‘I . . . erm . . . no.’ The panic of getting past him to put his phone back onto his bedside table is messing with her ability to talk. ‘I had a headache.’
‘But you’re okay now?’
‘Yes,’ she says, thankful that it’s dark and he can’t see the guilt written all over her face.
‘What time is it?’ he asks. ‘I couldn’t find my phone.’
‘Erm, around midnight I think,’ she mumbles. ‘Here, let me help you.’ She scurries past him into the bedroom and rushes round to his side of the bed.
‘It might help if we put the light on,’ he says, flicking the switch.
Kate instantly falls to her hands and knees.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Matt asks.
No, she’s not okay. Her heart’s thumping through her chest and she feels sick at how he will react if he finds her with his phone. Not because he knows there’s anything incriminating on there, but because she’s breached the trust that they’ve always shared.
‘Here it is!’ she exclaims, far too loudly. ‘You must have knocked it onto the floor.’
‘Oh,’ is all he says, but it’s enough to let her know that he doesn’t believe her.
23
Kate
Kate’s sleep is interspersed with vivid dreams of Matt, Lauren and her mum and dad, each of them vying for screen time in her head. They all float in and out, in various guises – unrecognizable as the humans they are, yet it is still somehow immediately obvious who’s who. The only cast member who looks like her real self is Jess, who is ensconced in the corner of a room, beckoning the family members over, one by one, to whisper to them. When it’s Matt’s turn, she holds his face and kisses him, long and deep, all the while looking at Kate.
When the alarm clock goes off, Kate hits the snooze button, hoping that she’ll be thrown back into the dream for just long enough to see what happens in the end. But Matt’s already moaning beside her and she feels an intense hatred for him, still so hurt by what he’d done in the dream that she’s momentarily unable to separate it from reality.
‘I didn’t get a wink of sleep,’ he says, though Kate knows that’s not strictly true, as she heard him quietly snoring at least three times. ‘It’s so bloody hot – there’s just no air.’
Kate sits up slowly, as if trying to fool her body into thinking she doesn’t feel well. She groans, for effect, as she lets her head fall heavily onto her bent knees.
‘Do you feel rough?’ asks Matt, leaning over to her side of the bed to rub her back.
She goes to speak, but clamps her mouth shut and nods instead.
‘Okay, you need to lie back down,’ says Matt. ‘Slowly.’ He supports her as she lowers herself back onto the mattress. ‘I’ll go and get a bucket.’
As Kate closes her eyes, a replay of her dream flickers on the inside of her eyelids, the image of Matt and Jess branding itself on her memory. She hopes, like most dreams, that it will have all but eradicated itself by lunchtime.
‘Here,’ says Matt, fetching in the spare washing-up bowl from under the kitchen sink and laying it down on the floor beside the bed.
It feels like she’s a child again, feigning illness to get off going to school. Her father would take one look at her hot red face, burnt by the radiator, and send her straight back to bed. Her mother wasn’t quite so easy to deceive and would watch her through narrowed eyes as she took her temperature with a thermometer.
‘Why don’t you take the day off?’ says Matt. ‘You can’t possibly drag yourself in like this.’
‘Mmm, I think I might,’ she manages through closed lips.
How ironic that as soon as she makes the decision, a rumbling of nausea circles in the pit of her stomach – like a washing machine on a slow spin.
She watches as Matt gets himself ready for work and can’t help wondering what he’s thinking as he selects the tie he’s going to wear. What would he say if she told him who his junior reporter really was? Would he be surprised? Would he pull her on it? Would he fire her on the spot?
But then Kate is forced to admit to herself that as of yet, Jess hasn’t actually done anything wrong. In fact, she’s probably the model employee, but if she’s expecting Kate to believe