“I’d been feeling… not quite right,” I said with a sad face.
“I’m so sorry.”
Silence.
“Mom had a miscarriage once,” Kate told me, saving me from more embarrassment.
I nodded in solidarity. After all, I’d had a miscarriage once, too, so I wasn’t lying exactly, just extending the truth by several years. “There was a lot of blood,” I elaborated.
“Jeez, did you go see a doctor? When did this shit happen?”
I thought about it for a beat. “A couple of days ago, when you were all at work. It happened in the middle of the day. Blood, but not crazy blood, you know. It was manageable. I mean like a heavy period, no more.” To mask the shifty glint in my eyes I focused on the floor and hoped Kate would interpret it for sadness and drop the subject. Sharing intimate details like this felt too close to the bone.
“I am sooo sorry,” she said again.
“When did your mum have a miscarriage?” I wondered if it had been before or after her cancer diagnosis.
“When I was little,” said Kate. “We were all psyched about having a baby brother or sister, but it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”
I felt a stab. I knew what it was like to lose a baby—at least, the beginnings of one. And my brother Rupert’s death was something that had haunted me my entire life. It had shaped me, really. The daughter who had never lived up to her parents’ expectations. The girl who should’ve been born a boy. The “disappointment.”
“Your mum sounds like a very brave woman,” I said. “Raising you on her own, battling with cancer, as she is now. She must be quite something,” I said. “Very valiant. Very courageous.”
It was Kate, now, who looked at the floor. “Battling, yeah.”
“Maybe once you all get settled you can catch up with your studies,” I suggested, changing the topic from her poor ill mother.
“Funny you say that, I was thinking the same thing! It’s tough when you don’t have your own space to study. Hard to even think straight.”
“I know. But now you can. Like Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s Own. You have that now.”
Kate took another of my dresses from my arms, and we continued our journey to my new room at the southern end of the house, to the swimming pool side. It was too cold to swim now, but there was a Jacuzzi, which I’d have all to myself. Or maybe not. Maybe the triplets would use it too. Wonderful on a starry night. This room was where my mother had stayed. I’d given her the most private bedroom in the house. I doubted she’d be back, though, now that Dad’s dementia had taken hold. She hated Cliffside anyway.
“Why did you lie to us about being pregnant?” Kate asked, out of the blue.
My smile froze into a grimace. “What?”
“There’s no way a pregnant woman would be taking so many painkillers. You know, for your ankle. Or drinking. I saw that empty bottle in your room, hidden under the bed.”
I stared at her, not knowing whether to laugh or explode.
“It hurts when you don’t tell us the truth,” Kate said, biting her lip. “We need to feel trust.”
A beat of silence. I didn’t know how to reply. Luckily, after a minute or so, she changed the subject. “Were you a good student?” she asked.
“Yes, I—I—slogged hard.”
She dumped the heavy load of hangers and dresses on the bed. “Did you go to college?”
“Yes. Yes, I did. I went to Exeter University. Studied Law.”
“Really?” she said, her eyes wide with surprise. “I would’ve never guessed. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re smart and all, but—”
“I don’t seem the type?”
“You’re just… you don’t… I can’t imagine you fighting in a courtroom, that’s all. You’re too—”
“I wasn’t an attorney, but a solicitor,” I explained, still shamed by Kate catching me out with my pregnancy lie.
“A solicitor?”
I laughed nervously. “I know, it sounds dodgy, doesn’t it? ‘Soliciting,’ as if my job is to stand on street corners in a miniskirt. I have no idea why it’s called that in Britain.”
“So what was… is your job, exactly? What the hell’s a solicitor?”
“In the UK, there’s a difference. You’re either the type of lawyer who takes a bar exam and gets to argue in court—to prosecute or defend—or you’re behind a desk negotiating contracts. I was the paper-pushing kind.”
“You make it sound so, like, unglamorous.”
“It’s hard work, pushing papers around, believe you me. Let me know if