‘Because it would be the only way to show Jess as your half sister when she’s not.’
Jess looks to Lauren and back to Kate with a manic expression. ‘What are you saying?’ she says, her voice verging on the hysterical. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Lauren has used her own child’s DNA to prove a match with yours.’
Lauren shakes her head as she looks at Jess imploringly, reaching towards her with her hands. ‘Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’
‘So you were prepared to drag Dad’s good name and reputation through the mud, inventing a past he never had, all to protect your own.’
‘What is going on?’ asks Jess, her face etched with confusion.
‘Are you going to tell her, or am I?’
‘Tell me what?’ cries Jess.
Kate looks to Lauren, who merely shrugs her shoulders, leaving Kate with no choice. ‘You’re not Harry’s daughter,’ she says to Jess, before laughing sarcastically and shaking her head. ‘My God, you’re not even Rose’s.’
‘Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?’ says Jess.
Kate raises her eyebrows at Lauren, giving her one last chance. Her sister remains silent.
‘You’re her daughter,’ Kate says, as Lauren’s eyes widen.
Jess’s head swivels towards Lauren, her mouth opening and closing, but no words come out.
‘You . . . you can’t possibly think that’s true,’ stutters Lauren, looking between them.
‘You were pregnant at sixteen,’ barks Kate, her anger at the injustice her father’s suffered so close to the surface. ‘Jess is twenty-two, you’re thirty-eight. You do the maths.’
‘You honestly think I’d get Jess here under false pretences? That I’d palm her off as Dad’s, when all along I’ve known she was mine?’
‘If you wanted to be reunited with Jess and have her in your life, but didn’t want to admit to the part you played in bringing her into the world, then yes. I think you’d be capable of anything.’
Jess falls down onto the sofa, agog, as she watches Kate and Lauren battle it out. ‘Is that . . . is that true?’
‘Of course it’s not!’ exclaims Lauren. ‘Why would you even think I would do something like that?’
‘To get back at Dad,’ says Kate, brusquely. ‘To get back at me. All the while keeping your secret safe.’
Lauren breaks down, clamping a hand to her mouth. ‘I can’t believe you’d think I was capable of that.’
Kate’s breath catches in her throat as she contemplates for the first time the consequences of what she’s done. A tear springs to her eye at the thought of her relationship with Lauren never recovering.
‘I don’t know what anyone’s capable of anymore,’ says Kate.
38
Lauren
‘I don’t even know what to say,’ whispers Lauren, unable to understand how she’s found herself in this situation. How her own mother could have betrayed her so badly.
‘You could start by telling us both why you lied,’ says Kate. ‘How you could deny Jess knowing who her birth mother is.’
‘I’m not her mother,’ Lauren says, wiping her eyes with a tissue. She turns to Jess. ‘I’m not your mother.’
‘How do we know that?’ shouts Kate. ‘How do we know that this hasn’t all been worked to your advantage?’
Lauren looks her in the eye, her bottom lip wobbling. ‘Because I had an abortion.’
Just saying it out loud threatens to break Lauren. They’re words she’s never uttered and now that she has, she stands there as if waiting for the Devil to commit her to hell.
‘I had an abortion,’ she says again, tearfully.
‘But Mum implied—’ starts Kate.
The mention of her mother makes Lauren’s insides feel as if they’re twisting against each other, making it difficult to breathe. ‘Mum has implied a lot of things,’ she says, not wishing to embellish, because if she does, she’s going to have to admit to where she’s been.
The shock of Justin’s parting words had stopped her in her tracks, midway down the corridor of his apartment block.
‘What did you say?’ she had said, turning slowly around to face him.
‘I said: it wasn’t your father who told me that you’d had an abortion, it was your mother.’
Lauren had shaken her head. ‘That can’t be right. Mum told me that she would support me with whatever decision I made. And that wasn’t what I’d chosen to do.’ Tears came to her eyes. ‘I wanted our baby, Justin, really wanted it.’
‘So what happened?’ he’d asked, pulling her back towards him, the pair of them standing on the threshold of his flat.
She had forced herself to go back in time, to a place she’s never dared revisit.
‘When I told them I was pregnant, I knew the reaction I was going to get,’ she’d said. ‘No parent wants to be told that their sixteen-year-old daughter is pregnant. But out of the two of them, Dad was the one who seemed to take it better, at least at first. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that he sat me down and told me that he thought an abortion would be the best option.’
‘And what was Rose’s stance during this time?’ Justin had asked.
‘Dad was supposedly the spokesperson for both of them, but she told me that she just wanted me to be happy, and would gladly support whatever decision I made, but feared it had been taken out of my hands.’
‘By your dad?’ asked Justin.
‘Yes.’ Lauren nodded.
‘Well, it was definitely your mother who called me,’ said Justin. ‘I will never forget it – just the day before, we’d sat in your room and decided that we were going to keep it. You even called me the next night to tell me how much you loved me.’
Lauren had nodded again, remembering.
‘But in that short window of time, you’d already got rid of it – well, that’s what Rose said anyway.’
‘But that just doesn’t make any sense,’ Lauren had replied. ‘That only happened after you told me that you didn’t love me anymore and wouldn’t take my calls.’
‘I wouldn’t return
