Three Wishes

  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 looking 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 unsupportive, 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.

  Hi Lyn,

  Well, it has been a long time, hasn't it? Too long. I think about you a lot and the other day I happened to see an article about a business called the "Gourmet Brekkie Bus." There was your face smiling back at me. I couldn't believe it. It seems to me that I might have played a small part in the success of...

  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.

  When they were in primary school, the two of them regularly swapped classes, just for the sheer pleasure of conning their teachers. Lyn found it strangely exhilarating being naughty Cat Kettle, talking to the bad boys up at the back of the classroom and not listening to the teacher. In fact, she found it so easy and natural being Cat that when they went back to their own classrooms, she sometimes wondered if now she was just pretending to be Lyn. (And if she was pretending to be Lyn, she wondered, was there another Lyn--the real Lyn--deep down inside?) When they turned sixteen the Kettle girls made the pleasing discovery that boys liked them, quite a lot. One night, Cat accidentally agreed to go out with two different boys on the same night. She only realized at the very last possible minute when one boy arrived to pick her up. The other boy was due to meet her at the movies in twenty minutes' time.

  It was a thrilling mix-up, with Cat dramatically clapping her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with the wonderful horror of it. They all fell about smothering whoops of laughter in Cat's bedroom, while the poor boy made strained conversation with Maxine. The only solution was for Lyn to go meet the other boy, Jason, at the movies.

  Lyn went off to the movies feeling pleasantly frightened, like she was on a covert mission to save the world. It was only when she saw Jason leaning against a wall outside Hoyts, chewing nervously on the tickets that he'd already bought, his face lighting up when he saw her, that she suddenly felt awful.

  "Hi, Cat," said Jason.

  "Hi, Jason," said Lyn, and remembered not to apologize for being late.

  It all went well in the beginning. They saw Terminator and Lyn avoided giveaway girly gasps, instead grunting with satisfaction at the most violent bits. At one stage she did worry she might have overdone it--she was laughing raucously at Arnie pulling out his eyeball, when she noticed that Jason had turned his head to look at her. But when she said, "What?" he grinned and pretended a piece of popcorn was his eyeball and ate it, so that was O.K., although revolting.

  It wasn't until afterward, when they were standing outside the movies, that everything went horribly wrong.

  Suddenly, without warning, he leaned forward and kissed her, slithering his tongue weirdly along her gums. It was horrible, disgusting, mortifying. It was like being at the dentist with your mouth forced agape and unexpected violations with strange instruments and excessive saliva buildup.

  When he'd finally finished with her mouth and Lyn was feeling an urgent desire to gargle and spit, he stood back, narrowed his eyes, and said, "Are you Lyn? Are you Cat's sister Lyn?"

  She tried to explain, but he was squaring his shoulders and squinting his eyes with cold contempt, just like the Terminator. "You Kettle girls are bitches, prick teasers," he said. "And you, you can't kiss." Then he delivered his final, devastating blow: "'Cos you're frigid!"

  Lyn went home on her own, disgraced, humiliated, and...frigid.

  She told Cat and Gemma that they'd been caught, but she never told them about the absolute confirmation of her worst secret fears. All she said was, "I will never, ever do that again."

  She was too late.

  The flashing blue lights were visible from a block away, illuminating the little group of people, policemen, cars, and tow trucks in ghastly turquoise, like a stage set for a play.

  As she pulled over, her own headlights shone a spotlight on the sickening, crumpled, caved-in side of Cat's precious car. It was a proper accident. The idiot could have killed herself.

  The reality of it was shocking. Now she wished she'd let Michael come with her.

  She parked her car and walked toward the circle of people. Cat was in the center, all eyes upon her as she blew into a little white tube held by a policeman who looked like a teenage boy.

  As Lyn approached she heard him say in a somber tone, "I'm afraid your reading is well over the limit."

  "Oh well." Cat kicked at the ground.

  A woman said to the man standing next to her, "I told you she was drunk!"

  "Good for you, Laura." The man shoved his hands into his jeans and frowned.

  Lyn fought the desire to say saying something crushing to Laura-the-bitch and walked straight up to the policeman.

  "Hello, I'm Lyn Kettle," she said, in her bright but stern working-day voice. "I'm her sister."

  The policeman looked at her and seemed to drop his own working-day tone. "Gee, you can really tell you're sisters! People must get you mixed up all the time."

  "Yes, ha! They do sometimes." Lyn smoothed down her hair uneasily and hoped he wasn't trained to pick up guilty body language. "Um. What happens now?"

  The policeman switched back to his somber voice of authority. "Well, your sister will have to come down to the station with us. I'm afraid she's likely to be charged with negligent driving and driving under the influence."

  Cat looked around her vaguely, as if all this had nothing to do with her.

  Lyn reached over and touched her on the arm. "Are you O.K.?"

  Cat raised her hands in a sort of hopeless gesture. "Oh. Never better."

  Her hands were bare, Lyn noticed. No wedding ring.

  CHAPTER 16

  "So she's going to have to go to court!"

  "Yes."

  "With a judge?"

  "A magistrate, I think."

  "Will we get to go and watch?"

  "Oh, for God's sake."

  Gemma had often observed a strange phenomenon in her conversations with Lyn. The more serious Lyn's tone, the more lighthearted Gemma became. It was like they were on a seesaw with Gemma flying high on the childish axis "Wheeee!" while Lyn banged down heavily onto solid, grown-up ground.

  If Gemma started to become more serious, would Lyn start to lighten up--or did the seesaw go in only one direction?

  "Gemma. She's going to have a criminal record."

  "Oh." Actually Gemma thought there was something rather thrilling about having a criminal record (did Cat have a mug shot?) but that was not the sort of thing you said out loud, especially to Lyn. "How terrible."

  "Yes. But anyway. There's more. She and Dan are separating. He's leaving her for Angela."

  "No!" There was nothing funny about that at all. "But how can he do this now, of all times? She only lost the baby a few days ago!"

  "Apparently, he was going to wait awhile to tell her, but then Cat found something on a telephone bill. I don't really know the full story."

  "But what if she hadn't lost the baby?"

  "He said he was going to stay and try and make it work."

  "He makes me ill."

  "Me too."

  "And how is she?"


  "I think she's suffering from depression. She just wants to sleep all the time. Listen, are you still seeing Charlie?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "It's all a bit more complicated now, isn't it?"

  "I guess so."

  Charlie said firmly, "It's nothing to do with us."

  "It's everything to do with both of us," said Gemma.

  "It's nothing to do with us," he repeated. "I don't want it to have anything to do with us. I love you."

  It was the first time he'd said it, and she didn't say it back. She said, "No, you don't!" and then he looked surprised and hurt and tugged at his ear.

  You're getting me mixed up with someone else, she wanted to explain. Don't look at me so seriously. Don't look at me as if I'm having an impact on you. I don't have real relationships. I don't have a real job. I don't have a real home. The only part that's real about me is my sisters.

  And if I'm not really real, then I can't really hurt you.

  Marcus told Gemma he loved her for the first time on a warm October night. It was also the first night he called her a silly bitch.

  They'd been going out for about six months, and Gemma, at nineteen, was still floating, spinning, bubbling with the delight of her first full-on proper, sophisticated, older (living on his own!), well-off, funny, smart boyfriend.

  He was a lawyer, for heaven's sake! He knew about wine! He'd been to Europe twice!

  She adored everything about him and he seemed (it was a miracle, really!) to adore everything about her.

  This was the boyfriend she'd dreamed about when she was fifteen.

  This was like, it!

  They were going on a picnic. A romantic picnic by the harbor that he had organized and she was wearing a new dress that she was swirling for him and he was laughing at her swirling and then he told her he loved her.

  He meant it. She could tell that he hadn't planned to say it. It had just come out of his mouth. It was an involuntary I love you, which meant it was the genuine article.

  "I love you too!" she said and they smiled at each other foolishly and had a lingering, lovely kiss against his kitchen counter.

  About twenty minutes later, they were ready to go out when they remembered the bottle opener. Marcus opened the top drawer and made a "tsk" sound. "It's not here."