Michael dropped his bread roll onto his plate.

“But what if you’re pregnant? Is it dangerous?”

“Pregnant?” said Cat. She was sitting cross-legged on the picnic rug, a bottle of beer in her hand. “Are you trying to have another baby?”

Lyn watched Cat and Gemma exchange loaded looks and closed her eyes. How many more people would she upset today? Suddenly she felt unbearably ill. She opened her eyes again.

“Where’s Maddie?”

Nobody took any notice of her question.

“So do you think you are pregnant?” asked Cat.

“Where is Maddie?”

She got to her knees on the rug and looked around wildly, fear clenching her heart.

“She’s right there with Kara and her friend.” Maxine looked closely at Lyn. “Darling, I don’t think you are well. Feel her forehead, Gemma.”

Lyn saw that Maddie was in fact only a few feet away, sitting on Kara’s lap.

She collapsed back down on the blanket and looked mutely at her family.

Gemma put her hand against her forehead and announced, “She’s burning up!”

“Right,” Michael stood up. “We’re getting you home.”

“You’re not to worry about Maddie,” ordered Maxine.

Gemma said, “We’ll sing her “‘Happy Birthday.’”

And before she knew it, Michael and Frank were on either side of her, practically carrying her off to the car.

“I’m not paralyzed,” she protested.

But her legs did feel strangely wobbly and her head was spinning and it was rather nice to be carried off, away from all those plates of food that needed handing around, candles that needed lighting, and Cat’s hard, closed-up face.

CHAPTER 20

Lyn woke up the next day to find an army of weeping, seeping spots had ravaged every part of her body. They crouched on her scalp, lurked in her pubic hair, huddled at the roof of her mouth.

“This is like a joke,” she croaked, as she lay in bed and lifted up her nightie to look with sick fascination at the vile rash of dots marching purposefully across her stomach. “This shouldn’t be allowed.”

She couldn’t remember ever feeling more ill.

Michael took time off work, and Maddie was packed off to Maxine’s house.

“I’ll be fine,” she told Michael pathetically. “Don’t use your holiday time.”

“For once in your life, will you just shut up and let me look after you! Now, I’ve rung the doctor about complications for pregnancy.”

She interrupted him: “My period came this morning, along with the spots.”

“Good. You’re my only baby to look after.”

Over the following days he did so much research on the Internet he became a chicken pox guru, nodding with rather annoying professional pleasure as each new symptom presented itself. When the spots started to itch, he was ready with cotton wool, a refrigerated bottle of calamine lotion, and damp cloths.

“Hmmm, this is rather erotic,” he said, as she lay facedown on the bed and he dabbed at the blisters on her bottom.

“I’m hideous,” she moaned into her pillow.

“Now I need to cut those nails,” he said, rolling her over. “So you don’t scratch yourself and end up with scars.”

“That’s for children, you big idiot. I’m a grown-up.”

The concentration on his face as he manipulated the nail scissors reminded her of Pop Kettle painting Nana’s nails. She had to look away and blink.

One afternoon she woke up from a sleep with a raging throat, to find a carefully quartered orange sitting on a saucer next to her bed, together with a jug of iced water, a pile of magazines, and three brand-new paperback novels.

“You’re wasted in I.T.,” she told him. “You should have been a nurse.”

“I’m only interested in your spots.”

New ones kept materializing, including a five-cent-piece-sized monstrosity on the end of her nose.

“Oh, gross!” said Kara, delivering a cup of tea from Michael one morning. I’m glad I had chicken pox when I was a baby! That one on your nose—man!”

Lyn laughed, put her hand to her face, and started to cry.

“Oh, no!” Kara was beside herself. She put down the cup of tea and crawled onto the bed next to her. “I’m such a bitch! And it’s not that bad.”

“I’m only crying because I’m sick and emotional. It’s O.K.”

Kara slung an arm around her. “Poor Lyn.”

Lyn sobbed harder. “Oh! When you were a little girl you used to hug me all the time. Remember your Crafty Case?”

Kara patted her kindly on the shoulder but obviously thought the disease had spread to her brain. “Daaad!” she shrieked. “I think we need you up here! Like, now!”

Kara came in after school that same afternoon, carrying a plastic bag from Kmart and a Women’s Weekly magazine.

She showed Lyn a picture in the magazine of a mobile with silver stars and moons, hanging in a child’s bedroom. “I thought we could make this together for Maddie,” she said. “To take your mind off, you know, how bad you look. I’ve bought all the stuff we need.”

“You lovely girl.” Lyn pulled cardboard, glitter, glue, and crayons out of the bag. “But what’s this?”

It was a new black bra with a label promising “fuller, firmer, more beautiful br**sts” and a picture of a woman demonstrating two magnificent examples.