Three Wishes (17 page)

“She won’t,” said Gemma in alarm. “Mummy doesn’t cry. You won’t cry, will you, Mum?”

Mum was cross. “No, I certainly won’t, Gemma. Don’t be so silly, Lyn.”

“We’ll go on the fastest water slide in the whole world and
Daddy will cry if you don’t come!” said Cat. “Won’t you, Dad?”

He sniffed loudly and pretended to wipe his eyes. “Oh yes.”

Lyn didn’t stand a chance.

The problem was it didn’t seem as if Maxine even noticed Lyn’s saintly behavior. She was just as cross and annoying as ever. After a while Lyn realized that she didn’t have a sparkly diamond for a soul at all. Deep down she felt
angry
with her mother, not pure and good and loving.

The thought of missing out on that water slide made her sick—but so did the thought of her mother sitting at the kitchen table with the tea towel over her shoulder.

So there you had it. She missed out on both the water slide and a gold star from Jesus.

That was the Christmas Lyn discovered the horrible pleasure of martyrdom.

Lyn knew she knew Angela as soon as she walked into the kitchen. She had the sort of face you remembered. Almond-shaped eyes. Exotic thick black hair. Caramel-colored skin.

Lyn’s mind jumped from Brekkie Bus circles to play-group circles to Michael’s work—to sitting in Cat’s car watching Angela tap on the car window, her face bent down, her ponytail falling to one side.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

How had Gemma managed to orchestrate this disaster? Quietly, she maneuvered herself behind Cat and placed one protective hand over her shoulder. Had she recognized her yet?

“I’m Angela.”

Lyn felt Cat’s shoulder become rigid and her own chest constrict in sympathy.

Gemma, of course, had no control over her emotions and quite unnecessarily dropped a full glass of champagne on the floor.

Lyn stared stupidly at the broken glass and tried to think calmly. This was a genuinely appalling situation. Three women in the one room who had all slept with Daniel Whitford.

It was all so…unhygienic.

“I’ll get a dustpan,” said Maxine as Charlie and Angela simultaneously bent down to begin picking up shards of glass in careful cupped hands. The rest of the Kettle family watched with interest.

“Butterfingers!” Nana Kettle leaned over to tap Charlie on the shoulder. “Gemma is such a butterfingers! That’s what we call her! Butterfingers!”

“I’m sorry,” Gemma stood staring fearfully down at Angela, as if she was some sort of awful apparition.

“It’s only a glass, sweetheart,” said Frank, his eyes appreciative on Angela’s legs. “I’m sure Lyn doesn’t mind.”

Lyn took a breath. She couldn’t see Cat’s face, only the top of her head. “Of course not. Please. Leave it. Charlie…Angela. I’ll look after it.” It felt like a betrayal to use Angela’s name. She needed to get these people out of her house.

“We’re admitting defeat on the cubby house.” Michael appeared in the kitchen, followed by Dan. “Time for a drink.”

“Have we had our first breakage?” said Dan. “Let me guess the culprit.”

Angela looked up from the floor. “Danny!”

Danny?

Cat shrugged away Lyn’s hand, stepped over the glass, and walked out of the kitchen, her face averted from Dan.

“Crosspatch!” Nana Kettle informed Charlie triumphantly. “That’s what we call that one!”

Dan backed himself up against the fridge. He looked nauseous. “Hi there.”

“So you two know each other, eh?” said Michael. Understanding swept his face as his eyes met Lyn’s and his words trailed lamely. “…how about that.”

Gemma looked imploringly at Lyn. Lyn massaged her forehead and watched Kara carefully pouring herself a very full glass of wine, one eye monitoring her father.

“Swim!” Maddie came running full tilt into the kitchen. She was stark naked and wearing her yellow plastic floaties on each arm.

“Lyn
—bare
feet!” warned Maxine at the same instant as Char
lie swooped Maddie into the air away from the glass.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Maddie patted the top of Charlie’s closely shaven head approvingly, as if he were a furry animal. “Swim?” she inquired brightly, tipping her head birdlike to one side. “Come swim?”

“Maybe another day, sweetie,” said Charlie.

Angela had gathered her composure. “I know Dan from the Greenwood pub,” she told Charlie. “I got chatting to him that night Bec and I handed out your fridge magnets.”

“Oh!” said Gemma. “That must be…oh.”

“Yes?” Charlie put a hand on Gemma’s shoulder and looked at her with gentle bemusement. Maddie tapped her finger on the end of his nose and giggled.

“I rang Cat the day I got locked out of the house,” explained Gemma. She gave Cat’s empty chair a nervous glance. “She said, There’s a number for a locksmith right here on the fridge.”

“Ha!” Dan was obviously trying to follow Angela’s jolly lead, but he was looking slightly manic, punching his fist into his palm. “I remember. It was shaped like a key. I stuck it on the fridge when I got home from the pub. Didn’t even think…about it. Good idea, magnets. Yep. Get your name in front of people. Well. You owe me, Gemma!”

Lyn wanted to smack him.

“Not as much as I owe you,” said Charlie, jiggling Maddie in one arm and putting his free arm around Gemma. He gave Dan a thoughtful, appraising look and then turned back to Nana Kettle. “Gemma is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Nana Kettle beamed up at him, her eyes shining though her glasses. “What a lovely young fellow! Isn’t he, Frank? Maxine?”

Maxine straightened up from the floor with the dustpan full of broken glass. “Very lovely,” she said. Her eyebrows were question marks. “You certainly saved Maddie’s feet from getting cut to pieces.”

“Good reflexes,” contributed Michael overheartily.

There was a contemptuous “pfffff” sound from Kara’s direction.

“Well. We’d better make a move.” Charlie handed Maddie over to Lyn. “It was great to meet you all.”

“Bye everybody,” said Angela. For a moment her flawless performance seemed to falter. “Bye, Dan.”

“Yeah.” Dan examined his hands. “Yeah. Bye then.”

“I’ll see them out,” said Gemma.

There was a moment’s silence in the kitchen. The central characters had left the stage, leaving the supporting cast without a script.

“What was that all about?” asked Maxine, shaking glass into the rubbish bin. “You were all behaving like lunatics. And have you noticed your daughter is drinking like a fish, Michael?”

Michael looked with confusion at Maddie.

“I think she means me, Dad,” Kara raised her wineglass cheerily. “Remember. You’ve got
two daughters.”

“Dan, shouldn’t you be finding out what’s wrong with Cat?” Maxine commanded.

“Yeah.” Dan seemed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. He opened the fridge door and stood staring at its contents. “I’ll just take her up a beer.”

“What?”

“Oh. Yeah. I’ll just take one for me then.”

He ambled from the kitchen, nearly colliding with Gemma, who looked up at him with something approaching hatred.

“Can I talk to you for a sec, Lyn?” she said in a strained tone. “Now?”

Lyn leaned up against the desk in her office. “Well. That was fun.”

“I feel terrible.” Gemma slumped into a chair and sat on her hands.

“It’s not your fault. It’s just bad luck. Although, of course, if you could have found a locksmith for yourself instead of calling Cat—”

If you weren’t always so bloody helpless.

“Yes, I know. This is terrible.”

“Yes.”

“Charlie was talking the other night about his sister. He said she’s been seeing—no, he said she’s
involved with a married man.
That doesn’t sound like a one-off.”

“Maybe it’s another married man. Maybe she makes a habit of it.”

“She called him
Danny.” Gemma shuddered.

Lyn picked up her container of paper clips and rattled it, hard. “Why would he tell Cat about Angela in the first place if he was going to keep seeing her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I could kill him.”

“I know. When I saw him coming out of the kitchen then, I thought, I could punch you, I could close my fist and punch you properly.”

Lyn looked down at her in-tray. There was a yellow Post-it note with a frantic message from her marketing coordinator—
Lyn! Problem! Please look at before Christmas! She hadn’t even seen it
until now. Her stomach clenched instinctively.

“Lyn?” Gemma looked up at her trustingly and swiveled her chair back and forth. “What will we do? Do we tell her?”

Lyn twisted her head from side to side. I am suffering from stress, she thought. I am suffering from profound stress.

The thought made her feel better for some reason.

“What do
you
think we should do?”

Delegate, Michael was always saying. You’ve got to learn to delegate.

“I don’t know.”

This was why delegating didn’t work.

Lyn said, “I think we should worry about it after Christmas. You can find out more from Charlie.”

“O.K.”

“What’s going on in here?” Cat came into the study, flinging back the door and coming to lean against the desk next to Lyn. She took the jar of paper clips out of Lyn’s hand and rattled it aggressively. The strands of hair around her face were damp. She must have washed her face, scrubbing away all the radiant happiness of that morning. The skin under her eyes looked sad and raw.

“Are you O.K.?” asked Gemma.

“Yes.” Cat took a paper clip and bent and straightened it between her fingers. She didn’t look at Gemma. “You’ll just have to break up with him.”

“Sorry?”
Gemma stood up from her chair.

“You’ll break up with him sooner or later anyway.”

“But I like him. I really sort of like him.”

“He’s a locksmith, Gemma.”

“So?”

“So, for some reason you get off on sleeping with, I don’t know—
blokes.
But it’s not like you’re going to marry one of them.”

“Oh my God,” said Gemma. “I can’t believe you said that. That’s so snobbish! You sound like…you sound like Mum!”

The ultimate insult.

“I’m not saying you’re better than them, I’m saying you’re smarter than them.”

“Cat.” Now Lyn could feel stress, like a toxic chemical, flooding her bloodstream. “You can’t expect her—”

“She’ll find somebody else in five minutes. Somebody better. He’s too short for her. He’s not good enough for her. Besides which, she only
met him because of Dan.”

“Yes, but—”

“I want to forget about it. I want to forget about that girl. How can I forget about it when Gemma’s dating her brother? The whole thing’s a joke.”

On the word “joke,” there was a break in Cat’s voice.

A tiny fracture of grief.

For a moment there was silence in the room.

“I’ll think about it,” said Gemma.

Lyn put her knuckle to her mouth and breathed in deeply. “But, Gemma—”

“I said I’ll think about it.” Gemma pushed her chair back in toward the desk. “She’s right. We would have broken up eventually anyway. I’m going to take Maddie for a swim.”

She left the room.

“It’s too much to ask,” said Lyn. “What if he’s the one?”

Cat flicked the mangled paper clip across the room. “I can assure you, there is no such thing.”

I’ve ruined Cat’s
Christmas, thought Gemma, changing into her swimsuit in Michael and Lyn’s bathroom. I am a bitch, a witch, a klutzy butterfingers.

“The problem with you, Gemma,” Marcus used to say, “is you don’t
concentrate.”

She pulled up the straps of her swimmers and looked in Lyn’s cupboard for sunscreen. The house was becoming hotter and hotter. Nana, to Maxine’s disgust, had stripped down to her petticoat. Gemma’s own face in Lyn’s bathroom mirror was bright pink. She still had the piece of tinsel tied lopsided around her head, giving her a dopey, hopeful look.

Charlie, she realized now, had talked about his sister Angela, but she hadn’t even mentally noted that the names were the same. They didn’t feel the same. There was Angela, Charlie’s younger sister, whom he obviously adored. Then, there was
Angela,
evil husband stealer.

The right thing to do was to break up with him.

It would be a noble gesture of triplet solidarity.

It would be a sisterly sacrifice.

It would be like going on a hunger strike.

“Charlie, ask your sister why I can’t see you anymore. Ask her
why she doesn’t look for wedding rings before she starts flirting and breaking
my sister’s heart.”

Ah, but Charlie.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.

The night before they’d had their own special Christmas Eve dinner on Charlie’s balcony. They cooked it together. “You’ve just got this mental block about cooking,” said Charlie. “Anybody can cook.” And it turned out when she was a little bit drunk and there was a good CD playing, so she was sort of dancing while she was cooking, with a wineglass in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, well, she was in fact a
spectacular
cook! It was a wonderful discovery.

He gave her perfume and a book for Christmas.

The Kettle girls were allergic to perfume, but she bravely dabbed it on her wrist and only sneezed eleven times in a row, spluttering in between each sneeze things like, “Hay fev-er!” “Gosh!” “Must!” “Be!” “Pollen!” “In!” “The!” “Air!”

When she finally stopped sneezing, she examined the book. “I’ve been wanting to read this!” she said, which wasn’t a complete lie as she had wanted to read it, before she did read it, a few months ago.

“Actually,” said Charlie, tugging on his ear, which was what he did when he felt a bit awkward or shy. (She already knew that about him. She already adored that about him.) “I don’t know anything about it. I just bought it because the picture of the girl on the front cover reminded me of you. I don’t know why.”

The girl on the front cover looked like a whimsical princess, and there was something about her expression that secretly reminded Gemma a little of herself too. It was her best self. The self she would be on a tropical island, on a perfect day, wearing a floaty dress and possibly a straw hat. A day when she didn’t sneeze or drink too much and nobody got offended or had to rush off and everybody got everybody else’s jokes. A day when Gemma had no memories except the good ones. A day when everything was funny and fascinating just the way it should be.

It delighted her that Charlie could recognize
that
self.

Wasn’t there some rule that said you had to marry that sort of man—fast?

She walked downstairs in her swimsuit and found Maddie, still naked and in her floaties, banging away on her xylophone. She was sitting on the sofa next to Nana, who was sloshing her bare feet around in a bucket of water.

“Oh good, Gemma!” said Nana. “I was just thinking. If I die in this heat, make sure they don’t have the funeral next Wednesday. That’s bingo day at the club. Everybody would be put out. Tell them to have it on Thursday.”

“You’re not going to die.”

Nana looked offended. “How would you know, Miss Smarty-pants?”

“Why don’t you come swimming with Maddie and me?”

“Because I don’t want to, thank you very much.”

Maddie tossed aside her xylophone with a clatter and threw her arms around Gemma’s leg. “Swim!” At least someone was in a good mood.

Lyn and Michael’s swimming pool was magnificent, a curving turquoise shell with glittering views that made you feel like you were swimming in the harbor.

“Gem! Look!” demanded Maddie. She leaned forward with her bottom sticking out behind her in imitation of a grown-up’s dive, her head squashed between upstretched arms. Then she launched herself into the pool, landing splat on her tummy. Her floaties kept her bobbing on the surface.

Gemma dived in next to her and swam along the bottom of the pool, feeling the voluptuous relief of immersion in a silent, cold, chlorinated world.

But it wasn’t as if she were in love with Charlie or even in a relationship yet.

They didn’t have nicknames, private jokes, photos of happier times, or joint friends who would be shocked and sad. No forth
coming social events. No joint purchases. It would be painless and clean. Just one sharp slice of the knife: “Charlie, I’m sure you understand. You’re Italian after all. Family comes first.”

“Look, Gem! Look!”

Maddie waded up the stairs and out of the pool, water dripping, and stood on the edge of the pool with her arms held high. She looked like a slippery little seal.

“Ooooh!” applauded Gemma as Maddie did a star jump into the pool and bobbed back up to the surface, gasping and choking, her hair flat across her face. She seemed to be under the impression that other people swam only for the pleasure of seeing her perform various awe-inspiring tricks.

“Maybe you could try and shut your mouth next time,” suggested Gemma. “You’ll swallow less water.”

Maddie patted the surface of the water with flat palms, so that drops of water flew in her eyes, and gave a loud chuckle, to indicate she was being funny now.

“Ha!” cried Gemma, splashing herself in an equally hilarious manner, while she thought about what Cat had said in Lyn’s office: “She’ll break up with him eventually, anyway.”

She wasn’t joking or being sarcastic. She said it as if it were a fact. She thought it was inevitable. Of course, the two of them had been teasing her for years about her growing accumulation of ex-boyfriends. Lyn had even given her a book called
Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives and helpfully indicated
with a Post-it note the chapter on the stupid thing she believed Gemma was doing. But still, Gemma had thought, rather idiotically she now realized, that they were as surprised as she was each time she broke up with another boyfriend.

Perhaps they already knew what Gemma secretly feared, that she wasn’t actually capable of genuine, serious love. Sure, she was capable of an infatuation, like the one she was currently experiencing with Charlie, but they were right, it probably wouldn’t last.

For weeks, sometimes months, she adored her men—and then
one day, without warning, it hit her. Not only was she over the infatuation, she actively
disliked
the guy. She remembered sitting on a beach with the plumber who liked country music.

“Where’s the bottle opener?” he said, frowning and scrabbling through their basket.

And that was it. I don’t like you, she thought, and it was like an icy cold breeze whistling around her bones.

Some people lacked hand-eye coordination. Some people were tone-deaf.

Gemma lacked the ability to stay in love with somebody.

“Gem! Look!”

“Ooooh!”

They sat down to eat Christmas lunch at the long table on Lyn and Michael’s balcony. The table was set beautifully with tasteful Christmas decorations, the harbor glinted beside them, and the sun reflected rainbows in the crystal of the glasses.

It seemed to Gemma that the setting called for another, more functional, better-dressed family—especially today, when everybody had red faces and there was a discernible bubbling of hysteria just below the surface.

There were loud pops and insults as people pulled at their Christmas crackers far too aggressively. Cat and Dan nearly wrenched each other’s arms off. People began to read out the jokes inside their paper crowns in loud sarcastic voices. Nobody listened except for Michael, who genuinely found them funny, and Nana Kettle, who kept missing the punch lines. “Eh? What did the elephant say?”

Maxine and Frank sat next to each other, which was a disconcerting sight. In fact, Gemma couldn’t remember the last time she’d seem them sitting together. They seemed to be overcompensating by being excessively animated and polite to each other.

Kara was tipsy.

Maddie sat in her high chair, singing a loud toneless song to
herself. She had to tilt her head up because her green paper crown was too big for her and had fallen down over her nose.

Gemma herself had slipped into full-on giggly, girlish Gemma. She could hear herself talking nonstop. Chatter. Chatter. Ha, ha, ha. Shut up, she thought, shut up for God’s sake, but it seemed she was trapped in her own inane party personality.

As food began to circulate around the table, Lyn and Maxine both hovered just slightly above their seats, ignoring their own empty plates, hands poised like frenzied conductors, ready to pounce triumphantly on any unmet requirement.

“Nana, have some salad dressing!” ordered Lyn.

“Cat, pass your father the turkey!” called out Maxine.

It was a mystery to Gemma why they cared so much. Nobody was hungry. It was too hot.

“More wine anybody?” asked Frank.

“Yes, please, just a little drop, thank you, Frank,” slurred Kara in a fake elegant tone and dissolved into hysterical giggles, slumping across the table.

“Would someone take her glass away?” implored Michael.

Maxine said, “I warned you hours ago she was drinking too much.”

“A little drop won’t hurt her.” Frank leaned over with the wine bottle.

Lyn snapped, “Dad! She’s fifteen!”

“Well, you three could sure put away the booze when you were fifteen.”

“You see, I’ve always had an interest in lepers,” Nana Kettle told Dan.

“I beg your pardon?” Dan looked dazed. His paper crown was leaving a stain of red across his forehead.

“Lepers!” chimed in Gemma. “Nana has always had an interest in lepers. It means your present is probably a donation on your behalf to the Leper Foundation. That’s what she gave Michael last year. Don’t you remember, Dan? We couldn’t stop laughing.”

“Gemma! Now you’ve ruined the surprise!” said Nana Kettle crossly. “Goodness me! Don’t listen to her, Michael.”

“I’m Dan.”

“I know perfectly well who you are, Dan, for goodness’ sake.”

Nana Kettle turned to Gemma.” I told that new young man of yours you were a butterfingers! Did you hear me?”

“I did hear you, Nana.”

“I think he agreed with me. He seemed a very sensible fellow, don’t you think, Dan?”

Dan’s hands clenched tight around his knife and fork. “Very sensible.”

“His sister was a pretty girl,” observed Nana Kettle.
“Very
pretty girl. All that lovely dark hair. Don’t you think, Gemma?”

Silently Gemma shrieked,
Shut up, Nana!
I will have to break up with him, she thought, I will. Her eyes were drawn irresistibly to Cat.

“She was gorgeous, Nana.” Cat’s face was hard. “Absolutely gorgeous. Don’t you think, Dan?”

“Oh, Christ.” Dan put down his knife and fork and dropped his head in his hands.

“Headache, dear?” asked Nana sympathetically.

There was a noise down the end of the table. Frank stood up and carefully tapped his fork against his glass.

He grinned self-consciously, boyishly, as everyone turned to face him. “I’ve got an announcement to make. It’s going to come as a bit of a surprise.”

“Good news, I hope,” said Michael with a hint of desperation. His purple crown was balanced precariously on his springy new haircut.

“Oh very good, Mike, mate. Very good.”

Gemma was barely listening to her father. She was wondering whether Dan really was having an affair with Angela, and if he was, then what? The thought of lugging around a secret of that magnitude made her feel ill. She was in the middle of giving Dan
a private, powerful death stare to convey, “If you are having an affair, I know you are and you’d better stop,” when her father’s words penetrated her consciousness.

“Maxine and I are dating again.”

Maxine and I are dating again.

Nobody said a word. From the house, the saccharine sounds of Michael’s Christmas CD became audible. Sleigh bells rang and somebody dreamed of a white Christmas.

Kara hiccuped.

“You’re
dating.” Cat leaned forward to look down the length of
the table at Frank and Maxine.

“We’ve been seeing each other socially for quite some time now of course,” said Maxine in a voice that sounded bizarrely too young for her, like one she’d put on to imitate what
a very rude young girl had said to her in the supermarket. “And a few months
ago we began a—well, I guess you could call it, a relationship.”