CHAPTER 9
Dan couldn’t seem to take it in at first. He stood in their living room staring at her, the ends of his hair still damp with sweat from his squash game.
He seemed bewildered. “A baby,” he kept saying slowly. “We’re going to have a baby.”
“Yes, Dan, a baby. You know—floppy head, makes a lot noise, costs a lot of money.”
And then finally he seemed to get it and let his squash racket fall to the floor and hugged her hard around the ribs, so that her feet almost lifted off the ground.
Rob Spencer caressed his tie lovingly. “Masturbation. Interesting.”
“The message is pleasure,” responded Cat. “Self-indulgent pleasure.”
“Yes, but she’s masturbating, isn’t she? I mean what we have here is a woman in a bath, mas-tur-bat-ing.”
People began to shift uneasily in their chairs. Marianne, who was taking the minutes, threw down her pen and put her hands over her ears. “Could you please stop saying that word, Rob!”
It was the last day before Hollingdale Chocolates closed for the Christmas break, and Cat was giving a presentation on a new advertising campaign for the following year’s Valentine’s Day. A full-page ad was projected via her laptop onto a large screen at the end of the room. The ad showed a woman lying in a bath, smiling wickedly, her eyes closed. One languid hand was allowing an empty Hollingdale Chocolate wrapper to flutter to the floor. The other hand wasn’t visible. The headline read, Seduce someone special this Valentine’s Day.
Cat was pleased with the campaign. She’d got the idea after Gemma told her how decadent she felt eating Hollingdale Chocolates in the Penthursts’ bath. Some guy at the agency contributed the “self-pleasure” element. (What a lovely idea! said Gemma when she heard, looking rather inspired.)
“The focus groups loved it,” said Cat.
“Oh yes, and they’re never wrong, are they? Ha!” Rob looked jovially around the meeting room. He lowered his voice. “Two little words: Hazelnut Heaven.”
“Arrggh!” People clutched their chests as if they’d been shot. Others buried their heads in their hands. Sidelong glances were shot down the end of the table where the CEO of Hollingdale Chocolates, Graham Hollingdale, chewed a pen lid and looked bored out of his mind.
Hazelnut Heaven had been last year’s new-product disaster. When it happened, the entire company ducked wildly for cover, hurling blame like hand grenades over their office cubicle walls. They passed the buck so furiously and successfully that it stopped nowhere. Twelve months later, recalling the experience created a warm glow of camaraderie.
Cat gave the obligatory rueful chuckle. “You’re right, Rob. There are no guarantees. But I do think we’ve got all the right elements for our target audience.”
“Love your work, Cat!” said Rob. He leaned forward and pressed a finger to his lips. “But to be frank, I have some real concerns about this one.”
Aha. It had been a few weeks since she’d pointed out his error in the Operations Meeting. Rob had been biding his time, cradling his wounded ego, waiting to pounce. If this had happened yesterday, her adrenaline would have been pumping. Today, it all seemed like an amusingly childish game. It was only a job—a means of making money. And she was having a baby. At the thought of the baby magically curled in her womb, Cat felt an exquisite burst of joy.
“We agreed on this concept over a month ago,” she said calmly. “You loved it, Rob.”
“Hey, I hate to admit it but I can be wrong! This has got to be an open forum, Cat. No finger-pointing. No politics. Just honest opinions.”
Cat swallowed a guffaw.
“O.K. then,” she said. “Let’s look at the creative rationale again. We wanted something strong enough to break through the clutter. It does. We wanted something to appeal to single women in their thirties. It does.”
Rob held up his palms like he was testing the weight of two things. “Masturbation. Hollingdale Chocolates. Anyone else worried about what this says about our brand values, our brand heritage? Graham?”
Rob swiveled his chair to face the CEO. Graham sighed in an exhausted fashion and chewed harder on his pen lid. He was a strange, inscrutable man, with a disconcerting habit of allowing his eyelids to droop, turtlelike, whenever any of his staff spoke. The longer they spoke, the more it seemed he was drifting into a deep, comfortable sleep.
Rob stared at him for an agonizing few seconds and then swiveled his chair back to Cat. “I’m just not convinced you’ve cracked it this time, Cat. I know you’re the creative genius. But just run with me here while I throw a few ideas around. What if she was lying in the bath dreaming of her lover? You could have one of those little bubbles coming out of her head, you know, to show she was dreaming.”
“Yeah, now that sounds like a good compromise, folks!” contributed Derek, who was a moron. “Give her a lover!”
“She doesn’t want a lover,” said Cat. She doodled “July 23” on her notepad. It was the date her baby was due.
“Why not?” asked Graham suddenly. “Why doesn’t she want a lover?”
Everyone turned in surprise to look at him. Cat looked at the slightly awkward jut of his chin. Perhaps, she thought, Graham Hollingdale was just shy. Perhaps his eccentricity wasn’t arrogance after all. Maybe it was just plain, old-fashioned, teenage-boy gawkiness disguised by the authoritative uniform of a balding, middle-aged business executive.
She smiled at him—a Gemma smile—open, radiant, and guileless.
“She might like a lover at some point, but the message of the ad is that you don’t need a lover to give yourself pleasure on Valentine’s Day. All you need is a bath and Hollingdale Chocolates.”
She looked at Rob. “There’s no need to feel threatened by it.”
Rob rolled his eyes. “I’m thinking about the impact on the brand—”
“Run it as is,” said Graham. “I like it.”
“Great.” Cat slammed shut her laptop. “I’ll e-mail you all PDFs.”
“Fine.” Graham subsided sleepily back into his chair.
Rob didn’t look up. He was using a gold ballpoint to jab a straight line of vicious little blue dots across his notepaper. No revelations there. He was still the slimy prick he’d always been.
“Happy Christmas, everybody!” said Cat warmly.
She and her baby sailed from the room.
It was the night before Christmas Eve, and Annie the marriage counselor was celebrating with gigantic Christmas trees dangling from her ears. They had red and green lights that flashed disconcertingly on and off, on and off.
“Love the earrings, Annie,” said Dan. He was holding Cat’s hand as they sat thigh to thigh on the green vinyl sofa.
“Thank you, Dan.” Annie gave her head a merry little swing. “Now, if you don’t mind me saying, you two seem a lot cheerier than when I saw you last.”
“We’ve had some news.” Dan squeezed Cat’s hand.
“I’m pregnant,” said Cat.
“Oh!” Annie clasped her hands together. “Congratulations!”
“It’s not like that means everything is suddenly O.K.,” said Cat. She didn’t want Annie thinking they were going to fork out one hundred and twenty bucks for an hour’s worth of trilling and cooing.
“Of course not!” Annie’s smile disappeared in tempo with her flashing lights. “But it is wonderful news after you’ve been trying for so long.”
“Yes.” Cat leaned forward to look at Annie seriously. “I want us to fix everything before the baby’s born. I hated having divorced parents. I hated the way they spoke about each other. I’m not putting my child through that.”
She sat back, embarrassed by her intensity. She hadn’t even realized she felt that way until the words came out of her mouth. In fact, up until now, she’d always told people the opposite—that she couldn’t care less about her parents’ divorce.
Now their marriage was something they needed to fix before the baby was born. It was a task that had to be ticked off the list some time over the next nine months, like transforming the study into a nursery and installing a baby capsule in the car.
Annie was the expert. That’s what they were paying her for.
“I still feel angry with Dan about what he did,” said Cat. “Sometimes I can’t even bear to look at him I feel so angry. Actually, sometimes I feel sick when I look at him.”
“Are you sure that’s not morning sickness?” asked Dan. “Because that seems a bit extreme.”
Cat and Annie ignored him. “Obviously,” said Cat, “I need to stop feeling that way before the baby is born.”
She looked at Annie expectantly. Dan cleared his throat.
Annie opened her manila folder in a businesslike manner. “Well, I think this all sounds very constructive, very positive. Let’s get started, then.”
“Yes, let’s.”
Cat held on tight to Dan’s hand and didn’t look at him.
On Christmas Eve, Cat offered to baby-sit with Maddie while Lyn and Maxine went to the Fish Markets.
She arrived to find the two of them walking around the house on exaggerated tippy-toes. “We just got her down,” explained Lyn. “It was a nightmare. The girls at play group say you only miss one or two and that’s it, afternoon naps finished for good—never to return!”
It seemed to Cat that Lyn was speaking to her about Maddie in a more relaxed, mother-to-mother tone, now she was pregnant. It made Cat feel both humiliated and grateful to think that Lyn had been consciously—or perhaps subconsciously—curtailing her conversation.
“Have you told Mum yet?” asked Lyn, while their mother disappeared into the bathroom to reapply her lipstick.
“No. I’m going to make a family announcement at lunch tomorrow.”
“Cat! Dad knows, Nana knows—you can’t make a family announcement when the only one in the family who doesn’t know is Mum!” said Lyn. “Tell her now.”
Cat sighed. Every conversation with her mother was fraught with danger. It was as if they were former players from competing teams who shared a long and violent history. Sure it all seemed a little silly now but all the old antipathies about unfair penalties were still there just beneath the surface.
Throughout the seventies, until their peace treaty in the eighties, Maxine and Frank had fought, and their three little daughters had fought loyally and bravely alongside them. Lyn took Maxine’s side. Cat took Frank’s side. Gemma took everyone’s side. It was hard to put a decade-long battle behind you.
Maxine reappeared, smelling of Joy and hairspray.
“The Smith family might appreciate receiving that shirt soon,” she remarked to Cat, who was lying on Lyn’s sofa, bare feet dangling off the end.
Cat looked down at her faded T-shirt. “I think they’ve got higher standards.”
Lyn pinched her on the arm.
“I’m pregnant, Mum,” said Cat to the ceiling.
“Oh!” said Maxine. “But I thought you and Dan were having problems.”
Lyn said in an anguished tone, “Mum!” while Cat pulled a cushion out from under her head and held it over her face.
Maxine said, “Well, I am sorry, Lyn. I thought they were. Gemma mentioned something about counseling.”
Cat didn’t need to see her mother’s face to know the lemony expression of distaste that would be pulling at her mouth as she said the word “counseling.” Counseling was something other people did.
Cat took the cushion off her face and sat up. “People get pregnant from having sex, Mum. Not from a perfect marriage. You ought to know that.”
Maxine’s nostrils flared, but she drew herself upright, manicured nails digging into the strap of her handbag. It always astounded Cat—this ability of her mother’s to pack away unsightly emotions, in exactly the same way she transformed unwieldy bed sheets into sharp-edged squares for the linen cupboard.
“I’m sorry, dear. It was just the shock, hearing you say it like that, just lying there on the sofa. It was odd. I’m very happy for you. And for Dan, of course. When are you due? Here, let me give you a kiss.”
Cat sat upright, hugging the cushion to her stomach like a recalcitrant teenager while Maxine pressed cool lips against her cheek.
“Congratulations, dear,” she said. “You’ve cut back on your drinking, I hope.”
As Lyn and Maxine closed the door behind them, Cat lay back on the sofa and thought about the announcement of Lyn’s pregnancy. A special family dinner with Maxine practically gurgling with delight and pride, raising her champagne glass to Michael’s camera, a proud, maternal arm around Lyn’s shoulder.
Cat pressed her palms tenderly against her stomach.
“You and I are going to get along so much better, aren’t we?”
Christmas Day. It began with such promise.
They slept in till ten. Cat could feel the heat in the air when she woke.
Secretly, like she did every morning now, she patted her belly. Good morning, baby. Happy Christmas.
“It’s going to be hot,” she said out loud, stretching and kicking off the sheet. Dan lay on his stomach, his face squashed into his pillow, his arms looped around it.
“Lucky we’re going to the mansion,” he said, his voice muffled. He half lifted his head from the pillow and opened one eye to look at her.
“Happy Christmas, Catriona.”
“Happy Christmas, Daniel.”
It was their thing, calling each other by their full names, whenever they wanted to be funny or portentous or especially loving. It started after their wedding, remembering their wedding vows. “I, Daniel, take you, Catriona, to be my wife…” except on their honeymoon it was more likely to be, “I, Daniel, take you, Catriona, to f*ck your brains out.”
No one’s brains had been f*cked out lately, of course. She’d let him back into the bedroom after three nights on the sofa bed, and ever since the news about the baby she’d stopped flinching violently every time his arm accidentally brushed against hers, but there was still an invisible, uncrossable line down the middle of their bed. Well, not quite down the middle. Cat’s half—the wronged-party half—was a touch more generous.
They did what they always did on Christmas morning and stayed in bed to exchange their Christmas presents.
He gave her a delicate gold bracelet and the new Marie Claire recipe book and a “make your own herb garden” kit. She gave him aftershave and a new squash racket. They were just a little too effusive about each other’s gifts.
“I’ll let you open this one,” said Dan, once the bed was covered with wrapping paper. He pulled an extra package from his bedside drawer.
Cat read the gift tag out loud: “To my new little baby girl or boy. Happy Christmas. I love you and I love your mum. From your dad.”
Normally Dan’s cards read, To: Catwoman. From: Batman.
The present was a miniature furry football.
“Boy or girl, they need to learn how to kick a ball properly,” explained Dan. He bent his head down and spoke to Cat’s stomach. “Did you hear that? No sexism in this family.”
Cat looked at the top of his head, and her mind did one of those strange little shifts, a mental double-take. He’s going to be someone’s dad. There’s my dad, their child would say one day and the other kids wouldn’t bother looking up from their game because fathers were all pretty much the same really and this dad would be walking toward them—and the dad would be Dan.
For some reason, this thought was very, very sexy.
As Dan sat back up she pushed him by the shoulders and rolled herself on top of him, to sit astride his stomach. The Christmas paper crackled beneath them, and Dan looked up at her with narrowed green eyes, an unshaven jaw. “She’s crossed the line.”
“Yeah, I’m crossing the line.” Cat pulled off her T-shirt and bent toward him. “And you’d better not cross it again, mate.”
“Never,” he mumbled, his tongue already in her mouth, his hands running up and down her spine.
She had thought sex would be ruined forever—but they were too good at it for it to be bad. The hurt of the last few weeks seemed only to make it more intense; it gave her a feeling of exquisite fragility, as if at any moment she would cry. She came fast and hard and that thing happened, the phenomenon that had only happened twice before and both those times she’d been smoking pot. It was like a stained-glass window shattered in her head and every fragment was a different memory or thought or feeling. There was the plate of spaghetti smashing against the wall and there was Gemma with shiny eyes saying, “Two very, very pretty blue lines,” and there was Dan walking toward a child looking up to say, “That’s my dad,” and there was the Christmas tree of Cat’s childhood, glittering with gold and silver tinsel in the morning light, surrounded by presents that had magically materialized overnight.
It took them a few seconds to catch their breath.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow.”
“So, this should make Christmas less stressful,” Dan said as they drove toward Lyn’s place. “Getting your parents over and done with in one go, instead of driving all over Sydney to see them.”
Dan had a low-maintenance family. His parents had considerately moved up to Queensland a couple of years ago, and he had an enviably casual relationship with his only sister, Mel. Christmas was all about the Kettles, which was fortunate because they didn’t leave much energy for anyone else.
“It will be more stressful,” said Cat. “I think it’s a bizarre idea having the parents together for Christmas. Mum will be even more uptight than usual, and Dad will be showing off. It will be painful to watch.”
“And you can’t drink yourself into oblivion anymore.”
“I assume you’re going to give up alcohol in sympathy with me.”
“Enjoy your little fantasies, don’t you?”
“You’re still on probation. Don’t get all cocky just because you got lucky this morning.”
“Ooh, I got lucky all right.”
As they waited for the traffic lights to change Cat looked out the window and watched a family who had just pulled up outside someone’s house. A group of kids were running helter-skelter into the house, and a man was standing with his arms outstretched while a woman loaded him up with presents from the car. He pretended to stagger under their weight, and the woman flicked him on the arm.
The lights changed and Dan accelerated.
“You know, I might forgive you, one day,” she said. “I might.”
“The air conditioning isn’t working,” said Michael as he ushered them into the house. “My wife is not happy. Merry Christmas.”
He had a screwdriver in his hand, which he handed to Dan. “It’s time to initiate you into one of the great joys of fatherhood, mate.”
Dan stared at the screwdriver.
“You get a picture on a box, a thousand little screws, and instructions entirely lacking in logic. Oh, it’s fun. Today, we’re working on a three-story cubby house. Santa Claus must have been out of her mind. Come on. You’re not escaping.”
“A drink?” asked Dan a touch desperately, as Michael led him off by the elbow.
Cat mouthed the word “probation” at him.
She found Lyn in the kitchen, wearing a sleeveless sundress that made her shoulders look too thin. The gleaming granite bench tops were covered with orderly rows of chopped ingredients. She was standing at the kitchen sink washing lettuce leaves.
“You’re the most organized cook on the planet,” said Cat. “What is that noise?” She bent down to see Maddie sitting under the table, frowning heavily, while she banged away discordantly on a tiny xylophone.
“My Cat!” cried Maddie and banged even harder to celebrate. “Look! Maddie noisy! Shhhh!”
“Ooh, can I see?” asked Cat hopefully, but Maddie was way too smart for that.
“No!”
“It’s no use.” Lyn wiped the back of a wet hand against her forehead. “It’s her favorite present. You know who it’s from—Georgina. The bitch. She must have combed the shops looking for the loudest toy she could find. I’ve had the worst morning. First the air conditioning. We can’t get anybody out to fix it and they’re forecasting thirty-four degrees. Nana will be complaining all day. Michael has spent two hours on that stupid cubby house. Mum’s setting the table on the veranda, and she’s so tightly wound up you can see the static crackling. You’d better keep away from her. Kara is upstairs, refusing to come out of her room. Gemma just called, all dreamy and idiotic, asking how to make a potato salad. Dad and Nana are late. Oh no, you disgusting, vile creature!”
Lyn did a strange little flapping dance on the spot and pointed at a cockroach in the middle of the kitchen floor. It seemed to have caught Lyn’s panic and kept changing its mind about which way it should go.
“The spray! It’s right there next to you. Stop laughing and kill it!”
Cat grabbed the spray. “Die, you little motherf*cker,” she said and blasted it.
“Yucky,” observed Maddie, who had come out from under the kitchen table and now stood with her hands on her hips like a disgusted little housewife.
“That’s exactly what I say when I kill cockroaches,” said Lyn, as she scooped up the cockroach with a paper towel.
“Yucky?”
“Die, you little motherf*cker. In exactly that tone of voice. I’m pretending to be Arnie Schwarzenegger.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
They grinned, pleased with themselves.
“We’ll have to ask Gemma if she does it too,” said Lyn.
“She probably doesn’t know you’re meant to kill them. What shall I do to help now I’ve got rid of your vermin?”
“Can you extricate Kara from her hovel? She listens to you. Thinks you’re cool.”
“O.K.”
“You’re glowing by the way,” said Lyn as she returned to her lettuce leaves and Maddie returned to her xylophone. “Pregnancy must suit you.”
Cat smiled widely. “Cool and glowing. Glowing coolly.”
“Yeah, yeah. Go away. Maddie, I’m begging you to be quiet!”
Cat knocked once on Kara’s door and walked into her dark bedroom, which smelled of perfume and illicit cigarette smoke. The floor was layered in discarded clothing.
It was Cat’s own teenage bedroom. The one she got for four months of the year before she had to move out and let a sister take a turn at a room of her own. Kara was lying facedown on her bed, and Cat could hear the tinny beat of music from her headphones. She sat down on the end of the bed and grabbed her ankle.
Kara’s shoulder blades twitched angrily and she turned over, revealing blotchy mascara tearstains.
“Oh,” she said, pulling her headphones around her neck. “It’s you.”
“Yep,” said Cat. “Happy Christmas. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“So why the suicidal look? Did you get really bad presents?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“No. Probably not. Try me anyway so you can prove yourself right.”
Kara sighed dramatically.
“O.K., so this morning right, Mum gives me these shorts for Christmas and she goes, Try them on, try them on! I didn’t want to try them on in front of everybody but she wouldn’t shut up, so I did and I had to do this embarrassing, like fashion parade, with my gran saying Ohhhh, isn’t she sweet? and then do you know what Mum said, really loudly, in front of everybody?”
Kara’s voice quivered and Cat thought, You bitch, Georgina.
“What?”
“She said they didn’t really suit me!”
Kara’s face crumbled. “Can you believe she said that?”
“Mmmm. Well, I guess—”
“She means I’ve got fat, ugly, disgusting legs!”
“No, I don’t think she did mean that actually.”
“You don’t understand. You’ve got great legs!” Kara pinched viciously at the flesh on her own thighs. “And don’t you dare say there’s nothing wrong with my legs because if you do, you’re just a liar. I know there is, because at the swimming carnival, Matt Hayes pointed at me and said he’d seen better legs on a table, and all his stupid friends laughed through their noses, like they agreed!”
It was no wonder that teenagers ended up going on shooting rampages, thought Cat. She herself could cheerfully fire off a few rounds at Matt and his pathetic, pimply little mates.
“And don’t talk to me about how the media tries to make women feel bad about their bodies and it’s a feminist issue and blah, blah, blah. I know all that stuff! It doesn’t make any difference.”
Cat shut her mouth quickly. Kara lay back down on her bed and they sat in silence for a few seconds.
Cat tried frantically to think of something cool to say.
“I really hate my breasts,” she offered finally, lamely.
“What?” Kara snorted.
“The Kettle girls missed out on breasts. You should hear the jokes boys have made about us over the years. They thought they were so witty. So hilarious.”
“To Lyn, even? Did Lyn get upset?”
“Of course. Once a boy told Lyn she had two mozzie bites instead of tits and she cried for a whole week.”
“Really? Did she?” Kara sat up, invigorated. “I can’t imagine her, young, and getting all upset.”
“And you obviously don’t have any worries in that department.”
“Shut up.” Kara pulled at her T-shirt. “Boys don’t care about breasts.”
Cat stood up. “No. Of course not. Boys never think twice about breasts. Come on, you idiot, I’m sweltering in here. Are your legs capable of getting us downstairs?”
“Oh, all right. I’m starved to death, anyway. So what did that boy say again? Two mosquito bites, huh?”
“Don’t ever mention it to her, will you?”
Now Kara looked positively delighted. “I won’t. It might be a traumatic memory.”
“Probably.”
The sounds of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” floated up the stairs, and Kara winced painfully. “Oh no.” She clattered down the stairs, two at a time, yelling out, “Dad! Stop embarrassing yourself! Turn it off!”
Cat followed her, wondering if that mosquito bite thing happened to Lyn, or herself. Oh well. The year she turned thirty she had finally made peace with her breasts.
Gemma, Nana Kettle, and Frank were sitting around Lyn’s kitchen table shelling prawns and drinking champagne. The three of them all had tinsel bows tied around their heads, which were no doubt Gemma’s creations.
“I wish you’d all go outside on the balcony,” Lyn was saying.
“We’re helping you,” said Gemma.
“You’re not. You’re annoying me.”
Frank stood up and grabbed Cat around the waist, swinging her around.
“There you are! The mother-to-be! Happy Christmas, angel! Sit down and put your feet up. That’s what you do when you’re pregnant. I hope Dan knows that. I hope he’s waiting on you hand and foot. I’ll have to have a word with him.” He sat her down in his chair and began to pull at her protesting feet to put them on the table.
“Not on the food!” warned Nana.
Lyn said, “I’m sure you waited on Mum hand and foot when she was pregnant, Dad.”
The doorbell rang. “That will be Charlie,” Gemma happily popped a peeled prawn into her mouth. “He’s come to let you look at him.”
Lyn said, “Could you please stop eating the prawns!”
“Oh. Isn’t that what they’re for?”
“Why don’t we ask this Charlie fellow to take a look at the air conditioning?” Nana fanned herself with a napkin.
“He’s a locksmith, Nana.”
“I expect he’s handy, though. That’s our problem. None of the men here are at all handy.”
“Gemma!” Maxine came into the kitchen followed by a man and woman. “Your friend is here.”
“Everyone! This is Charlie!” Gemma waved her champagne glass rapturously and threw an arm around his shoulder.
He was a stocky man with a barrel chest, exactly the same height as Gemma. She hadn’t mentioned he was short. Sort of attractive, thought Cat, for a short man. She leaned forward as she shook his hand to check out the famous eyelashes. They looked perfectly ordinary to her.
“And this is my sister,” Charlie said to the room. “Her Vee-dub conked out this morning. So I’m the designated driver to our family lunch.”
Cat turned her attention to the sister. She had long dark hair scraped back off her face and a red T-shirt with a scooped neckline, revealing the cupped together curves of a luscious cleavage. She was beautiful. Model beautiful. She was also familiar.
“Hi.” She smiled. There was a buzzing sensation in Cat’s ears.
“I’m Angela.”
Lyn had appeared from nowhere to rest her hand gently on Cat’s shoulder.
“Hi, Angela,” said Gemma, and as her smile slid away from her face, her champagne glass slid from her hand to shatter on the floor.
I have mosquito bites for breasts, thought Cat.