You saw parents on television whose children had died. Cat could never stand to look at their white faces and pleading bloodshot eyes. They looked like they weren’t human anymore, like they had evolved into some other species. “Change the channel,” she always told Dan. “Change it.”

How dare she change the channel to escape from their horror and then lie here feeling desolate over an everyday, run-of-the-mill, happens to one-in-every-three-women miscarriage?

She turned over and squashed her face into her pillow, hard, until her nose hurt.

It was the second day of January.

She thought of all the hundreds of days ahead of her and felt exhausted. It was impossible to think of getting through a year. Day after day after day. Getting up to go to work. Shower, breakfast, blow-drying hair. Driving the car through rush hour. Accelerate. Brake. Accelerate. Walking through the labyrinth of cubicles at work. “Morning!” “Hi!” “Good morning!” “How are you today?” Meetings. Phone calls. Lunch. More meetings. Tap, tap, tap on the computer. E-mails. Coffee. Driving home. Gym. Dinner. TV. Bills. Housework. Nights out with friends. Ha, ha, ha, chat, chat, chat. What was the point in any of it?

And trying again. Sex at the right time of the month. Carefully counting the days until her period came. What if she took another year to get pregnant? And what if she miscarried again? There was a woman at work who had seven miscarriages before she gave up.

Seven.

Cat couldn’t do it. She knew she couldn’t do it.

She felt Dan’s thigh against hers, and the thought of having sex with him seemed bizarre. Slightly foolish even. All that grunting and groaning and ooooh and aaaaahing and we start up here, and now we move down there, and I do this and you do that and there goes you, and there goes me.

What a bore.

She rolled back over and looked at the ceiling. Her hands felt the little buttons on the mattress beneath the sheet.

She didn’t even like him that much.

Actually, she didn’t particularly like anybody.

The alarm began to beep, and Dan’s arm shot out automatically to hit the snooze button.

I’m just going to stay here, she thought. I’m just going to lie still like this, all day, every day. Maybe forever.

“So! How about I treat you to a real nice dinner in some classy restaurant? Just you and me. How would you like that? That’d be fun, eh? Put a smile on your dial?”

“No thanks, Dad. But thank you.”

“Lunch, then. That’d be better, eh? Smack-up lunch?”

“No. Maybe some other time.”

“Or with your mother? All three of us? That would be something different, eh? Ha!”

“Yes, that would be different. Ha. But no. I’m really tired, Dad. I might go now.”

“Oh. Well, O.K. Maybe another time. You call me when you’re feeling a bit better. Bye, love.”

Cat let her arm flop and the phone thud onto the carpet beside the bed.

She yawned hugely and thought about lifting her head to look at the clock, but it seemed like too much effort for too little return. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t getting up. It was her third day in bed and already it felt like she’d lived this way forever. Huge chunks of time vanishing in deep, dark, druglike sleep that dragged her down like quicksand. When she woke up, she was exhausted, her eyes gritty, her mouth bitter.

She curled up on her side and rearranged the pillows.

Her father had sounded like a used-car salesman on the phone. He always put on that fake, fiercely happy voice when things were going wrong, as if he could sort of bulldoze you into being happy again.

Dad was better in the good times.

A memory appeared so clearly in Cat’s head that she could smell it. It was the smell of cold, crisp Saturday mornings and netball. The sickly sweet Impulse deodorant all three of them used to wear, the wedges of orange that Mum brought along in a Tupperware container. They were always running late and the car was filled with tension and Maxine drove so slowly and then they’d pull into the netball courts—and there was Dad.

They wouldn’t have seen him all week and there he was waiting for them, lifting a casual hand in greeting. He’d be talking away to the other parents and Cat would crunch across the gravel in her sneakers and squash her head under his arm and he’d hug her to him.

He loved watching them play netball. He loved the fact that the Kettle girls were famous in the Turramurra District Netball Club. A-grade players. And lethal, all three of them. “Even the dippy redhead turns into a hard-faced bitch as soon as the whistle blows,” people said admiringly. “It’s just their long legs. They’re just tall,” said the jealous short girls.

Cat was goal defense, Lyn was goal attack, and Gemma was center. The three of them had the court covered, with the wings and keepers all but irrelevant. It was the one time in their lives where the roles were divided up evenly, neatly, fairly—equally distinct but equally important.

“Good play, girls!” Frank would call out from the sidelines. Not embarrassingly enthusiastic like some parents. Just cool and smooth. A little thumbs-up signal. He wore chunky woolen sweaters and jeans and looked warm and comfortable, like a dad in an aftershave commercial.

And where was Maxine? On the other side of the court, sitting very straight on a fold-out chair, her elegant shoes in neat parallel lines. Her white face pinched and set. Cold weather made her ears ache, and she was not the sort of woman to wear a warm hat: not like Kerry’s mum, Mrs. Dalmeny, who wore a bright red tea cozy of a beanie and danced joyfully up and down the sidelines, calling out, “Oh, well done, Turramurra, well done!”

Cat hated her mother then. Hated her so much she could hardly bear to look at her. She hated the discreet little clap, clap, clap of Maxine’s gloved hands when either team scored a goal. She hated the way she spoke to the other parents, so stiffly and carefully. Her manners were so good they were like a putdown.

Most of all, Cat hated the way her mother talked to her father.

“Max, how are you?” Frank would say, his eyes hidden by designer sunglasses, his tone as warm and sexy as his chunky sweater. “Looking as gorgeous as ever, I see!”

“I’m perfectly well, thank you, Frank,” Maxine would respond with an unflattering flare of her nostrils. Frank’s teeth would flash with humor and he’d say, “Hmmm, I think it might be a bit warmer on that side of the court.”