achieved when it’s empty.
She takes the stairs two at a time, taking care to step over the creaky floorboard on the landing – it’s a force of habit. She goes into her parents’ bedroom and heads straight for the wardrobe door, sliding it silently across.
