“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.”

CHAPTER 11

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.”