the ticket barrier. ‘I worked my arse off when I was there.’
‘So, you’d definitely go for experience over education?’ asks Matt, as they jump on the escalator.
‘If that’s all that’s separating them, yes.’
‘Okay, on your head be it,’ says Matt. ‘Have you heard anything from your mum or Lauren?’
Kate tells him about this morning, and the DNA match that Lauren is claiming to have found. Just the thought of her putting their personal details online makes Kate’s chest tighten. How could she have been so stupid?
‘It might not be your sister’s finest hour,’ he admits. ‘But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the girl is who she says she is.’
‘How do you mean?’ asks Kate, desperate to find any other scenario than the one that’s whirring around her head, making her feel as if she’s going mad.
‘Well, there’s got to be some semblance of a match there, especially if they’ve used an ancestry website, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the players are playing by the rules.’
Kate looks at him confused. ‘So you’re saying there’s room for error?’
‘Put it like this; these big genealogy sites are not in the habit of making mistakes, otherwise we’d all be running around thinking our mother was our sister and our children weren’t our own.’
Kate can’t help but laugh. When he puts it like that . . .
‘So, it’s safe to say,’ he goes on, ‘that if you’ve uploaded your DNA, you’ll only be shown your proven matches.’
‘O-kay,’ says Kate hesitantly, unsure where he’s going with this, but open to all suggestions.
‘So essentially, the DNA has to have been a match to have brought Lauren and this girl together. But – bear with me here – what if, crazy as it sounds, the girl has somehow cooked the results.’
‘By doing what?’ asks Kate, stopping stock still on the platform.
‘I dunno,’ says Matt, shrugging his shoulders. ‘She might have uploaded your DNA, for example.’
‘What?’ shrieks Kate, the idea too far-fetched for her to take it even remotely seriously.
‘I’m just saying,’ says Matt. ‘There are other ways that a match could have occurred, without her actually being related to you.’
‘But why would anyone go to those kind of lengths?’ asks Kate, her investigative mind beginning to whir at the possibility.
‘They wouldn’t,’ says Matt decisively, as if sensing the runaway train Kate’s just jumped on. ‘And certainly not where you’re concerned because, let’s face it, you’re not exactly an intriguing dynasty that someone would commit forgery to be a part of.’
Kate playfully slaps his arm.
‘I’m just saying that it’s a possibility,’ says Matt. ‘That’s all. You might not want to take this girl at face value.’
She had no intention of doing so. ‘So how come you’re a genealogy expert all of a sudden?’ teases Kate, keen to inject some light-heartedness to lift her mood.
‘Aha,’ says Matt, tapping a finger to his nose conspiratorially. ‘Funnily enough, I had an interesting pitch come through from a freelancer today.’
‘If you’re prepared to tell me about it, it can’t be that interesting,’ says Kate sarcastically.
Matt smiles. ‘Well, it was a feature about police forces uploading DNA from unsolved crimes to genealogy websites in the hope of finding a match to their suspect.’
‘Oh,’ says Kate. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, it got me thinking, what with you finding yourself in this rather unsettling position, and I decided to do a bit of digging.’
Kate looks at him expectantly.
‘It’s already bringing in results in the States, on cold cases from decades ago,’ Matt goes on.
Kate shakes her head. ‘How?’
‘Because despite DNA being left at almost every crime scene, unless the suspect was already on the police database, there was no way of tracking him down. Now, with the help of these websites, the police are able to trace relatives of the suspect and track him down by working backwards through the family tree.’
‘Wow,’ says Kate. ‘So from millions of suspects, they’re now able to narrow it down to one family.’
‘Yep, and some offenders have already been charged and are awaiting trial,’ says Matt as triumphantly as if he’d made the arrests himself.
‘So that means that anyone dead, alive or otherwise has the potential to be identified,’ says Kate.
Matt nods. ‘It’s a game-changer.’
Indeed it is, thinks Kate.
‘So now that Lauren has put herself in this position, what does she make of it?’ Matt asks.
‘She seems pretty set on this girl being the real deal, but that’s because it would suit her to have Dad’s name dragged through the mud.’
Matt pulls a disbelieving face. ‘I know her and your father