says. ‘I really need to be somewhere, but if you call my number now, I’ll have your details, and I’ll give you a call in the next couple of days.’
Justin punches the digits into his phone with a quiet determination as she recites them. ‘If I don’t hear from you, I’ll ring you.’
‘No!’ says Lauren, far too abruptly. ‘I’ll call you.’
‘You promise?’
She can’t help but go back to him and reach up to give him a kiss on the cheek. ‘I promise,’ she says, walking away, wondering how she’s leaving the petrol station with even more problems than she came in with.
12
Kate
‘Hey,’ says Matt, smiling as he emerges from the revolving door of his office building. He slips an arm around Kate’s waist and kisses her cheek. ‘You okay?’
She could be honest and say, No, my mother and sister are being the worst versions of themselves, and Jess might well be my sister, but she smiles and says, ‘yes’, instead.
‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ he asks, as they hold hands and fall in step with each other. ‘You don’t normally come up to meet me.’ His offices are only four blocks away from Kate’s, but they’re further from the station, so on the rare occasions they leave work at the same time, Matt would always walk down to Kate.
‘I just needed to get out,’ she says. It’s not a lie. Since her suspicions had been confirmed, she’d found it difficult to concentrate, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to share her muddled thoughts just yet. At least not until she’d managed to unravel them in her own head.
‘It was pretty quiet this afternoon,’ she goes on. ‘So once I’d put tomorrow’s stories to bed, I wanted some fresh air.’
‘You’re okay though, right?’ he asks, stopping and turning to look at her.
Commuters tut as they’re forced to sidestep around them on the pavement.
Kate instinctively touches her stomach and nods.
‘Nothing’s happened?’ Matt presses.
She shakes her head. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘That’s all it is?’ asks Matt, in a way that suggests he thinks she might be hiding something.
‘Yes,’ she says, smiling at his concern. ‘That’s all.’ She links her arm through his, encouraging him to start walking again.
‘Mmm,’ he mutters, looking at her through narrowed eyes, as if he’s still not quite convinced.
‘Anyway, how’s your day been?’ she asks, eager to change the subject. ‘How did the interviews go? Find anyone suitable?’
Matt groans. ‘Everyone pre-lunch was a write-off, but there were one or two candidates this afternoon that are promising.’
‘Is that because you had a couple of drinks in you by then?’ she asks, laughing. ‘Did your beer goggles make them a more attractive proposition?’
Matt nudges her playfully with an elbow. ‘I’ll have you know I’ve remained sober all day, thank you very much.’
‘That’s unusual for you,’ Kate teases. ‘For a Monday.’
He smiles as he swings open the door into the station, holding it for an attractive woman and her canine companion. ‘Ah cute,’ he comments after her.
Kate raises her eyebrows. ‘Is that the dog or the human?’
Matt rolls his eyes. ‘So, there were two stand-out applicants this afternoon, but with very different backgrounds. One’s straight out of university, having graduated in journalism. The other left school at eighteen, took a work experience position at the local paper and never left. She’s having to supplement her minimum wage by working in a bar in the evenings and at weekends.’
‘Okay,’ says Kate.
‘So, who would you plump for?’
‘The one who’s working on a paper,’ says Kate, without hesitation.
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. She really wants it, so much so that she’s prepared to work for next to nothing. I assume she’s writing for the paper?’
‘Yeah, but only at a very local level.’
‘But that doesn’t matter, because you’ll be training her up anyway. You’ll want her to do things your way and it’ll be a hell of a lot easier teaching someone who’s willing to learn versus someone who’s spent the last three years in a classroom and thinks they know everything already.’
‘Speaking from experience, are we?’ he says, smiling.
‘Actually, I did know everything by the time you took me on.’
Matt rolls his eyes in mock exasperation. ‘Or so you thought.’
‘I think you’ll find I taught you things,’ says Kate with a cheeky glint in her eye. ‘Not the other way around.’
Matt laughs. ‘So, you’d do yourself out of a job? You’d take the worker over the slacker?’
‘Oi, just because I went to university doesn’t make me a slacker,’ says Kate, breaking away from Matt to tap in at