We went out about three times. It was only a couple of weeks before I was leaving for London. It was certainly not a relationship.

The first time I realized you two were serious was at Marcus’s funeral, which was hardly the right time to say anything.

Then I got all distracted with Michael and next thing I knew, you and Dan were engaged and it just seemed so irrelevant and stupid.

It was over ten years ago, Cat. I am really, really sorry that you’re upset. But it meant nothing. Can we just forget about it? Can you call me? What do you want for Christmas?

Lyn

To: Lyn

From: Cat

Re: The Dan Issue

I want something very, very expensive for Christmas.

Cat

Lyn looked at her computer screen and smiled. Good. Cat was sounding like herself again. She drew a straight line through Talk to C. re D.

Hopefully that was it. In a strange way, it had made her feel as if she was somehow involved in their marriage problems, as if she and Dan had cheated on Cat, which was ridiculous of course.

It was just three dates. Three dates, a long time ago, in another world, another time. All was fair back in the early nineties. Before the AIDS prevention ads started to seem scary, not funny, before the Kettle girls started settling down.

Lyn had a sudden, unexpectedly vivid memory of lying on Dan’s bed, in his messy, boy-smelling room. “Do you like it when I do this? Seems like you do, huh? What about this?”

Did she like it just that bit more because she knew deep down Cat had been lying when she said wasn’t interested? Who wouldn’t be interested? He was gorgeous. No long-term potential, of course, but very sexy.

God, she hadn’t thought about that for years. She’d better stop it, or she’d blush next time she saw the cheating bastard.

It was later that night and Lyn stood at the bathroom mirror applying her moisturizer with upward patting motions. She looked straight ahead at her own reflection, trying to avoid the sight of Michael cleaning his teeth. It baffled her how much it annoyed her. He was just so enthusiastic about the whole procedure, sawing vigorously away at his gums, toothpaste frothing over his upper lip. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder whether it had irritated Georgina too.

“Do you know we’ve been together now for as long as you and Georgina were?” she said, as he bent down, mercifully finished, to rinse his mouth.

“Have we?” Michael dried his mouth with a towel.

“Yes,” said Lyn. “So are you going to be unfaithful to me now?” There was a harder note in her voice than she’d wanted.

Michael put down the towel. “No,” he said carefully. “No, that wasn’t actually my intention.”

“Pfffff,” said Lyn. “I guess it wasn’t your intention to be unfaithful to Georgina either.”

Michael leaned against the bathroom door. “Is this to do with the whole Cat and Dan thing?” She didn’t say anything. “Is it Kara? This morning’s teenager from-hell-performance?”

“It’s nothing. It was a joke.”

“Didn’t sound like one.”

Lyn put away her moisturizer and Michael’s toothpaste. She walked past him into their bedroom. He snapped off the light and followed her.

Without speaking, they pulled back the quilt, climbed into bed, and took their books from their bedside tables. They lay side by side on their backs and held their books in front of them.

After a few seconds, Michael suddenly put his book flat down on his chest.

“Do you remember the first time we went camping together?”

Lyn kept looking at her book. “Yes.”

“I remember waking up that first morning and seeing you next to me in your sleeping bag, all curled up, and I felt so…so pleased to see you. It was like the feeling you got when you were a kid and you had a friend stay the night. While you were sleeping you’d forget he was there and then you’d wake up and see him sleeping on the mattress on the floor and you’d remember and you’d feel all happy. You’d think, Oh that’s right, good old Jimbo’s here—we’re gonna have fun today!”

Lyn went to speak and he put his hand on her arm to stop her.

“My point is I can’t remember ever once feeling that way with Georgina. Even during our supposedly good times. Our very worst times are still ten times better than the very best times I had with Georgina. When you and I first got together, I remember thinking, Bloody hell, why did nobody tell me it could be this good?”

Michael picked up his book again. “So that’s why I’m not going to be unfaithful to you.”

Lyn blinked and watched the words on her page dance and dissolve.

“Because you remind me of my mate Jimbo.”

She closed her book and used it to whack him on the stomach.

CHAPTER 6

“Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. You are seated at the right hand of the Father, receive our prayer. For you alone are the holy one, you alone are the Lord—”

“Remind me to tell you about water aerobics!”

“What?” Gemma bent her knees and dropped her head down to her grandmother’s height.

“Water aerobics!” hissed Nana Kettle into her ear. “I don’t want to forget!”

“O.K.” Gemma stifled a giggle and Nana gave her a naughty look.

When the Kettle girls were little, their grandmother used to take them to Sunday morning Mass and sit with a ramrod-straight back, monitoring their every move with flinty eyes. The stealthiest pinch of a sister’s thigh didn’t escape her. Now, Gemma took Nana to church every few weeks. Her grandmother still dressed as piously as ever—buttoned-up cardigan and skirt—but her standards of behavior seemed to have slipped. One Sunday the two of them got the giggles so bad, Gemma worried that Nana would choke to death right there in the pew.