in foster care together until she was eighteen and came here.’
‘What is this place?’ asks Kate. ‘Some kind of halfway house?’
‘Yeah, it’s supposed to ease us into independent living, but once you come here, you very rarely leave.’
‘Unless you’re Harriet,’ says Kate.
Finn smiles. ‘Unless you’re Harriet,’ she says, before her face suddenly clouds over with worry. ‘But they don’t know that she’s gone. You won’t tell them, will you? They’ll throw me out if they know she’s not living here, and she’ll get into trouble.’
Kate feels genuinely sorry for her, but her sympathy doesn’t run to Jess. Why should it? When she’s turned up out of the blue, wreaking havoc on her life. Everything she’s said has been a lie and everything she’s doing seems specifically targeted to inflict as much grief and pain as she possibly can.
‘So, what dream is she chasing in London?’ Kate asks casually.
‘Oh, she’s got big plans,’ says Finn, with a smile that creases her eyes. ‘She’s got a great job, a new boyfriend . . . As you probably know, Harriet goes for what she wants . . .’
Kate smiles tightly.
‘And usually gets it,’ says Finn, laughing.
Kate shivers involuntarily at the realization that it’s her family that she’s looking to get it from. Whatever ‘it’ is.
27
Lauren
Lauren’s in the shower, with shampoo in her eyes, when she hears the ping of a text on her phone. She grabs at the towel hanging over the glass screen in an attempt to clear her vision, but the soap is still smarting as she blindly reaches out of the cubicle to where she’d left her phone balancing on the basin. She can’t find it and risks a peek to give her some perspective. It’s not there.
‘Who’s Sheila?’ asks Simon.
She ducks her head back under the water, buying time. Shit!
‘What’s that?’ she calls out, as nonchalantly as she can manage, even though her insides feel like they’ve been set alight.
‘Sheila’s asking about tomorrow night,’ says Simon, the tone of his voice loaded with cynicism.
Lauren turns the thermostat to cold in the hope that it’s going to shock her brain into working. ‘One sec,’ she says, as she rinses the final traces of shampoo out.
The extra time that she thought she had is cut short when Simon turns the shower off and hands her a towel.
‘Let’s have a look,’ she says, holding out her hand, the water still dripping from her hair.
Simon places her phone purposefully into her palm, its content weighing more than the device itself. He stands there, unmoving, watching her.
‘Oh,’ she says, seeing the two worded message of Tomorrow night? ‘That’s Sheila from work.’
‘From the hospital?’ asks Simon.
She needs to think fast, but she feels wrong-footed, and vulnerable with no clothes on.
‘Yeah, one of the girls was asking if any of us were about to cover her shift.’
‘But you’re on maternity leave,’ says Simon gruffly.
‘I know, it was just a round robin, and I guess I must still be on the list. Sheila’s obviously checking that it’s tomorrow they were talking about.’
‘I’ve not heard you mention a Sheila before,’ says Simon, eyes narrowed.
‘She came just as I was going on maternity leave,’ says Lauren, covering her face with a towel as she dries her hair. It’s easier to lie when he can’t see her eyes.
‘Did she come to your leaving drinks?’
Lauren does a quick mental scan of all the midwives sat around the table at the pub. They’re all women Simon would know, and the two he didn’t, he made a point of talking to when he came to pick her up, an hour early.
‘I don’t think so,’ she says warily.
‘Well maybe you need to let whoever needs to know that you’re not looking for any extra shifts. I’ll do it.’ He starts to thumb instructions on the screen and Lauren makes a grab for it.
‘Woah,’ says Simon, pulling it away and holding it up in the air, out of her reach. ‘What are you so tetchy about?’
She’s not, because she knows she’s deleted every single message that ‘Sheila’ has ever sent, and all of her replies. But there’s still that niggle, no matter how tiny, that she hasn’t, and the thought of Simon seeing it sends her off-kilter. She gets hotter and hotter as she runs through their most recent communication in her head:
Sheila: I need to see you
Lauren: I may be able to do Thursday night
Sheila: Seriously?
Lauren: Maybe. I’m not sure yet
Sheila: I can’t stop thinking about you
Lauren: I’ll let you know
Sheila: Don’t make me