The Lies We Tell

For mum

Prologue

Surrey Hills, July 1989

Two girls walked ant-like towards the copse in search of shelter as the sun crept towards its highest point in the sky. Everything, from the parched footpath across the heath it had taken them three quarters of an hour to traverse to the scabbed earth beneath their plimsolls, shimmered like beaten silver in the pulsing heat. It was the hottest day of the year by far. A day dense with the drumming of insect battalions; its air tainted by an acrid tang like distant smoke. An intense heat that made the cotton of their sundresses suck their thighs.

‘Come on Kat, this way,’ urged Jude, the taller of the two and clearly the leader. Her full-bodied voice was self-assured. Confident her companion would follow as she always did, she pressed on without breaking her stride. Her steps were punctuated by frequent shakes of her head to toss loose the raven swathe of hair from the hot skin at the back of her neck. For both girls had quickly tired of tying back their hair school-style now they no longer had to.

With an anxious frown, the second girl paused and fumbled for a moment to disentangle damp fabric from pale skin flecked with the telltale blotches of nettle burn. It had taken longer than she hoped to retrace their tracks to the spot where they sunbathed the previous day and she felt light-headed and weary. Slipping the tin water bottle out of the side pocket of her rucksack, she hastily drained the last mouthful of body-warm fluid then straightened up to run a sticky palm through her bobbed, chestnut hair.

‘Wait for me,’ Kat called in the truculent whine of a heel-dragging child. But Jude was impervious. Single-minded, too, as she strode on towards the copse.

With a final rub to the back of her legs, Kat set off in her wake. What was Jude’s problem? she wondered, miserably. For her so-called friend had blown hot and cold since before the exams. If Kat only knew what she’d done wrong she could make things better. But she hadn’t the courage to ask Jude direct, not like that, for fear her friend would interpret this as a sign of weakness. So she’d decided to keep quiet. To smother the resentment now bloating her insides. Because she knew – and had done since their first meeting two years earlier – that if they fell out she, not Jude, would come off worst.

The copse was a welcome blemish on the heath’s gnarled face, a kind of sanctuary. Yet the world inside was thick and sticky; the air beyond full-blown. Above the ragged branches now shading their heads, criss-crossed vapour trails looked like wire threads.

Kat rubbed her eyes with heat-swollen fingers. Ahead she would soon see the tiny clearing just beyond the clump of rhododendron where Jude was headed. But try as she might to catch up, she was forced to halt every few steps by limbs of bramble trailing across her way. Then, just before she could draw level, she was halted by an unexpected sound. A dull metallic click, undeniable though barely heard. The sound of a lighter. A Zippo perhaps like the one her brother, Andrew, used to have.

At one with the copse’s dank stillness, blood pounding her skull, Kat’s ears strained for further clues. Despite the heat she shivered. What was it they were told on their arrival at the outwards bound centre at Gallows Hill? To remain in pairs. Stick to the designated footpaths. Watch out for adders. Keep at hand their emergency whistles. What a joke it had all seemed at the time.

Yet since she and Jude first visited the copse earlier in the week, a vague sense of unease had dogged Kat like a distant echo. Earlier, out on the wide expanse of open heath, she’d felt vulnerable; exposed. Then, once inside the copse, she’d been reluctant to follow Jude’s lead and strip down to her pants to sunbathe – for fear of being seen.

Always the timid one, just like Jude was always leader. Though that was only part of the story, wasn’t it? For aside from all the fuss that had been going on at home in recent weeks, there was how Jude’s behaviour towards her had changed. Kat had grown sore from the poison tip of her friend’s ill will. The way Jude looked at her sometimes through angry, slitty eyes. The things she said, quite unprovoked. Those barbed grenades, meticulously lobbed then swiftly defused by a jovial dig or encouraging smile.

Now, with urgent eyes, Kat scanned the barricade of foliage encircling her. Until, a beat later, she heard another sound. A muffled cough, low in timbre. Male. Someone else was in the copse. Close by, too. Unseen. A realisation that yanked Kat’s world inside out, triggering her charge back towards the footpath.

Running fast, she barely felt the twigs and thorns tearing into her limbs; the ground, pitted with knotted roots and jagged stones, jarring her body. Or how the undergrowth was starting to thin. Not daring to look behind her for fear of slowing her pace, Kat headed towards the lunar light of the open heath. But as she hit the dusty path dumb panic was replaced by the searing pain of rational thought: Where was Jude?

Casting an urgent glance over her shoulder and seeing no one behind, Kat stopped.

The copse was still; the day silent, apart from the sound of her lungs rasping the soupy air. She slipped off the canvas rucksack Andrew had lent her. Let her fingertips skim pale skin beneath her arms where the webbing had chafed. What had possessed her to bring her sketch pad, watercolours tin and box of pencils? Still panting, she took four or five deep breaths then pinched the stitch ripping into her side.

‘So. Here we are, then, thrown together by fate!’ Tears of relief poked Kat’s eyes as, straightening up, she saw Jude leaning against a nearby tree. Her arms were loosely folded. Her face was calm; her expression almost serene. A cream-coloured flower freshly picked from a nearby rhododendron nestled in her hair. ‘Hey,’ Jude continued in a languid drawl. ‘What’s got you all steamed up?’

‘Where were you?’ Kat gasped.

‘In the clearing. I came looking for you when you didn’t come.’ A shard of something hard glinted in Jude’s pale grey eyes. ‘Why, what’s the matter?’

‘We have to leave. Now,’ said Kat, reaching for her bag. ‘Come on.’

‘But we’ve only just got—’

‘Now.’

Amused by the unfamiliar urgency in Kat’s voice, Jude shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll just go and get my…’ But her words were lost as she turned away and stepped back into the undergrowth.

‘No. Wait!’

Yanking Andrew’s rucksack back over her shoulders, Kat plunged into the bushes towards the spot where Jude had just been standing. Once inside the depths of foliage it was hard to ignore the tiny flies as white as ash that clung to the leaves; the fetid air that hung heavy with the smell of something rotten.

With mouth clamped shut, barely daring to breathe, Kat parted the branches and saw her companion adjusting the fastening of her bag. Slipping a strap over her sunburnt shoulder, Jude rose to her feet. But as she straightened up her body froze, her attention snagged by something in the tight-lipped bushes. A vague movement perhaps, or an unexpected noise. Shadow shifted in the leafy darkness as a man stepped into view.

Fearful of revealing herself, Kat struggled to stifle her cry. But neither figure before her seemed to have noticed as they stood just a couple of feet apart. Face to face, they waited for what felt like a lifetime until, without warning, the man lunged forwards and grabbed Jude by the neck. Deftly, he clamped his other arm around her waist.

One moment Jude was standing upright, mannequin-still, the next her slender frame was crumpling beneath his superior force. Cream flecks of petal tangled from her hair. The strap of her dress slipped loose off one shoulder. The stranger’s face pressed against her ear as if poised to share some intimate confidence. A tense flinch signalled her mute acquiescence before he roughly tugged her back towards the bushes.

‘Run, Jude! Run!’ bellowed Kat, slapped back to her senses by the sudden brutality of it. But it was too late. One minute Jude was there, the next the foliage was closing around her like a final curtain.

Chapter 1

London, July 2013

She wakes with a jolt, her heart pounding, swallows hard then winces at the acid taste of her throat. Shouldn’t she be used to this by now, the persistence of memory? Yet it’s not surprise Katy feels, but a familiar downward tug on her spirits that comes this same time each summer, year after year, until the day passes and the shadow of it retreats between the cracks in her protective shell.

‘Hey, are you OK?’ Michael whispers softly in her ear.

Though his breath warms her face she keeps her eyes firmly shut; wills him to believe she’s still sleeping. To leave her alone. Morning will come soon enough and then they can talk, but not now, she thinks as a bead of sweat trickles down one side of her cheek. The night is heavy – too close even for a sheet. But lying beside him naked on her back, she feels vulnerable. Exposed.

Resisting the urge to roll over, Katy listens to Michael’s breath as he undresses. Feels the mattress dip as he lowers himself down beside her. Then he tries again, gently squeezing her shoulder this time. Getting no response, he runs his hand downwards and strokes her breast. His touch is light but determined and despite herself she feels the nipple harden. Strengthening her resolve, she lies still. Registers the smell of cigarette smoke in his hair. Wonders about the time. Well past midnight from the sporadic pulse of distant traffic through the open sash, she guesses. Where did he go after leaving the pub? Back in twenty minutes he texted, but that must have been at least an hour ago. As Katy rolls away and onto her side, Michael’s disappointment is tangible.

‘Then you won’t mind if I take matters in hand, then,’ he murmurs.

The mattress begins to shift rhythmically in time to the movement of his hand, like a tiny boat on a swelling tide. Sweat wells at the base of her hairline but Katy resists the urge to wipe it dry as his body stiffens and the rhythm grows more intense. Then, at last, a muffled gasp marks the breaking of the wave and he lies spent and still beside her until his breathing returns to normal and, at last, he falls asleep.

Shifting back onto her front Katy carefully positions her arms and legs so they aren’t touching any other part of her body. Or his. Stifled by the dull weight of the city’s night time heat, she marvels at the fact that little more than two months ago it was snowing. That this time last year, vast swathes of the country were being lashed by torrential rain. Further evidence of a displaced Gulf Stream, the papers said when they weren’t bemoaning the latest austerity measures or the sickening situation in Syria.

Turning her head towards the bedside clock, Katy’s eyes sift the grainy darkness. 2:07a.m. Wednesday July 3, the digits taunt like angry eyes. Can it really be that long ago? Over twenty years. More time has passed since that distant summer day than how old she was when she last saw Jude. She thinks about this for a moment then tries to erase it from her mind, but it’s too late. Now she’s wide awake and in the instant she knows it recalls, with a sinking heart, the big morning she has ahead at Janssen’s, the design agency in Victoria where she’s worked for the past six years.

Following a recent promotion her boss Sally-Anne, the company’s UK managing director, has asked Katy to present the strategy behind a new corporate identity for a top five high street bank to Janssen’s founder and four of his senior management team who are flying in from Amsterdam. The redesign is likely to be as controversial as it’s so far been top secret when it goes live, thanks to the State bail-out that’s kept the bank afloat since the 2008 crash. A reluctant public speaker, Katy has been dreading the presentation – though she knows the morning will provide an opportunity to shine, if she can master her nerves. For she loves her job and the meritocratic nature of the world she works in. A creative environment in which a self-starter like Sally-Anne can rise to the top propelled by street sense and stubborn determination rather than formal qualifications. Unlike banking, the dusty realm her father, Charles, had always hoped she’d follow into for a ‘proper’ career.

Katy stares at the dark mass of Michael’s back. Is he already asleep? Then, as if on cue, the shape beside her emits a deep sigh, blindly rearranges itself then starts to snore with a soft rumble on the inward breath then a low whistle on the outward. It’s a cartoonish sound that, despite the late hour and her eagerness to sleep, makes her want to laugh.

On the floor beside her bed is the pocket radio Katy keeps for restless nights like this. Reaching down with her hand, she pats the floor for a moment until she finds it, tucks in the tiny ear-pieces, then turns it on to hear a late night phone-in debating the risk climate change poses to indigenous insect species. Gently, Katy rests her fingertips on Michael’s hip as the presenter bemoans an infestation of ants in his ground floor flat. Carefully, she adjusts her other arm, placing her right hand on the barely perceptible doming of her belly.

Closing her eyes, she finds herself back by the canal near where she once used to live. Picnicking with her brother, mum and dad. Lying on her front, head resting on her hands, watching soldier ants. A meticulous procession marching in time to the bitter beat of parents’ arguing.

Michael is lying spreadeagled in the middle of the mattress as Katy wakes just before the alarm a few hours later. Careful not to disturb him, she disentangles herself from the knotted earphones, turns off the alarm then settles back onto the pillow to observe his slumbering form.

How she loves the early morning contradiction of his body. Its strength and vulnerability. The decisive jaw line and the baby softness of the skin. The soft tuft of armpit hair she yearns for yet dares not touch for fear of how grumpy he will be if she wakes him too soon. Her eyes pan down his body past the firm contour of his undulating chest, the nest of dark hair below, the rounded firmness of his thighs before settling on the symbol tattooed on the small, triangular piece of skin just beneath his right ankle. It is a cross, arms bent at right angles, with a tiny dot nestled within each quadrant.

He had it done long before they met on a night out in Sydney, or was it Hong Kong – he could never quite remember. My mate’s idea of a laugh, though I can’t say I got the joke, is all he’d said, dismissively. Then one day, with nothing better to do, Katy had searched on Google to discover it to be an ancient spiritual symbol still widely used throughout Asia. But when she mentioned this to Michael later he’d seemed indifferent. Reluctant to push him, she hadn’t mentioned it again. Isn’t everyone entitled to a little secret?

Restless, Katy slips out of bed. Stepping over the clothes from the night before which Michael has left scattered on the floor as usual, she picks up a discarded sarong and wraps it around herself before padding downstairs to the bathroom on the second floor to shower.

Standing at the mirror a few minutes later, damp-haired and flush-faced, she scrutinises the freckles that always come with summer for any sign of change before applying moisturiser then a dusting of bronzer. She turns her attention to her eyes. They are slate-blue, a colour quick to transmit whatever mood she is in: dull grey when tired, dark and leaden when angry, azure when all is well.

Carefully, she applies a light brush of mascara. Only then, as her fingers arrange her hair, is her gaze drawn to the ring she now wears on her left hand. A tiny silver band with a single diamond that had belonged to Michael’s mother. Elegant but a bit tight – she shouldn’t really wear it until she’s had it adjusted, though she won’t do this for another few weeks. Not until she’s begun to feel a bit more like her old self. Which she would do any time now, everyone says. When the sickness starts to ease and the swelling in her joints subsides.

Katy frowns. For it is taking time for her to come to terms with the unplanned pregnancy. More time than it has taken Michael, to be sure.

Throughout her twenties – a restless decade during which Katy drifted from one dead-end job to the next, struggling to find her way after what happened and then her parents’ separation and all those messed up exams – the idea of having a child had never entered her mind. As she entered her thirties, tentatively assembling foundations, the thought of fitting responsibility for someone else into her life just as things were finally starting to take on some kind of shape seemed laughable.

Following secretarial college, she acquired a business administration qualification. After years periodically scouring small ads for the next flatshare, she bought a small place in Balham using what her father left her for the deposit. Then came Janssens, where she not only met Michael but a champion in Sally-Anne – if she could earn the woman’s respect. You know how it is, Katy would shrug if ever pressed. I’m just not the maternal type. Though she hopes she’ll become so now, of course. And will, too, just as soon as Michael stops making a fuss.

Throwing open the window of the first floor kitchen, Katy leans out into the sunshine as she waits for the kettle to boil. The back of the upper maisonette overlooks the garden they share with the downstairs flat which has been empty for the past six weeks since its owner Phil, a TV producer and one of Michael’s best friends, left to shoot a documentary about urban farming in Detroit.

Really, summer is the cruellest season, she thinks, gazing down onto the wilting plants. A shadow briefly stirs but she battles to resist it. Not now, she tells herself. For despite the date, today is just a day like any other. Katy refocuses on the dusty beds below. But as she starts to make a mental note to do some watering later, she is distracted by a noise. The low grinding of a key. A sound which appears to be coming from the French windows of the flat below. Which is impossible, of course, because the place is empty.

A hooded figure steps into full view on the patio below. A man – probably in his early twenties, she deduces – though his face is obscured by the hood of a white sleeveless top across the back of which is emblazoned the word Everlast. Although slight, his body is toned, she notes, her eyes drawn to the muscularity of his upper arms and, in particular, his left biceps around which a black ring of thorns has been tattooed. His feet are bare beneath the dusty hems of his black sweat pants and then, as he starts to fill a watering can with water, splashed with wet.

Strange behaviour for a burglar, she thinks, watching him water the nearest line of bedding plants, wondering who this stranger could be. A friend of Phil’s, probably. Though she doesn’t recall having seen anyone like him hanging around the place before.

Another noise from the neighbouring garden snags the attention of them both. The sound of chanting. It’s the woman who lives in the downstairs flat next door. A lawyer, Katy recalls, though they have never spoken. She had rarely seen her at all, in fact, until just before last Christmas when the woman went on maternity leave and swapped sombre suits for T-shirts and lycra. Now, with the door open wide, she is standing on the sun terrace outside her back door dressed only in an oversized granddad shirt with arms outstretched as if in honour to the morning sun.

‘Caught you!’ Michael laughs, burying his face in her neck. As his free hand reaches to unfasten the towel still knotted around her, Katy halts it.

‘Don’t,’ she hisses, gesturing towards the open window through which she can now see her neighbour performing some kind of yogic genuflection to the morning sun. Or perhaps it’s t’ai chi. ‘There’s someone down there. Outside.’ Her gaze shifts to Phil’s garden but the hooded figure has gone leaving only a damp trail of footsteps which have already started to evaporate in the morning sun.

‘Spoil sport,’ Michael sighs. He shoots a quick glance up at the kitchen clock then turns back towards Katy. ‘Come back to bed for a bit. It’s still early.’

‘Not today it isn’t,’ she smiles, relieved to have a real excuse. ‘I’ve got to be in early for this morning’s presentation.’

In the bedroom, Katy pulls out a selection of clothes. In the bathroom, Michael lines up the badger brush, razor, soap and balm on the glass shelf as the basin fills for his daily ritual. As she dresses Katy can see without looking each stroke of the blade as the silence is broken every half minute or so by a gentle splash of water and then, when it is done, the brisk slap of lotion on skin. Familiar sounds that until recently would reassure. A slice of male intimacy she has come to relish since moving in with Michael three years earlier. Though now it is merely a fleeting distraction.

For since she discovered she is pregnant something about the proximity of their living arrangements has begun to pall. He’s crowding her – that’s how it feels, at least. Michael. And his mother, Jean.

Katy grimaces at the thought of how her mum-in-law to be, widow of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, had taken it upon herself to place an announcement in the Telegraph. She’d done it within hours of her son confiding their recent decision to finally get hitched, with a small, informal ceremony scheduled to take place at a local west London church in just two months’ time. Though they’d both been annoyed Michael had said nothing, of course, for fear of upsetting her. Goodness knows what the woman would say if she knew the reason for their haste. Which reminds Katy of something.

‘Ring me later about dinner tonight at Mum’s, OK?’ she calls, crouching down to retrieve a missing shoe from beneath the bed. ‘I should be free by midday.’

Straightening up from the sink, Michael turns towards her as he pats his face dry. ‘Ah. Yes. About that.’ Carefully, he dabs his neck with the hand towel. ‘Look, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it. I got a call yesterday from an old school friend who’s a headhunter. They want to meet for dinner to discuss an executive creative role they’re looking to fill. I’m really sorry, Katy. But we weren’t going to tell either granny-in-waiting until after the scan, were we – not till we’re sure everything’s OK?’

Annoyed, Katy is about to object from the upstairs landing where she now stands then thinks better of it. How irritable she’s become these days, she reasons. Though it is surely her rampaging hormones, that’s all. And the oppressive heat – the hottest July in seven years. The time of year, too – always her least favourite. And then there’s the date…

A new job will be good for both of them, she knows. Having missed out on promotion the previous Easter, the extra money will help cover the cost of the childcare they’ll need when she’s ready to return to work. Noticing yesterday’s shorts and T-shirt which Michael has left on the floor where she now stands, to remind himself at some point to put them in the laundry bin, she smiles. Swiftly grabbing the bundle with her free hand, she deftly lobs the knot of clothes in his direction. It takes him by surprise, catching him on the shoulder before he has time to duck.

‘I’ll send your apologies,’ she calls down, brightly. ‘You can make it up to me later.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t quite get that.’ Katy adjusts the mobile phone so the earpiece is a little further from her ear. Running up the steps towards the street level exit of St James’s station is making her breath come in short, shallow gasps and beads of sweat have gathered at the back of her neck where hair meets skin.

‘I said: you’re late,’ Sally-Anne booms.

‘I know. There was a problem on the District & Circle, but I won’t be long—’

‘Where are you?’

‘Just coming into reception,’ Katy lies.

‘Well you’d better be here in five – we need to have a final run through before the presentation which, I might add, is due to begin at half past.’

She bites her lip. Being on the receiving end of one of Sally-Anne’s bad moods always makes Katy feel like a naughty schoolgirl. She might still make it though, just. ‘OK. Better go – the signal’s cracking…’

Slipping the mobile back into her bag she breaks into a run, only slowing her pace once she turns off the pavement into the darkened walkway leading to the offices within. Catching sight of her reflection in the chrome and black corridor that once was state-of-the-art office design, she straightens her blouse and smoothes her hair before casually walking past the receptionists who are already busy fielding calls. As soon as she’s out of their sight, she darts up the stairs two at a time.

‘Good of you to join us,’ Sally-Anne declares, shooting Katy an ice-pick stare as she bursts through the door.

Katy re-sets her expression to businesslike. She’s worked with Sally-Anne since first arriving at Janssens as a temp six years before – long enough to know better than to waste her time concocting gushing apologies or elaborate excuses. The woman is firm but fair if you play a straight bat, as her father used to say. A cricketing term the origin of which Katy could never fathom. Because it was Sally-Anne who secured her a full-time position and under whose guidance she has since steadily risen up the ranks to become acting head of client services while Miriam, the official holder of that title and her immediate boss, is on maternity leave.

Rising from her desk, Sally-Anne picks up her pad then reaches for her skinny cappuccino with an immaculately manicured hand. On her feet the woman still has on the yellow and red Masai Barefoot Technology trainers she wears to work in the vain hope of offsetting the stubborn thickening of her ankles. Otherwise she is dressed today in a fuchsia linen trouser suit with yawning buttons that tell their own story of the struggle to contain the woman’s heavily-tanned chest. Around her neck, the paste choker modelled on the Bulgari necklace Keira Knightly wore on Oscar night almost obscures the blossoming of her second chin. Her flawless fingernails bear witness to how rarely she taps a keyboard nowadays.

‘Just coming,’ Katy calls out lightly. But now she feels on edge and the air con makes her shiver. Uneasy, like there’s something important she’s forgotten.

Reaching for the presentation notes which she has left in a box file to one side of her computer, she slips the papers into an A4 notepad and clasps it tightly. Though she has gone through her presentation piece so many times she almost knows it by heart, the prop is reassuring and the tension in her jaw line starts to subside. Until, as she starts moving away from her desk, her attention is drawn to a Post-It bearing a message in a childish scrawl.

‘Some woman rang for you around nine,’ calls Dawn as she beings to read. Sally-Anne’s PA is rake-thin and blonde with a fixation with Marilyn Monroe that today has her dressed in a tightly-fitted satin blouse and black pencil skirt despite the heat. ‘She was most specific about the spelling,’ she presses on, helpfully. ‘A Judith Davies, spelled with an i-e-s. Hey, are you OK?’

The room spins for a moment and a number of things happen at once. As Katy sinks down into her chair, the notes slip from her grasp. As she closes her eyes, a sudden wave of nausea makes her skin prickle cold with sweat. Judith Davies. The name for which she spent months scanning the obituaries section of her father’s Daily Telegraph. The abbreviation of which still makes her spirit bolt.

Tranquilo, she hears. The echo of Michael’s voice is calm and reassuring, though the bile licks the back of her throat. Relax.

A beat later, Dawn’s arm is curling around her shoulders. With the stifling heat, the younger woman’s pale skin has taken on a wild and feverish glow and her perfume, a smell like pear drops, is overpowering. Fearful she will retch, Katy tries to think of something else. Like birthday dinner at Mum’s, later. Michael’s job interview. The presentation she’s about to give. Only when she opens her eyes does the other woman step back. When will this end? she wonders, bleakly. Another week or two, perhaps. Surely no more?

‘Drink this,’ Dawn offers, breaking the seal on a plastic bottle of mineral water.

Exhaling slowly, Katy offers up a watery smile as a familiar voice from somewhere close by mumbles her thanks. She drinks and the pressure inside her skull begins to ease allowing her brain the space to think. Not for the first time she wonders if Dawn knows. Some second sense, perhaps. Or, maybe, she can just smell the hormones. Then, as her head starts to clear, it hits her.

Jude. It has to be. For how many Judith Davieses can there be who’d want to speak to her – today of all days? What can she possibly want after so long?

Her body stiffens. Not against nausea this time but the tension building between the rational side of her brain which is racing with questions, and the rowdy gang of emotions jostling for position. Curiosity. Relief. Shame. And something else. An exquisite collision of excitement and fear which makes her almost toss the Post-It into the bin. As quickly as it came, the urge is gone and she slumps defeated against the back of her chair. For what would be the point?

What’s it people say about what goes around, comes around? Because the two of them are bound and always have been by what happened out on the scalding heath that day. Inescapable, that’s the word for this moment, she thinks, her gaze refocusing on the yellow square of paper. Fate.

An impatient tut-tutting sound draws Katy back to the moment. Looking up she sees Sally-Anne, her faced locked into an impatient frown, standing the opposite side of the office holding the door open. No time for this now, she thinks, stuffing Jude’s message deep into her pocket as she stumbles to her feet. Gathering her notepad, pen and papers Katy cradles them in one hand then pauses, briefly, to take another gulp of water. Though the hotness