Three Wishes (22 page)

“What do you mean obviously?”

“Cat, of course.”

“Oh, Cat, of
course.”

“Imagine how she’d feel if I just happily announced I was having a baby.”

“So how long do we put our life on hold for?”

“As long as necessary.”

“That’s ridiculous. What if Cat takes months to get pregnant again? Or has another miscarriage?”

“Don’t say that.”

She couldn’t understand why this wasn’t as black-and-white obvious to him as it was to her.

Lyn put the garlic into the hot oil and it sizzled and popped excitedly, while Michael lifted Maddie off his feet and allowed her to go running off on some mission.

“You’re serious.”

“I told you. The other day with Gemma and Mum, she was just, I don’t know. When we were sitting there eating bun, she had exactly the same sort of surprised hurt expression on her face that she got when Mum and Dad sat us down in the living room and told us they were getting a divorce. I’ve never forgotten it. Her little face just crumpled.”

“Well, your little face probably crumpled too.”

“I don’t know if it did or not. That’s just my memory of it. Cat’s face.”

“So. Do you think Cat would do the same for you if the situations were reversed?”

“Yep.”

“I bet she bloody well wouldn’t.”

“I bet she bloody well would.”

Kara appeared in the kitchen. “Yum, it smells good in here. I’m
starved to death
!”

Lyn’s eyes met Michael’s in shared surprise at this unexpected cheeriness.

“Shall I set the table?”

Michael’s mouth dropped.

“Thanks,” said Lyn, trying for the nonfussy, not-too-enthusiastic tone that Cat seemed to use so effectively with Kara.

“No problemo.”

She opened a cupboard door and began pulling down plates.

Michael gestured wildly and silently at Lyn. “Drugs?” he mouthed frantically, doing something peculiar to his forearm that was presumably meant to be his imitation of somebody injecting a vein.

Lyn rolled her eyes.

Kara closed the cupboard door. “What are you
doing, Dad?”

“Oh! Just—you know!”

“You are such an idiot.”

Michael looked relieved and nodded agreeably.

“Mummy!” Maddie toddled back into the kitchen, an expression of perplexed delight on her face. “Look!”

She held up two copies of
Good Night, Little Bear.

Lyn said, “Fancy that!” and Maddie plunked down onto her bottom with both books in front of her, her head turning back and forth, as she flipped each page, intent on solving this mystery. The smell of frying garlic filled the kitchen and Michael chomped on a piece of capsicum and the ghost of his childhood dimple dented his cheek as he happily poured too much soy sauce into the stir-fry. Kara rattled efficiently through the drawer for knives
and forks and her bare shoulders were young and tanned with skinny white lines from her swimsuit. And for just a moment, in spite of all the reasons not to feel happy (like the sinister bruise of worry over today’s parking lot incident), Lyn experienced an unexpectedly lovely unfurling of happiness.

It didn’t last, of course.

Michael became overexcited by Kara’s sunshiny mood and asked too many offensive questions, like, “So! What have you been up to?” causing her to slump with disgust and ask if she could please eat her dinner in peace and quiet in front of the TV.

After dinner, Maddie had a sudden revelation that her nightly bath was actually a physically painful experience, tantamount to torture. At Michael’s insistence, Lyn finally succumbed to the ferocity of her tantrum and let her go to bed dirty, which went against all of her deepest-held beliefs about personal hygiene and good discipline.

And when the house was finally quiet and Michael and Lyn were settled around the dining room table with coffee and Tim Tams and their respective laptops, Lyn started to tell Michael about what happened in the parking lot and found she couldn’t find the right words.

She could have found the right words if it had happened to someone else. In fact, she’d be the first one offering a diagnosis. “You weren’t having a heart attack, silly!” she’d say and then she’d tell them that they almost certainly had a—and she’d use the words with such calmly knowledgeable, pseudo-psychologist, women’s-magazine authority—panic attack. Yes, a panic attack, which was really nothing to worry about. Oh, she’d be so enthusiastically sympathetic, so know-it-all, typical Lyn. She’d explain how she’d read all about these “attacks” and they were really quite common and there were techniques you could learn to deal with them.

But they weren’t meant to happen to
her.
Other, more fragile people were meant to have panic attacks. People in need of look
ing after. O.K., if she was being completely honest—slightly
silly
people.

Not Lyn.

An event occurred. You flicked through your mental filing case of potential emotional responses and you
chose
the appropriate response. That was emotional intelligence, that was personal development, that was Lyn’s specialty. So why was she suddenly having a panic attack over not finding an exit and forgetting to buy cockroach spray?

Maybe it
was
something medical.

Maybe she should talk to a doctor about it.

The problem was that the very thought of talking about it out loud, to Michael or even more so to a doctor, seemed to cause a perceptible quickening of her heart. She imagined trying to describe that horrible pain across her chest and involuntarily pressed her hand to her collarbone. God, it had been awful.

If she told Michael about it, he’d insist that she see a doctor. He would react with immediate, loving, husbandly concern. “Let’s rule out the physical reasons first,” he’d say. And then he’d go on and on about reducing stress in her life and delegating more and not taking on so much and hiring more staff and getting more sleep and a cleaner—and it would make her feel really, really stressed.

That was the problem with a perfect husband. A lesser man might laugh and say something like, “Well, you’re a bit of a head case, aren’t you!” and that was exactly the sort of unsupportive reaction she needed.

A little contempt might make it dwindle away. It would be like laughing at the scary bits in a horror movie.

She looked at Michael and thought about saying, “I’m going to tell you something and I want you to be
un
supportive, O.K.?” He was sitting back in his chair, munching his biscuit and double-clicking in that casually authoritative way he had with computers, as if the laptop was an extension of his own body. Computers and
other electrical equipment seemed to shrink when Michael was around, becoming malleable and obedient in his large hands. It was a pity he couldn’t do the same with every problem. Tap a few keys, frown in an interested way. “Mmmm, let’s give this a go, then,” and hey presto, confidence about the functionality of your personality rebooted and restored.

She would tell him another day.

Or perhaps she wouldn’t tell him at all.

She went back to the twenty-three unanswered e-mails that had just filled her computer screen. She could see the words “problem,” “urgent,” and “help!” featuring heavily in the subject headings.

“You’re not still worrying,” Michael looked over at her, “about Maddie missing her bath.”

“I’m not that anal.”

“She’s testing her boundaries.”

“Yes, and finding they can be knocked over with ease.”

“The solution is a sibling.”

“Pffff. She’s got too many Kettle chromosomes. Anyway, of course we’re going to have another baby one day. Just not right now.”

“For some reason I have a problem with Cat’s life having such a major impact on my life.”

“Well, that
is
life. People impact on each other.
Siblings
impact on each other.”

“Not mine.”

“Yours are weird.”

“Oh, please. From the mouth of a Kettle. Now that’s the kettle calling the pot black.” Michael chuckled contentedly at his own wit.

“Oh, very good, yes, good one, darling.”

Lyn applauded lavishly with one hand on the tabletop while using the other one to continue scrolling through her e-mail. She hadn’t really been concentrating on the conversation due to a
distractingly intriguing e-mail that had just arrived from an address she didn’t recognize.

With a pleasant buzz of anticipation—could it be?—she was scrolling to the end of the e-mail to see if the sender was who she thought when the phone rang.

“Hello?” Lyn snatched up the portable phone from the table in front of her and kept looking at her computer screen.

There was silence for a second, a muffled sound, and then, “Lyn.”

It was Cat. Her voice was wrong.

Lyn stood up, pressing her hand against her other ear.

“What’s the matter? What is it?”

“Well. One thing is that I’ve had an accident.”

“A car accident? Are you O.K.?”

“Oh! Yes, I’m O.K. Although one little problem. The thing is…The thing is I’m probably over the limit. I had maybe four glasses. Five glasses. Maybe one was a glass of water? Yes, rehydrate, like Gemma says. But. Yes. Too many glasses. And this guy’s wife, this stupid, stupid
bitch,
she wants to call the police. I said it’s not necessary, we can just exchange details. But she’s such a fucking…I think they’re calling now.”

“Where are you?” Lyn was running toward her bedroom as she spoke.

“Me? Oh, I’m on the Pacific Highway. Down the road from the Greenwood.”

“What are you wearing?”

“What?”

“Cat—what—are—you—wearing?”
She unzipped her shorts and wriggled out of them. Michael had followed her into the bedroom, carrying his chocolate biscuit.

“Jeans and a T-shirt. But look I have to tell you—”

“What color T-shirt?”

“Black. Lyn. What I’m calling to tell you…I need to tell you that Dan is leaving me. Yes. For that girl. He loves her. He doesn’t love me.”

“I’m coming now. Just stay where you are. Don’t talk to anybody.”

She hung up, threw the phone on the bed, and pulled jeans and a black T-shirt from her wardrobe.

“What’s going on?” Michael absentmindedly stuffed the rest of his biscuit in his mouth.

“Cat’s been in an accident. I’m going there.”

“O.K., and why are you changing your clothes?”

“She’s over the limit. She thinks the police are coming.”

“So…?” Suddenly he understood. “Oh, Lyn, don’t be so stupid. You can’t get her out of this.”

She finished zipping up her jeans and pulled the elastic from her hair and ran her fingers through it, I-don’t-care-what-you-think Cat-style.

“Probably not. It’s worth a try.”

“No, it’s not worth a try. You’re being ridiculous.”

His paternal, pompous tone was really irritating her. She ignored him and grabbed the car keys from the dressing table.

“I’ll come with you,” he said. “I’ll tell Kara.”

“No.”
He would slow her down. She was running for the door to the garage. “No. Better stay here.”

“Don’t you drive too fast! Lyn, are you listening to me? You drive
carefully,
for Christ’s sake! You promise me? Promise me!”

The fear and frustration in his voice made her stop for a second and look at him calmly. “I promise. Don’t worry.”

“You three girls,” he called after her, as she ran down the stairs, her car keys held out in front of her like a sword, ready to push the button to deactivate the alarm, “You are so bloody, bloody…!”

“I know,” she called back, comfortingly. “I know.”

She prayed he didn’t hear the screech of tires as she accelerated out of the garage.

According to family folklore, swapping identities was a game Cat first played when they were just two years old and she was caught by her parents in the act of creating her own crayon Picasso on the living room wall.

Maxine and Frank exploded as one, “Naughty girl, Cat!”

Cat turned her head, red crayon artistically in hand, and realized from the identical expressions of horror on her parents’ faces that she had committed a terrible crime.

“Me Lyn,” she said craftily. “Not Cat.”

And for just a split second they both believed it was Lyn, until Frank lifted her up by the strap of her overalls for a closer look at Cat’s evil little sparky face.