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.”

“Oh,” said Gemma, who was still feeling woozy and wonderful. “I put it away last night. Didn’t I put it in that drawer there?”

“Clearly you didn’t.”

“Oh.” She leaned over to look in the drawer and suddenly he slammed it shut, so she had to pull her hand back fast. He yelled so loudly that it was physical, like a blow to her chest, “For f**k’s sake, Gemma, where did you put it? I’ve told you at least five f**king times where it goes!”

It was just so unexpected.

“Why,” she asked, and it was a bit difficult to breathe, “are you yelling?”

The question enraged him. “I’m not,” he yelled, “fucking yelling, you silly bitch!”

He slammed drawers open and shut with such force that she was backing out of the kitchen thinking, My God, he’s gone crazy!

Then, “Why did you put it there?” and he lifted the bottle opener out of the wrong drawer and put it in the picnic basket and said in a perfectly normal voice, “Right, let’s go!”

Her legs were shaking.

“Marcus?”

“Mmmm?” He carried the basket out of the kitchen, collecting his house keys from the table. “Yeah?” He smiled at her.

“You were just yelling at me like a complete maniac.”

“No, I wasn’t. I just got a bit irritated when I couldn’t find the bottle opener. You’ve just got to put it in the right drawer. Now are we going on this picnic or not?”

“You called me a silly bitch.”

“I did not. Come on now. You’re not going to be one of those fragile, sensitive types, are you? I don’t want to have to walk on eggshells. That used to drive me mad with Liz.”

Liz was his ex-girlfriend, and, up until now, she had represented a very pleasing element in their relationship. “Oh, she couldn’t have been that bad,” Gemma would say happily whenever Marcus brought up one of Liz’s faults. Liz had lived with Marcus for two years and was a bit of a loser. Attractive enough, but she didn’t have Gemma’s legs and she was a sulk, a prissy girl, always nagging. Not as smart as Gemma. Gemma didn’t want to lose that enjoyable feeling of gentle superiority whenever Liz’s name came up.