suspected murderer and the parents of someone who was once on The Voice.
She feels a bubbling sensation in the pit of her tummy and smiles knowingly to herself, hoping that maybe it won’t be too long before she can take a break from both.
‘Okay, so follow the celebrity lead, Kate, and Lara, maybe you can run alongside to develop the true crime element or see if you can find a strong real-life example of how Joe Bloggs is using an ancestry website to find his long-lost mother or something.’
Kate can’t help but flinch as Lara, the features editor, nods enthusiastically and jots a note down on her pad.
‘That’s all,’ says Lee, standing up. ‘Back to work.’
Despite having tons to do, Kate finds herself daydreaming for the rest of the day, unable to concentrate on the simplest of things. Even Karen, her deputy, telling her about a Tinder date she had last night, which Kate is usually keen to hear about, leaves her bored and uninterested. The minutes feel like hours as the clock ticks slowly towards four o’clock, the time she can ring the clinic for the results. Yet as soon as her phone displays 16.00, she suddenly feels reluctant to call, knowing that once she does, she will no longer be in limbo. If she doesn’t get the answer she wants, she’d now almost prefer to be in this state of uncertainty, where there’s still a chance that her life is about to change. Where she can dare to believe that this time next year, she’ll be out of this job, holding her longed-for baby with another twelve months separating her from her father’s passing.
She knows that the pain of losing him will never leave her, but as each week comes and goes, a tiny part of her starts to heal. Sometimes she can almost feel herself being sewn back together again – as if a needle is darning the holes that have been left by his death. Yet now, with Jess turning up, it feels as if they’re all about to be unpicked again.
Kate takes her phone and grabs a tissue from her handbag, knowing that whichever way this phone call goes, she will probably need one. She walks through the office painstakingly slowly, almost willing someone to stop and talk to her – anything to hold off the inevitable for a few more minutes. Even Stan, the normally-chatty post guy, who she bumps into on the way out of the building, lets her pass without comment.
‘Bloody typical,’ she says out loud, as she walks through a throng of smokers adding to the already polluted streets of E14. She holds her breath as the clouds of smoke billow around her, forcing her to step off the kerb. A black cab toots its horn and she holds up an apologetic hand. She has to apologize again when the cabbie pulls over next to her, thinking she’s hailed him.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I don’t need . . . I was just . . .’ He tuts and joins the line of traffic again.
She hopes that once she’s made this call, her brain will return to its usual levels of awareness.
Her fingers fumble for the numbers on the keypad and she waits for the familiar options to present themselves:
‘Welcome to Women’s Health at Woolwich Hospital.
Press one for appointments.
Press two for test results.
Press three to speak to a doctor.
Press four for anything else.’
Kate’s hand hovers over the phone and she takes a deep breath before pressing two.
‘Women’s Health, can I help you?’ asks a monotone voice.
Kate wonders how you can sound so miserable when your job is to relay good news. But then she catches herself as she realizes that more often than not, it’s bad news this woman has to dispense. Kate wonders where she’s going to feature in the stats.
‘Oh hi,’ she says, cheerily, as if it will make a difference to the outcome of the conversation. ‘I’m calling for pregnancy test results.’
‘What’s the name?’ asks the woman.
‘Kate Walker.’
‘Date of birth?’
‘Fourth of August 1984.’
‘Hold on,’ says the woman, sounding as if it’s like every other call she’s received today.
What you’re about to say next will dictate my future, Kate wants to scream down the line. She thinks of Matt and feels a flutter in her chest. Our future.
She chews on her lip as she listens to a piped version of Beethoven, watching the people in Costa Coffee on the other side of the street as they go about their everyday lives.