‘Perhaps you should try reading an article about that too, then?’ the detective says with a distinctive smirk in his voice, before following his colleague back to their car.

‘Maybe I will,’ she spars back, although too quietly for him to pick up the petulance in her voice.

Chapter 43

Chapter 43

Kat

In hospital. Mark is in hospital. Alive. Blood pounds in Kat’s ears as she tries to process what she’s just overheard from the familiar spot around the corner from Beth’s house. Her heart stutters then lurches, and she leans against a parking meter to catch her breath. What does that mean? For her, and for Beth. And what happens now?

She wishes she knew how serious Mark’s condition was. The detective said that he was unconscious, and something about his mum crying by his bedside. Is he dying? Or will he wake up?

Will he remember?

She blinks furiously. Maybe she should go to St George’s Hospital, try to find out for herself. But she got up early this morning to see Beth, not Mark. They connected so powerfully yesterday that she feels she’s earned the right to knock on her door now, to check how she is. She can’t let their new closeness drift away just because Simon is back home. But Saskia said that Beth was somewhere called Painshill Park, visiting Santa’s grotto with her family. That means she’ll be gone for a few hours at least, so maybe Kat should go to the hospital; she’d be back before Beth anyway.

Except there’s Saskia to deal with too now. Kat felt sick listening to her with those detectives, describing herself as Beth’s best friend, casually telling them where Beth is today, as though they confide in each other about everything, which Kat knows for a fact isn’t true. When Beth asked Kat to pick up Ava and Martha yesterday, she seemed to be singling Kat out as special. Not only entrusting her with her two most precious things, but also revealing that she was out of London. Details that she didn’t seem willing to share with anyone else, not even Simon. But did Kat get that wrong? Were Beth’s friends just too busy with their glamorous lives to trudge up to school in the middle of the day for someone else’s children?

She pushes her clenched fist against her breastbone, trying to calm her ragged breathing, but it doesn’t work. Maybe she is the mug after all. The one who risked her job, and her friendship with Sally, to pander to Beth’s needs.