“You’re not going to die.”

Nana looked offended. “How would you know, Miss Smarty-pants?”

“Why don’t you come swimming with Maddie and me?”

“Because I don’t want to, thank you very much.”

Maddie tossed aside her xylophone with a clatter and threw her arms around Gemma’s leg. “Swim!” At least someone was in a good mood.

Lyn and Michael’s swimming pool was magnificent, a curving turquoise shell with glittering views that made you feel like you were swimming in the harbor.

“Gem! Look!” demanded Maddie. She leaned forward with her bottom sticking out behind her in imitation of a grown-up’s dive, her head squashed between upstretched arms. Then she launched herself into the pool, landing splat on her tummy. Her floaties kept her bobbing on the surface.

Gemma dived in next to her and swam along the bottom of the pool, feeling the voluptuous relief of immersion in a silent, cold, chlorinated world.

But it wasn’t as if she were in love with Charlie or even in a relationship yet.

They didn’t have nicknames, private jokes, photos of happier times, or joint friends who would be shocked and sad. No forthcoming social events. No joint purchases. It would be painless and clean. Just one sharp slice of the knife: “Charlie, I’m sure you understand. You’re Italian after all. Family comes first.”

“Look, Gem! Look!”

Maddie waded up the stairs and out of the pool, water dripping, and stood on the edge of the pool with her arms held high. She looked like a slippery little seal.

“Ooooh!” applauded Gemma as Maddie did a star jump into the pool and bobbed back up to the surface, gasping and choking, her hair flat across her face. She seemed to be under the impression that other people swam only for the pleasure of seeing her perform various awe-inspiring tricks.

“Maybe you could try and shut your mouth next time,” suggested Gemma. “You’ll swallow less water.”

Maddie patted the surface of the water with flat palms, so that drops of water flew in her eyes, and gave a loud chuckle, to indicate she was being funny now.

“Ha!” cried Gemma, splashing herself in an equally hilarious manner, while she thought about what Cat had said in Lyn’s office: “She’ll break up with him eventually, anyway.”

She wasn’t joking or being sarcastic. She said it as if it were a fact. She thought it was inevitable. Of course, the two of them had been teasing her for years about her growing accumulation of ex-boyfriends. Lyn had even given her a book called Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives and helpfully indicated with a Post-it note the chapter on the stupid thing she believed Gemma was doing. But still, Gemma had thought, rather idiotically she now realized, that they were as surprised as she was each time she broke up with another boyfriend.

Perhaps they already knew what Gemma secretly feared, that she wasn’t actually capable of genuine, serious love. Sure, she was capable of an infatuation, like the one she was currently experiencing with Charlie, but they were right, it probably wouldn’t last.

For weeks, sometimes months, she adored her men—and then one day, without warning, it hit her. Not only was she over the infatuation, she actively disliked the guy. She remembered sitting on a beach with the plumber who liked country music.

“Where’s the bottle opener?” he said, frowning and scrabbling through their basket.

And that was it. I don’t like you, she thought, and it was like an icy cold breeze whistling around her bones.

Some people lacked hand-eye coordination. Some people were tone-deaf.

Gemma lacked the ability to stay in love with somebody.

“Gem! Look!”

“Ooooh!”

They sat down to eat Christmas lunch at the long table on Lyn and Michael’s balcony. The table was set beautifully with tasteful Christmas decorations, the harbor glinted beside them, and the sun reflected rainbows in the crystal of the glasses.

It seemed to Gemma that the setting called for another, more functional, better-dressed family—especially today, when everybody had red faces and there was a discernible bubbling of hysteria just below the surface.

There were loud pops and insults as people pulled at their Christmas crackers far too aggressively. Cat and Dan nearly wrenched each other’s arms off. People began to read out the jokes inside their paper crowns in loud sarcastic voices. Nobody listened except for Michael, who genuinely found them funny, and Nana Kettle, who kept missing the punch lines. “Eh? What did the elephant say?”

Maxine and Frank sat next to each other, which was a disconcerting sight. In fact, Gemma couldn’t remember the last time she’d seem them sitting together. They seemed to be overcompensating by being excessively animated and polite to each other.

Kara was tipsy.

Maddie sat in her high chair, singing a loud toneless song to herself. She had to tilt her head up because her green paper crown was too big for her and had fallen down over her nose.

Gemma herself had slipped into full-on giggly, girlish Gemma. She could hear herself talking nonstop. Chatter. Chatter. Ha, ha, ha. Shut up, she thought, shut up for God’s sake, but it seemed she was trapped in her own inane party personality.

As food began to circulate around the table, Lyn and Maxine both hovered just slightly above their seats, ignoring their own empty plates, hands poised like frenzied conductors, ready to pounce triumphantly on any unmet requirement.

“Nana, have some salad dressing!” ordered Lyn.