“That’s ridiculous. That’s just going over the top! Restraining orders are for big, violent ex-husbands with guns.”

“She had a knife. Their tires were mutilated.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s going to start mutilating people!”

Charlie compressed his lips and puffed out his cheeks, drawing his eyebrows together.

And there it was. That feeling. The icy breeze whistling through her bones, except this time it was combined with nausea clutching at her stomach.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

His hand holding the motorbike helmet dropped by his side.

“Are you serious? Don’t say things like that if you’re not serious.”

“I am serious.”

“Gemma, don’t. Come on. This is silly. This is nothing.”

“It’s not about Cat.”

“So what is it about?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” She pulled out the old, well-worn favorite. “It’s me. Not you.”

“What? You’ve been thinking about this?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

She looked at his face, and it was like watching something close down—shutters pulled, curtains drawn, doors slammed shut. A polite, immobile, stranger’s face emerged. It wasn’t Charlie anymore. It was just some guy she didn’t know, who didn’t know her, who didn’t particularly want to know her.

Two minutes later he was gone. She sat at the Penthursts’ kitchen table and looked at a photo on the fridge door of Don and Mary all dressed up at their daughter’s wedding, smiling and squinting into the sun.

She listened to his bike roar off down the street. A trajectory of sound that ended in silence.

And that was that.

So he didn’t make the six-month mark, after all.

The weeks that followed were an odd time. She missed him, but in a dreamy, nostalgic, inevitable way, as if it had been a holiday romance, where neither of them had ever seriously considered a future together.

Her stomach problem kept coming and going. She lost her appetite and took a lot of afternoon naps, lying on the big four-poster bed, listening to the wails of the crows. “Aaah” they cried dolefully to one another.

“Aaah,” said Gemma to the ceiling.

“I had no choice, did I?” she said to the Violets.

No, they answered silently. No choice at all.

The day before Gemma found out her tummy bug was actually a baby, she and Cat spoke on the phone about Maddie’s birthday.

“But you can’t just not go!” said Gemma.

“I’ve implemented a new policy,” said Cat. “No more children’s birthdays. Saturday was my last one for all time.”

“Who was the child?

“Emma Herbert’s daughter. They had a jumping castle.”

“Emma from school? Well, that explains it. She was always a bitch. She probably gave birth to a bitch.”

“I was the only childless one there. Also the only single one.”

“So? Why didn’t you just play on the jumping castle?”

“So, I am sick to death of holding other people’s babies and smiling at other people’s babies and hearing about other people’s bloody babies!”

Gemma herself thought there was nothing nicer than other people’s babies. It was especially pleasing the way you got to hand them straight back when they started doing anything complicated, like crying.

“O.K. But you will have your own children one day.”

“I’m thirty-three,” said Cat, as if it were someone’s fault.

“Yes, I do know that, actually. Well, you could meet someone new. Or you could get back together with Dan. Or you could pop by your local sperm bank.”

“I’m thinking about it!” said Cat in an ominous, “that’ll show ’em” tone that made Gemma think of Cat as a little girl, a darkly frowning little girl plotting lavish schemes of revenge against nuns and schoolteachers.

“Apparently cloning technology is really advancing. You could get a little Cat Clone.”

“I’ve already got a clone thanks very much.”

“Yes and she’s not going to be happy when she hears you’re not going to Maddie’s party.”

“I can’t have a baby,” Gemma told the doctor.

She had never thought that her body would do anything so serious, so definite, so permanent.

“Four months is a little late to be considering a termination.”

“Oh no. I can’t have an abortion!”

“Well, then.”

“But I can’t have a baby.”

The doctor lifted her hands in a “What do you want me to do about it?” gesture.

Gemma looked down at her own hands. They were shaking, just like Cat’s did that day in the bathroom when they found out she was pregnant. She thought about that bag with the bright red elephants that Lyn always carried around. It was full of stuff for Maddie. In her room there was more stuff. Important, technical-looking, necessary stuff that kept her alive.

“I read once about some teenagers who had a baby,” Gemma said. “They gave their baby breakfast cereal and it died.”

“Too much salt,” said the doctor.

“But I could do that!” cried Gemma. “I could easily do that! How would you know?”

“You wouldn’t do that. There is plenty of information available. Plenty of support. There are clinic centers for new mothers. Mothers’ groups.”