by Louise Hall
Last night had been amazing; she hadn’t felt that wild since after her final exams at university when Kian had whisked her away to Brighton for a very dirty weekend. Cate had a sudden thought; she quickly worked out the dates in her head. That was probably when baby number two was conceived.
“Kian,” Cate tried again. This time she pinched his nose; it might have been childish but it worked. He spluttered, sitting bolt upright. “What?”
His black hair was stuck up in tufts that were shaped surprisingly like Cate’s fists. He also had fingertip-shaped bruises on his shoulders. Oops.
“Your phone’s ringing,” she gestured towards the floor.
“Ignore it,” Kian lay down, nuzzling his face between her breasts again.
“I can’t,” Cate said, tortured by the increasingly loud buzzing. “What if it’s about Lo?”
“Ugh,” Kian swiped his phone from the floor. “Hello?”
Satisfied that Kian would have told her straight away if it was about their daughter, Cate closed her eyes.
She’d almost fallen back asleep again when Kian tapped her ankle, “angel, wake up. We need to go to St. Ignatius.”
St Ignatius was the mother church in their Church of England diocese. She didn’t understand why they would need to go there now? Although she and Lola attended church services most Sundays; they always went to St Hilda’s (St Ignatius’ smaller, sister church) instead because it was within walking distance of their home. The last time she’d been to St Ignatius was thirteen years ago when she was in her last year of primary school and she’d sung with the school choir at the Christmas carol concert there.
Kian had already put on his trousers and was buttoning up his shirt. “It’s Liv.”
Cate sat up too quickly, feeling sick. “I’m going to…”
She ran to the bathroom and vomited up the full contents of her stomach. “Tell me she’s OK.”
“She’s OK,” Kian checked her over. “Do you want to stay here?”
“No,” Cate shook her head, “I think it’s just my morning sickness kicking in, I was lucky with Lola.”
She quickly got dressed and they took the lift down to the underground car park.
“Darn, I wish I’d brought a change of clothes with me, I feel so scruffy,” Cate frowned as they joined the motorway. Her blouse was all creased from spending the night crumpled up on the kitchen floor.
“I seriously don’t think anyone will notice,” Kian said, his fingers flexing on the steering wheel.
She was still confused as to why Liv would be at St Ignatius? Her sister had never been religious.
When they arrived at St Ignatius, there were several fire engines parked out front. The sirens were still blaring and the noise was deafening. Cate put her hands over her ears as she followed Kian across the road towards the church.
The paramedics were loading a trolley into the back of an ambulance and Cate stopped, her heart beating frantically, wondering if it was her sister lying there on the gurney. The woman had an oxygen mask covering her face and she was wearing what looked like a wedding dress except the hem was singed and blackened. A man followed her into the back of the ambulance and as he turned around for a split second, Cate recognised him; it was Ryan, Liv’s ex-boyfriend.
Cate looked at Kian, “what’s Ryan doing here? Where’s Liv? I don’t understand.”
“She’s over there,” he pointed to a forlorn figure hunched over by the dry stone wall near the graveyard.
“Liv?” Cate recoiled at the stench of smoke and booze coming off her sister.
“I’m going to try and find out what happened,” Kian kissed Cate’s forehead, “take her home. I’ll get a taxi back.”
“I don’t…” Cate looked back at her sister; she looked so unbelievably small and broken.
She crouched down in front of her. “Can you get up?” Liv looked up for the first time; her face was all grimy from the smoke. “I’m going to take you home.”
Liv’s eyes widened, “I can’t. Mum will kill me.”
“You can come back to ours,” Cate said gently. “Come on.”
She guided Liv around the back of the church, to avoid the crowds gathered at the front.
They were almost at the sanctuary of Kian’s Range Rover when one of the wedding guests must have spotted them.
“You fucking bitch, I’ll kill you.”
One of the bridesmaids charged towards them, her flower crown sat wonkily on the top of her head. Liv slumped back against the car door. Cate panicked. “Get in the car,” she yelled at Liv. “The door’s open.”
When she didn’t move, Cate tried again. “Please Liv.” She ran around the front of the Range Rover, yanked open the door and shoved her sister firmly inside.
“How can you fucking protect her?” The bridesmaid spat at Cate. “Do you even know what she’s done?”
“She’s my sister,” Cate tried to walk away but the bridesmaid grabbed her arm, her pale-pink lacquered nails biting into Cate’s skin. “Yeah well because of your psycho sister, my sister is in that fucking ambulance over there. It’s supposed to be her wedding day.”
Cate managed to break free of the bridesmaid’s clutches and quickly locked herself in Kian’s Range Rover. Her hands were shaking so badly; it took her several attempts just to get the key in the ignition. She couldn’t even begin to understand what had just happened. As they drove away from St Ignatius, the bridesmaid was still shouting obscenities at them and she took off her heels and threw them at the back window.
When they got home, Cate shepherded Liv upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms. “You need a shower,” she nudged her in the direction of the bathroom. The cloying stench of smoke was making Cate feel sick again. She dashed to the toilet and vomited again.
“I’m sorry,” Liv said quietly when Cate came back from the bathroom. “I’ll go somewhere else.”
“It’s just the smoke,” Cate said softly. Apart from Kian, Liv was the only other person who knew that she was pregnant again.
Liv turned her back to Cate and removed her t-shirt. Cate gasped when she saw the huge, almost-black bruise spreading across her sister’s ribs on the right side. “You’re hurt, Liv. We need to take you to the hospital.”
Liv shook her head, “I can’t. I’ll be arrested.”
“What?”
Liv wouldn’t tell her anything else and the smell of smoke was threatening to make her sick again so Cate grabbed a quick shower and changed her own stinky clothes, putting them straight in the washing machine.
When she checked on Liv again, she’d had a shower and was lying curled up on the bed in the guest room. She’d changed into the clothes Cate had left out for her but her t-shirt had ridden up a little, exposing that nasty-looking bruise again.
Cate took Liv’s clothes downstairs and put them in the washing machine but she couldn’t settle. There was too much to think about. She kept picturing that huge bruise on Liv’s side. She paced back and forth in the lounge, wishing that she could take her sister to the hospital to get her checked out. It might not be just a bruise…
“I’ll be arrested,” those words kept looping through her head. Just what had her sister done?
Cate looked out of the front window, paranoid that at any moment she was going to see blue flashing lights and the police were going to come and arrest her sister. She pinched her arm hard enough to leave a mark, praying that this was a nightmare she was going to wake up from.
As she was looking out of the window, she saw her sister-in-law’s car parked on the other side of the courtyard. Cate felt a whoosh of relief. Erin was a paediatric nurse at the hospital.
“Is everything OK?” Erin asked when she opened the front door to Cate. She was still wearing her pale-blue scrubs. “I’ve only just got back from the hospital. Ben left me a message saying that something’s happened with Liv?”
At first, Liv wouldn’t let Erin look at her bruise. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,”
Cate protested. “Please Liv.”
After Erin had checked her out, they left Liv to go back to sleep and went downstairs.
“What happened?” Erin whispered.
“I don’t know,” Cate shrugged. She should have been comforted that Erin thought that her sister was just badly bruised and didn’t have any more serious internal injuries but already her worries had moved on to something else.
As they sat at the kitchen counter nursing mugs of tea, Kian and Ben came home. “How is she?” Ben asked Erin.
“She’s OK physically,” Erin frowned, “but I think she’s still in shock. She won’t tell us anything.”
“It was Ryan’s wedding,” Kian said. He went to get another couple of mugs from the kitchen cupboard.
He explained that partway through the ceremony, Liv had burst through the doors at the back of the church and ridden a motorbike down the centre aisle. She’d lost control just before she got to her ex-boyfriend, Ryan and his bride, Simone and was thrown off the bike, which carried on going, slamming into the altar at the front, knocking over a tray of candles which set the carpet on fire and engulfed the bottom of Simone’s dress.
Cate was horrified. Why would her sister do something like that? She knew that she’d been devastated when Ryan had broken up with her and quickly started dating one of her co-workers but this… “Is anybody hurt?”
“They took the bride to hospital; she’s got burns on both her ankles.”
“None of this makes sense,” Cate put her head in her hands. “Is she going to be arrested?”
Ben coughed, “I don’t think so. Nobody’s pressing charges.”
“But she nearly burned down a church?” Erin spluttered.
Ben shared a look with Kian. “It’s been sorted. Let’s go home, sweetheart.”
After they’d gone, Cate turned to Kian, “what aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you pay them off?” she asked.
He shook his head, “I didn’t have to.”
Cate didn’t understand. Who else would protect her sister like that?
“You have to promise that you won’t tell Liv,” Kian sighed. “That’s the deal.”
“I promise,” Cate swore.
“It was Jax.”
“Jax Taylor?” Cate exclaimed. She knew that her sister had nursed a major crush on Jax ever since his boy-band X13 were finalists on a TV talent show a few years ago. X13 had performed at Kian’s sister’s wedding reception last summer. Cate had still been separated from Kian at the time. She’d been too scared to tell Kian that she wanted them to get back together so Liv had made her a deal; if Cate told Kian how she really felt, Liv would try and snog Jax. Liv had never told her if she’d followed through with her side of the deal.
“It was his motorbike; he was the one who called me.” Kian looked at his watch, “I’m going to go and pick up Lo from Emily’s.”
“Hey baby girl,” Cate laughed as Lola came running towards her. “Did you have a good time at the sleepover?”
“Mummy, I’m not a baby anymore,” Lola pouted. “We talked about this; I’m a big girl now.”
Cate caught Kian’s eye and tried really hard not to laugh. “OK, I’ll try and remember that in future.”
“Mummy?” Lola climbed up on to one of the stools at the kitchen counter. “Emily’s got a baby brother. He’s really cute and he doesn’t cry very much, he just sleeps a lot. Can I have one?
“We’ll see,” Cate chuckled, thinking about the tiny little thing already growing inside her womb. “Why don’t you go upstairs and put your things away?”
She’d almost forgotten that Liv was staying with them until she heard Lola call from the top of the stairs. “Auntie Liv!”
“Darn,” Cate ran to the bottom of the stairs. “Auntie Liv is going to stay with us for a little bit.”
“Mummy,” Lola said from the top of the stairs, her eyes darting back and forth between Cate and Liv. “Auntie Liv looks really sad. I think you should get me a baby brother to cheer her up.”
Kian tried to distract his daughter, “Lo, do you want to come and walk Jimmy with me?”
After they’d gone, Cate went back upstairs and lay down next to Liv on the bed. “I’m here if you need me, OK?”
Liv turned over, “I shouldn’t have come here, especially not now.” She looked at Cate’s abdomen.
“Nonsense, you’re my sister,” Cate said. “I want you here.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, you know that right?”
Liv looked so scared. “Of course. Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“I can’t,” Liv said. “Not tonight.”
“Try and get some sleep then,” Cate pulled the duvet up over her sister’s shoulders. “You know where we are if you need anything.”
Later that night, Kian and Cate were in the bath. Kian leaned forward so Cate could massage his tense shoulders. “This week has been such a head-fuck.”
“I know,” Cate kissed his shoulder, “but it makes me feel better somehow. I’ve been so freaked out that the same thing would happen with this little one as it did with Lo. Then I think about what happened today, with Liv… I guess, so many things happen that you don’t expect and the things you do expect to happen, don’t. When you kissed me that first time on Christmas Eve, I never could have imagined that all these years later we’d be sat here like this, married and expecting our second child together.”
“I did,” Kian grinned, turning to kiss her. “I always knew I’d have those things with you.”
“Since you can tell the future,” Cate pressed her face against Kian’s back. “Liv’s going to get through this, right?”
“Come here,” Kian lifted her effortlessly so she was sat on his lap. “Of course she is. Your sister’s a Klein girl and they’re tough.”
CHAPTER 7
“Aw, are you feeling all snuggly tonight?” Cate whispered to Jimmy.
She couldn’t sleep; she was still so worried about Liv. She hadn’t wanted to disturb Kian because he had a match tomorrow so she’d come downstairs to the kitchen. There was a basket of washing that hadn’t been put away yet so she sat at the kitchen counter and started folding it into piles. Sat in the darkness with just the moonlight streaming in through the kitchen window, there was something therapeutic about the rhythm of quietly folding up clothes and putting them into neat, organised piles.
Jimmy had dragged his bed all the way across the kitchen floor so that it rubbed up against her bare ankles.
She heard footsteps coming down the front stairs.
Liv came into the kitchen but she didn’t see Cate sat at the kitchen counter. “Damn it,” Liv muttered, resting her head against one of the kitchen cupboards.
Cate didn’t want to but she knew that if Liv was going to be staying with them for the foreseeable future, as a mum she needed to know if her sister was still drinking. There had been such a stench of booze coming off her when they’d found her outside the church.
“If you’re looking for booze, we haven’t got any,” Cate said quietly. She didn’t really like the taste and Kian was a professional athlete so they only really bought alcohol when they were having guests over.
Liv spun around, clutching her chest. “Geez Cate, are you actually trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I’m sorry.”
She sat down next to Cate at the kitchen counter. “Why are you sat here in the dark? It’s kind of creepy, you know?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Cate shrugged, “don’t try to distract me. What were you looking for just now?”
“I wasn’t looking for booze. I’m not an alcoholic, you know?”
“You might not be addicted to it but you can’t deny that in the past you’ve used alcohol to deal with your problems.” The darkness gave Cate the freedom to be blunter than she usually would be with her older sister.
“Yeah,” Liv picked at a loose thread on her pyjama pants, “and look wh
ere that got me.”
“I’m really worried about you, Liv.”
“I know and I hate that but I swear to you I haven’t had a sip of alcohol since we left St Ignatius.”
“What happened?” Cate asked, “you said that you were going to have breakfast with a friend and then suddenly I find out that you’ve ridden Jax freaking Taylor’s motorbike down the centre aisle of the church during Ryan’s wedding!”
“I didn’t lie to you,” Liv said. “Jax and I have been talking since Sinead’s wedding last summer but he’s been in Sweden recording the new album and then on the Asian leg of X13’s world tour. He had a few days off so he asked if I wanted to have breakfast with him. He picked me up on his motorbike.”
“Oh my goodness, had he been drinking too?”
“No,” Liv said vehemently. “Jax might be a musician but he’s really responsible. He doesn’t drink much at all and definitely not when he’s riding his bike, no way.”
“But…”
“He’s such an amazing guy, Cate and I’m me, you know? I didn’t want to make a fool of myself,” Liv’s laughter sounded hollow. “I’d drunk half a bottle of vodka before he even arrived that morning.”
“Liv…”
“Don’t,” Liv held her hands up, “you don’t need to lie to me, OK? I know just how badly I messed up. I drank half a bottle of vodka and basically torpedoed my entire life. You and Lo are two of the most important people in my life and I need you to know that I would never, ever do anything that would put you at risk.”
“I know,” Cate put her hand on Liv’s. “What were you looking for just now?”
“My side’s hurting. I was trying to find some frozen vegetables or something to ice it or maybe some painkillers.”
Cate jumped down off the stool, startling Jimmy who’d been resting his head on her foot. “I don’t think we’ve got any frozen veggies because I need to do a big food shop before we go to the match tomorrow but there are some painkillers in the cupboard above the oven.”
The Rovers match against Everton the next day didn’t kick off until 5.30pm so although Kian had to leave mid-morning to meet up with the rest of the team at a hotel in Manchester city centre, Cate still had plenty of time to go to the supermarket. She’d learned very early on in their marriage that it definitely wasn’t a good idea to try and go food shopping with her husband. The first and only time they’d ever tried it, she’d managed to do the entire weekly food shop with a newborn baby in tow while Kian was still signing autographs and posing for selfies by the front entrance.
