Three Wishes, Page 23

  Gemma insisted they share a spa bath immediately, before it got dark and the view disappeared.

  "It's like we're all back together in the womb!" she said when they were sitting in the bath, their backs up against the sides, legs crisscrossing in the middle, wineglasses in hand. "It was just like this, except without the sauvignon blanc. Or the bubbles."

  "You do not remember being in the womb, Gemma," said Lyn.

  "I do!" said Gemma airily. "We used to float around all day, having fun."

  "Mum thinks we were fighting," commented Cat. "She read somewhere about twins actually thumping each other in the womb."

  "Oh no," said Gemma. "I don't remember any fighting."

  Lyn widened her eyes fractionally at Cat and lifted her hair away from her neck. Gemma held her nose and slowly slid down until her head disappeared beneath the noisily bubbling water.

  Cat closed her eyes and felt the childlike, familiar comfort of her sisters' legs pressed casually against her own.

  It might actually be rather nice to return to that shadowy time of preexistence, she thought, when there was nothing particularly pressing to do except the occasional somersault, no thoughts, just interesting sensations of light and sound, and no loneliness, because those other two versions of you, who had been there forever, were right there beside you, not going anywhere.

  CHAPTER 18

  All her life Cat had never had a problem falling asleep. Now she battled ferocious attacks of insomnia. Each night she lay in bed with her eyes firmly shut, her body carefully positioned for sleep, and felt like a fraud. Her body wasn't deceived. The mechanics of falling asleep had become mysterious to her.

  Eventually she would give up, turn on the lamp, and read, for hours, till three, four o'clock in the morning. She never closed the book. One second she'd be reading a sentence, the next the alarm was beeping insistently and she was groggily opening her eyes, the book still open in her hand, the light from the lamp insipid in the morning sunshine.

  One night, in the middle of the night, she was sitting propped up in bed, turning the pages of her novel without taking in a word.

  She was thinking about how she and Dan had shared over a decade of events.

  They were together, cooking steak at the pub barbecue, when they overheard somebody asking if it was true that Princess Diana had died.

  They were part of the crazed crowd in the stadium on Bondi Beach, chanting "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi!" when the women's beach volleyball team won Olympic gold.

  There was the Tuesday night when Dan was watching the late news and she was cleaning her teeth. She heard him swear and then call out, "You'd better come look at this." She walked into the living room with her toothbrush still in her mouth and for the first time saw that plane make its unrelenting, cold-blooded flight across the skyline. They sat up until dawn, watching the twin towers crumble, over and over.

  And then there were the personal events. The auction when they bought their unit. "Sold!" the auctioneer cried out, and they leaped to their feet, punching their fists in the air.

  The scuba dive when they saw their first Weedy Sea Dragon, a fragile, mythical creature. Dan drew three big exclamation marks on his slate.

  The trip to Europe. The wedding. The honeymoon. The trek in Nepal.

  A million minuscule events. The pizza that never came. The Pictionary game where they slaughtered Lyn and Michael. The first time they used their breadmaker and the bread was so hard they kicked it around the kitchen like a football. The weird, druggy guy from next door who inexplicably said, "Bitchin' Barney!" whenever he met Dan at the garbage bins. How could she not be with someone who shared such a major chunk of her life?

  Just six months ago they'd had a weekend away in a B&B in the Southern Highlands. It rained and they made up a stupid game called Strip Scrabble. She laughed so much her stomach hurt. Was he experiencing his "niggling doubts" that weekend?

  Each time Cat looked the other way did his smile vanish and his face go blank, like a movie character letting the audience know what he was really thinking?

  She slammed the book shut and looked over at his empty side of the bed. Was he sleeping peacefully next to Angela right now? Had they made love? Had they worked out positions for sleeping together? Did he complain about her hair tickling his nose? All that long, lovely black hair.

  Oh God, this pain was unbearable, excruciating. Nobody could expect her to bear this.

  She got out of bed and went around the flat swiching on lights. She stood under the shower and held her face up to the water. She turned on the television and flicked dully back and forth between channels. She stood in front of her open fridge, staring blankly at its contents. A basket of ironing killed off forty-five minutes.

  By five A.M., she was dressed and ready for work.

  She sat on the sofa with dry, burning eyes, her hands folded in her lap and her back straight, as if she were waiting for a job interview.

  Dan was supposedly staying on Sean's floor until he got a new lease on a flat. He wouldn't be there every night, of course. Sometimes he'd stay with his girlfriend.

  Girlfriend. A girlfriend sounded so much younger, sexier, and prettier than a wife.

  Cat hadn't seen him now, or talked to him, for thirteen days. Thirteen days, where she hadn't known what he wore to work, what he ate for dinner, who pissed him off, what made him laugh on TV.

  And that lack of knowledge about his life would just keep accumulating and expanding, pushing them further apart, a cold empty space between them.

  Decisively, she stood up and went looking for the keys to the courtesy truck. She needed to know where Dan had spent the night. If he'd stayed at Sean's place, she would be able to make it through the day. If he'd stayed with Angela, well, at least she'd know.

  It felt good to be outside, moving. The truck made her feel tough and capable. The streets were deserted, the streetlights still glowing.

  At Sean's place in Leichhardt, she drove up and down the narrow street, peering hopefully at each parked car. Finally, she gave up with a sickly sort of calm. So he was with her. Right now, he was with her, in a bedroom Cat had never seen.

  It was light by the time she turned into Angela's street in Lane Cove.

  She remembered driving there that first time, filled with righteous hurt. Looking back, it seemed like she'd been luxuriating in her pain, safe in the knowledge that their marriage was a given, that Dan's love was a given.

  Dan's car was parked outside Angela's block of units, parked with the assured confidence of a regular visitor. It looked like it belonged there.

  Then she saw the car in front of Dan's. A blue VW. She remembered Charlie on Christmas Day. "Her Vee-dub conked out this morning."

  She looked in the car window and Dan's long-sleeved blue top was lying on the passenger seat. It seemed she had an endless capacity to be hurt. The casual familiarity implied by that shirt was somehow more shocking than anything.

  "Ange? Have you seen my shirt?"

  "Your blue one? I think you left it in the car."

  And was Cat in Dan's consciousness at all when he had these conversations with Angela? Of course not. Cat no longer existed, except as a problem to be solved, a memory to put behind him.

  She was an ex-wife. Ex-wives were vindictive women with bitterly lined faces. Fine then, she'd act like one.

  There was a Swiss Army pocketknife in Sam's smash repair truck. It slid back and forth in the center console each time she turned a corner. She got the knife from the car and unsnapped it. The morning sun caught the blade.

  It was a beautiful Friday morning. The cicadas were already humming a promise of a hot summer's day and a weekend especially created for brand new-couples.

  Tomorrow was Saturday, and she'd be waking up alone.

  She squatted down besides Angela's car and plunged the tip of the knife into the black rubber of the tire.

  Something unlocked in her mind. She tipped right over into blind fury.

 
She hated Dan. She hated Angela. She hated herself.

  She hated the tires for resisting her. It was so typical: nothing ever went right for her! "Fuck you!" In a frenzy she ripped and slashed with all her strength, not moving on to the next tire until she was sure it was satisfactorily butchered.

  After she finished Angela's tires, she moved on to Dan's, becoming efficient and deadly in her movements. And now it was for her baby. Her baby had been betrayed too. Her baby didn't have a chance to live and that was somebody's fault and she was going to kill them!

  "Hey!"

  The sound made her jump.

  She looked up and saw Dan and Angela walking out of the glass doors of the block of units.

  Dan's face changed as he got closer and recognized her.

  "Cat?"

  The knife was clenched hard in her hand as she stood up. Her chest was heaving, her face hot and sweaty.

  It was a moment of profound humiliation.

  On their faces she could see fear, pity, and a touch of revulsion.

  And the worst of it was, this was an event happening to them. They were experiencing it together; they would talk about it later. It was the first in their collection of shared stories. "The time Dan's ex-wife slashed our tires."

  Cat didn't say a word. She turned away from them, climbed into her truck, and drove off, without looking back.

  Her hands on the steering wheel were filthy black.

  What is happening to me?

  She drove home to clean up. She had a nine o'clock meeting.

  Gemma turned up at lunchtime.

  She sat in Cat's office with that mystified expression she always got when she visited, as if she'd landed in a foreign country, instead of a normal, everyday workplace. It was an expression Cat found simultaneously charming and irritating.

  She said, "I don't have time to go out for lunch."

  "Oh, that's O.K., I'm not hungry." Gemma looked up from reading a memo in Cat's in-tray. "Goodness. It's all so serious here."

  "Yeah. Deadly serious. We sell chocolates."

  Gemma put down the memo. "Did you happen to slash a few tires before you came to work today?"

  Cat was startled. She had just come back from a meeting where she had given a highly professional presentation. That knife-wielding maniac of this morning was somebody else entirely.

  "How did you know? Oh. Stupid. The brother."

  "So you did! Was it satisfying?"

  "Not really." Cat scraped away a rim of black from her fingernail. "Did you come in just to ask me that?"

  "They're thinking of taking out a restraining order against you."

  Cat looked up and felt her neck becoming hot.

  "A restraining order?"

  "I know! It's exciting, as if they're scared of you! But still, I thought I should warn you with your court case next week. The prosecutor might mention it. Of course, your lawyer will object, and the judge will say, Sustained, the jury will disregard that! And the jury will all look thoughtful and your lawyer will say, This is a travesty, Your Honor! My client--"

  "Oh shut up! It's not that sort of court case."

  "I know. I was being funny."

  "Not."

  "No. Sorry. Really, I just wanted to tell you that, ah, I don't think you should go near them again."

  "Thanks. Is that all? I've got work to do."

  "That's all." Gemma stood up. "By the way, I've broken up with him."

  "With Charlie," said Cat dully. She was thinking about how she must have looked that morning, holding a knife. "You didn't need to."

  "It wasn't because of you."

  "Oh."

  "I nearly forgot!" Gemma picked up her bag and began fumbling through it. "I got you a present."

  She pulled out a foam hammer with a ribbon tied around the handle.

  "It's for stress relief." She banged it on the edge of Cat's desk and it made a sound like glass shattering. "I thought you could hit things with it when you got mad at Dan."

  Cat made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I should have had it this morning."

  "You can even hit people with it. See!" Gemma hit herself on the arm with the hammer. "Doesn't hurt! Do you want to hit me and pretend I'm Dan?"

  "That's O.K."

  "Or Angela?"

  "Cat, could I have a word?" Graham Hollingdale poked his head in the office, just as Gemma furiously smashed the hammer against her own forehead, crying, "Take that, Angela!"

  He looked alarmed. "Oh, excuse me! I'll come back."

  Gemma rubbed her forehead. "Actually, it does hurt a bit."

  To: Cat

  From: Lyn

  Subject: Dinner

  Hi

  How are you? Do you want to come to dinner tonight?

  Love, Lyn

  P.S. Gemma told me about this morning. She said Dan saw you driving off in some truck. Just wondering how that could be when you DON'T HAVE A LICENSE? Are you mad?

  To: Lyn

  From: Cat

  Subject: Dinner

  Can't come to dinner, thanks. Just promised the CEO I'd go to a boring-as-hell work function.

  P.S. Yes, I am mad. Possibly certifiable.

  Saturday morning welcomed Cat with a thumping headache, dry mouth, and furry tongue.

  Why did she keep doing this to herself?

  She lay still, fingertips to her temples, her eyes closed as she tried to remember the night before.

  "Hello there."

  Her eyes flew open.

  Sweet Jesus, don't let this be true.

  Snuggled up next to her, with the pillow making wings on either side of his pealike balding head, was her CEO Graham Hollingdale.

  She just managed to stop herself from screaming.

  "How are you feeling?" She watched in horror as he wriggled himself up and the sheet slipped to reveal a not unattractive naked chest. Graham Hollingdale, naked, in her bedroom. She'd never seen him without a tie before! He was way, way out of context.

  She closed her eyes.

  "Ah. Not that great," she mumbled.

  The sordid details of last night tumbled back into her head. She'd gone with him to the Confectionery Manufacturer's Association Annual Meeting. They had endured astoundingly boring speeches, and afterward he'd suggested a drink. After the second drink she told him she was separated. After the third she had the startling revelation that Graham was a rather distinguished, handsome man. After the fourth she was suggestively suggesting they share a cab back to her place and feeling pleasantly promiscuous, as if she were the slutty one from Sex and the City.

  You fool, Cat. You stupid, stupid fool.

  She was giving up alcohol forever.

  "Would you like me to get you a cup of tea?" asked Graham. Was that his hand on her leg? Or, surely not, something else?

  "No, thank you."

  She fought back welling hysteria and opened her eyes to confirm her state of undress. Her shirt was still buttoned decorously but her skirt had vanished. Underwear appeared to be intact.

  "It's O.K. We only fooled around a little." His tone was avuncular and cozy.

  Oh, yuck, yuck, yuck! She remembered it all. She'd kissed him! Worse, she'd kissed him enthusiastically.

  She'd had a clumsy heavy-petting session with Graham Hollingdale, of all people! She'd have to get a new bed.

  How utterly disgusting. How utterly humiliating.

  She looked at her boss, lying on Dan's side of the bed, his hands crossed comfortably behind his head, and felt ill.

  How much lower could her life sink? Self-disgust filled her mouth. Dirty-gray, sordid misery wrapped itself around her.

  "I thought you were married," she said coldly.

  He smiled. "Oh, that's O.K. I'm poly."

  "You're who?" Was he trying to say that he was really a woman trapped in a man's body?

  "Poly. Polyamorous. It means 'many loves.' If you're poly, you believe in having committed relationships with more than one person. My wife and I are both poly
."

  "So, you're swingers." Cat began to shift unobtrusively as far away as possible to the other side of the bed. Thank God no bodily fluids had been exchanged.

  "Ha! Everybody thinks that!" Graham sat up with enthusiasm, a finger held in the air. She wished he could show this much enthusiasm for her marketing plans. "Not at all! Swinging is just about sex. Polyamory is about sharing your love with more than one person. It's about romance!"

  "This is romance?"

  "Not yet, Catriona. Not yet. My wife will always be my primary partner, but I would be honored if you would consider a poly relationship with me as a secondary partner."

  Cat stared at him.

  "I've always felt we've had real chemistry."

  She was flabbergasted. "Really?"

  "Really." Graham beamed. "I could commit to you fully, on Wednesdays. Wednesdays would be just for us."

  This was becoming surreal.

  "Graham. Last night, was ah--great. But I don't think I'm a poly sort of person. I have this thing about monogamy. Just ask my husband. My ex-husband."

  "Oh, monogamy." Graham looked slightly disgusted by the word. "Polyamory is so much more enriching. I can give you a Web site address."

  "And Wednesdays aren't good for me." Laughing would be a big mistake.

  "Oh well! I can look at my schedule!"

  "Actually, Graham, can I ask you a big favor?"

  "Of course." He looked at her expectantly.

  "Do you think you could leave now?"

  Venus on the Dance Floor

  Christ! Get it off! I hate this song! "Venus"!

  It reminds me of this time I went to a nightclub in the city. I was with a group of mates and we were watching these three girls dance.

  They weren't bad, so I think, I'll have a go. Worth a go. So I boogie on up to 'em, feeling like a complete loser, like you do. One of 'em smiled at me and I'm thinking I'm in like Flynn. And then this bloody song starts and I became invisible! They went right off, laughing, screaming, and doing these really over-the-top sexy dances. No way could you break into that little circle. All they could see was one another. So I had to slink on back like a total dickhead. My mates never let me forget it. For years afterward, whenever I walked into the pub, they'd be singing lines from that song.