The Half Sister Read online

  SANDIE JONES

  THE HALF SISTER

  Contents

  1. Kate

  2. Kate

  3. Kate

  4. Lauren

  5. Lauren

  6. Kate

  7. Lauren

  8. Kate

  9. Lauren

  10. Kate

  11. Lauren

  12. Kate

  13. Lauren

  14. Kate

  15. Lauren

  16. Kate

  17. Lauren

  18. Kate

  19. Lauren

  20. Kate

  21. Lauren

  22. Kate

  23. Kate

  24. Kate

  25. Lauren

  26. Kate

  27. Lauren

  28. Kate

  29. Lauren

  30. Kate

  31. Lauren

  32. Kate

  33. Kate

  34. Lauren

  35. Kate

  36. Lauren

  37. Kate

  38. Lauren

  39. Kate

  40. Kate

  41. Lauren

  42. Kate

  43. Kate

  44. Lauren

  45. Kate

  46. Lauren

  47. Kate

  48. Lauren

  49. Kate

  50. One year later

  Acknowledgements

  For Oliver

  You make me proud every day

  Keep being you

  1

  Kate

  Kate sees the familiar nameplate on Dr Williams’ office door and feels a knot in her stomach. She doesn’t know why, after all this time, it still affects her like this – she should be used to it by now. But every time she walks through his door she’s filled with hope, and every time she walks back out, she feels utter despair and sadness, unable to believe that fate could be so cruel.

  As if he knows what she’s thinking, Matt grabs hold of her hand as they sit in the clinic’s waiting room. Squeezing it, as if he is somehow able to transfer his boundless optimism onto her.

  He kisses her head as she leans into him. ‘I think this might be the one,’ he says, over-enthusiastically, as if believing it hard enough will prove him right.

  ‘It’s certainly the last one,’ she says wearily.

  ‘Let’s see,’ says Matt with forced joviality.

  ‘Kate!’ exclaims Dr Williams as he opens his door.

  She should call him Ben, as he’s requested a hundred times. But using his first name means she knows him well, and if she knows him well, it would be admitting how long this has been going on for.

  ‘Doctor,’ she says, as she stands up and walks towards him with an outstretched arm.

  ‘Good to see you,’ says Dr Williams. ‘Matt, how are you?’

  The two men greet each other as if they’re old friends, meeting at a football match. Kate finds herself wondering at what point the bonhomie will be replaced with the business in hand. She suspects it’s when her legs are in stirrups and said hand is gloved.

  ‘So, are we all ready?’ asks Dr Williams, now seated in front of them at his desk. He doesn’t look up from his computer screen to see Matt’s determined nod.

  ‘Okay, so all your numbers are looking good,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘We’ve identified the strongest embryo which, I’m pleased to say, is of the highest grade.’

  Kate feels Matt looking at her, knowing that he’ll be beaming from ear to ear, but she doesn’t have the energy to return his eagerness because she’s heard it all before. ‘Highest grade’, ‘4AAA blastocyst’, ‘It doesn’t get much better than this’ – all had been bandied around during their last three attempts, but it hadn’t made that line go blue on the pregnancy test, had it?

  Matt’s enthusiasm had propped Kate up at first, when test after test proved inconclusive. She’d relied on his positivity to bring her back around the right way after they were told that the reason they couldn’t get pregnant was due to ‘unexplained infertility’.

  ‘It means there’s nothing wrong,’ he’d said as he practically skipped out of Dr Williams’ office three years ago.

  Kate didn’t have the heart to tell him that it also meant that there was ‘nothing right’.

  Instead, she’d adapted her diet, stopped drinking, and stood on her head after sex. But nothing had resulted in them being able to conceive, hence they now find themselves in the clinic. Again.

  Once Kate’s lying on her back with her legs in the air, she sings Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in her head, to distract herself from the fact that there is a doctor, an embryologist, a nurse and a medical student all staring intently at her lady parts. Galileo Galileo, she hums, in an attempt to take herself to another place.

  ‘Once you’ve had a baby, a smear test will be like just going to the hairdressers,’ her sister Lauren had offered when they’d inadvertently run into each other at the doctors. Kate hadn’t wanted to share her infertility struggles, so had been caught on the hop. Of all the things she could have said she was there for, a smear was the first thing that popped into her head. She could have kicked herself.

  You would have thought that an older sister with three children would be the perfect antidote to the situation that Kate finds herself in. Someone who would sympathize, offer unbiased advice and a shoulder to cry on. But Lauren is not that person, or perhaps, more to the point, Kate doesn’t see that person in her. Instead, she sees a woman who is living the life she had assumed she’d be living, and sisters or not, Lauren’s perfect little set-up is not the kind of support network Kate feels she needs to be immersed in right now. And anyway, she thinks, how could she possibly understand what I’m going through when she only has to look at her husband to get pregnant?

  She jumps as she feels a sharp pain in her groin.

  ‘Okay, so we’re inserting the embryo now,’ says Dr Williams, though Kate doesn’t know if he’s talking to her or the eager student, who can’t seem to get close enough to see what’s happening.

  As it turns out, it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been poked and prodded, it will never feel like going to the hairdressers.

  She wants to push the invasive hands and instruments away, restore her dignity and tell them she’s had enough of being treated like a laboratory rat. But then she looks at Matt, with his gentle smile and hopeful eyes. She could so easily take herself down the why is life so unfair? route, but in the rare moments of clarity, when she knows that having a good life isn’t dependent on having a child, she is so grateful to have him.

  She’d always wanted a baby with the husband she loves, more than anything in the world. Had been consumed by it at one point. But the pain and constant disappointment were taking their toll. If she’d had her way, they would have stopped at the third IVF attempt. She was exhausted, both physically and mentally; her nervous energy depleted by the tales she’d had to spin to friends and work colleagues who raised a knowing eyebrow whenever she refused an alcoholic drink.

  ‘This is it,’ she’d said to Matt, a couple of nights ago, as they were snuggled on the couch watching TV.

  She felt him stiffen and sit up straighter. ‘What, this is our last chance?’ he asked, seemingly floored.

  Hadn’t he noticed how tired she was? Seen her desolation every time they looked at a blank pregnancy test? Couldn’t he see how their whole lives had been taken over by the process of getting pregnant?

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ she’d said quietly.

  ‘But we . . .’ he stuttered. ‘Darling, we’re so close now – I know it. We can do this.’

  Something inside her had snapped. ‘You keep saying we, as if we’re going through this together.’

  He’d looked at her,
hurt. ‘Aren’t we?’

  She chastised herself for taking her frustrations out on the person she loves the most. But isn’t that always the way?

  She thinks back to how carefree they’d once been. How they’d met on the newsroom floor of the Gazette and bonded over mutual banter about a loathsome editor. It had made the day go quicker, made the shifts under the editor’s watch seem a little easier to bear. Whenever he’d march into the open-plan office, shouting his morning mantra, ‘Who are we going to throw to the lions today?’, Kate and Matt would race to send each other an email with ‘YOU?’ in the subject heading. It was a regrettable day when the editor himself received Matt’s email.

  ‘I’ll miss working with you,’ said Matt, as he and Kate sat in the pub ruing their stupidity. ‘But every cloud has a silver lining.’

  She’d thought he was referring to his new job at rival newspaper the Echo. She couldn’t stop grinning when he added, ‘Because now I can ask you out.’

  They’d spent blissful evenings trawling the pubs of South London and lazy weekend mornings reading the papers in bed. But now she can’t remember the last time they’d done either.

  Instead, they’d been referring to ovulation charts before they made love and subliminally avoiding social events with their pregnant and blessed-with-children friends, which seemed to be just about everyone they knew.

  In their effort to have a baby, they’d lost the ability to be spontaneous. Ironically, they’d given up what should have been the halcyon days of pre-parenthood to the restrictions of being responsible for another human, despite the painful absence of one.

  ‘Done!’ says Dr Williams with a flourish. He puts the catheter back on the tray and pings his gloves off.

  ‘So, we’ve got two more in the freezer?’ asks Matt. ‘Before we have to go through egg retrieval again, I mean?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got two more good quality embryos left to go on this cycle.’

  ‘But even if they don’t work, we can still go again, can’t we?’ Matt continues.

  Kate doesn’t want to have this conversation. She has an urgent need to empty her painfully full bladder and all the time there’s a viable chance of a baby being inside her, she refuses to acknowledge that they’ll have to go through this again. Because that would mean that the little human being who is having to work so hard right now isn’t going to make it.

  ‘Let’s concentrate on the here and now,’ says Dr Williams, as Kate swings her legs down to the floor. ‘So, just carry on as normal, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks’ time for the blood test to see where we’re at.’

  Kate looks to Matt and smiles. She can’t help but notice that he’s got his fingers crossed.

  2

  Kate

  ‘So, no Matt today?’ asks Rose, Kate’s mum, as she bustles into the dining room carrying a tray of roast potatoes.

  Lauren deftly lifts one out as Rose sets the tray down and bites into it, groaning with pleasure as it crunches.

  ‘Afraid not,’ says Kate. ‘He got called into the office at the last minute.’

  ‘Ah well, no bother,’ says Rose, going back into the kitchen. ‘I’ll do you a plate to take home.’

  ‘So, what’s the big scoop of the day?’ asks Lauren’s husband Simon, as he carves into the beef joint that’s resting in the middle of the table. Kate can’t help but feel that he’s taking her dad’s job away from him. ‘Or are you not allowed to tell?’ he goes on.

  ‘I could –’ Kate lowers her voice – ‘but then I’d have to kill you.’

  He laughs heartily at the joke he thinks she’s made, but, truth be known, nothing would give her more pleasure. She and Matt had often lain in bed thinking of ways to commit the perfect murder, and her sister’s husband always topped the list of potential victims. He’s tolerated rather than liked, and if it wasn’t for her mother wanting to keep the Sunday-lunch ritual going, Kate could quite easily never see him again. But hey, you can’t choose your family.

  ‘Come on, seriously, I wanna know,’ says Simon. ‘Do you and Matt share stories or are you bitter rivals? Fighting each other to the death for the best ones.’

  Kate wonders whether he’d prefer to hear about the imminent cabinet reshuffle or the prostitute who’s claiming to have kept a Premiership footballer up the night before a cup final, both of which she knows Matt is working on. She decides not to give Simon the satisfaction of either.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly divulge our pillow talk,’ she says. ‘Lauren, pass me the carrots, will you?’

  ‘I can’t remember the last time we were all together,’ says Lauren.

  Kate can. It was three weeks ago, and on the way home, her and Matt had discussed how they might be able to stretch the weekly lunches to maybe every other week.

  ‘I only do it for Mum,’ Kate had said. ‘You know how she loves having us all over.’

  ‘I know,’ Matt had replied. ‘But it’s dictating our weekends. I don’t get much time off as it is, and when I do, no disrespect, I’d rather us two do something together.’

  But in the last three weeks, that hadn’t happened either, as Matt had worked, then Kate had been at a film festival, and now, this weekend, he’s had to go into the office again.

  ‘It’s just that everyone’s busy,’ says Kate.

  ‘Everyone but me,’ laughs Lauren. ‘I’ll be sitting at this table waiting for the roasties until my dying day.’

  ‘Well, maybe you need to get a life!’ Simon laughs.

  It’s funny how words are dependent on who says them. If Matt had said that, Kate would have taken it in the spirit it was meant; banter between two people who gave each other as good as they got. But from Simon’s lips, the joke is lost, turning a flippant comment into something that sounds far more disrespectful.

  The flash of disdain that crosses Lauren’s eyes tells Kate she’s not the only one who feels it.

  ‘I’d imagine being a mother keeps you very busy,’ Kate interjects.

  Lauren rolls her eyes. ‘You have no idea.’

  You’re right, I don’t, thinks Kate.

  ‘In all honesty, now that I’m back on maternity leave, I don’t know how I had time to go to work,’ Lauren says, laughing.

  ‘It’s all about time management,’ says Simon. ‘Imagine Kate when she has children; it’ll be like a military operation.’ He laughs again.

  ‘Not everyone wants children,’ says Lauren, and Kate can’t help but feel dismayed at how misplaced and ill thought out her words are.

  She fixes an insincere grin on her face, wondering how much longer she has to keep up with this charade of happy families. If Matt were here, he’d at least take some of the flak for her, stepping in to bat away the barbs.

  ‘Some women want careers instead,’ Lauren goes on.

  Kate struggles to keep her expression neutral, but it feels like her cheek’s been slapped. ‘I don’t think you have to make a choice between having a career and having children,’ she says.

  Simon looks at her with an amused expression. ‘You can’t have both.’

  ‘Why not?’ asks Kate brusquely. ‘We’re perfectly capable. Just because we’re the ones who have babies shouldn’t mean our careers have to suffer whilst we have them.’

  Simon rolls his eyes.

  Kate looks to Lauren, shaking her head in the hope that she’ll get some sisterly support, but Lauren has turned away. Kate wonders when her sister became so spineless when faced with her husband’s old-fashioned views.

  Up until their first child, Noah, was born five years ago, Lauren had dedicated her life to bringing other people’s babies into the world. In fact, Kate couldn’t remember a time when her sister wasn’t surrounded by children. She’d babysat for family friends as a teenager and had studied midwifery as soon as she’d finished secondary school, which was why she was well placed to make comments about forgetting your dignity when you give birth. Logically, Kate knew she should take her sister’s words as they were probably intended, yet
she couldn’t help but feel they were aimed at her personally.

  Simon sighs theatrically. ‘The proof’s in the pudding. Someone like Lauren, who has worked for the good old NHS for fifteen years, isn’t as high up as her peers who have chosen not to have children. Fact.’

  ‘When do you think you’ll go back to work?’ asks Rose in an attempt to change the subject, although Kate is quite sure that she already knows the precise date. Lauren and their mum are close like that.

  Lauren throws a glance at her husband. ‘I’m not due back until the end of the summer, but if we need the money, I might go back sooner.’

  ‘Let’s hope that she still has a job by then,’ says Simon. ‘If the current government have their way, the NHS won’t last for much longer.’

  Now, you just wait a minute. This government have gone all-out to secure the future of our healthcare system.

  Those are the words she knows her conservative father would normally have said, but there’s a deafening silence. Kate looks at the chair he’d once occupied, now sitting woefully empty in the corner of the room, and feels a very real physical tug on her heart.

  It’s coming up to a year since he died, yet Kate can still hear him, still see him, sitting at his place around the table. They’d left his chair empty for the first six months, none of them able to remove it from where they gathered every Sunday, but gradually they’d moved a little this way and that, shuffling ever closer, until suddenly it had been banished to where only cobwebs grew. Kate had been a reluctant visitor ever since, finding the slow removal of the man she adored too painful to accept. Where she’d once looked forward to the family getting together, excited to hear about her father’s week at work and revelling in the heated debates between him and Matt, it had now become an effort. Without her ally, the dynamics seem to have shifted, and the once light-hearted, evenly matched pairings of her and her father versus Lauren and their mother now feel heavily weighted in her sister’s favour.

  Whenever Kate calls her mother, Lauren seems to be adding her two pennies’ worth in the background. And on the odd occasion Kate’s dropped in to see the children, Rose is there, preparing dinner in Lauren’s kitchen. Maybe it’s always been this way, but now that her father isn’t round at her flat, helping her out with odd jobs, Kate notices it more.