CHAPTER 15
The first time it happened, she was driving out of the Chatswood Shopping Center parking lot.
Maddie was in the back, silently strapped into her car seat, her thumb in her mouth, one finger locked around her nose. Lyn could see her accusing eyes in the rearview mirror. They weren’t talking to each other after a particularly horrible experience in the bookstore.
Maddie had spotted a copy of her favorite bedtime book in the children’s section and grabbed it triumphantly off the shelf.
“Mine!”
“No, Maddie, it’s not yours. Yours is at home. Put it back.”
Maddie looked up at Lyn as if she were nuts. She shook the book vigorously at her, eyes blazing righteously. “No! Mine!”
Lyn felt quietly browsing customers around her lifting their eyes and tilting their heads in an interested way.
“Shhhh!” She put a finger to her lips. “Put it back.”
But Maddie wasn’t having any of it. She stomped her feet like a demented tap dancer and hugged the book tight to her stomach, hollering, “No, shh! Mummy, mine, mine, mine!”
A woman walked into the same aisle as Lyn and smiled sympathetically.
“Ah. The terrible twos, is it? I’ve got that to look forward to!” She was pushing a stroller with a cherubic blond baby, who observed Maddie with surprised round eyes.
“Actually,” said Lyn. “She’s not even two yet. She’s starting early.”
“Ah. Advanced for her age,” the woman said nicely.
“You could say that,” began Lyn. “No, Maddie!”
She leaped forward too late. The angelic baby had reached out a hand as if to grab Good Night, Little Bear and Maddie had responded with swift, efficient retribution, using the book to swipe the child across the face.
The baby dissolved, as if her feelings had been hurt for the first time ever. One shocked chubby hand went up to the bright red mark on her cheek. Her blue eyes swam with fat tears.
Lyn looked at the rather satisfied expression on her own daughter’s face and died of shame.
There was nothing worse, Lyn and Michael had always agreed, than seeing a parent slap a child in anger. Maddie would not be smacked. There would be no violence in their household.
Violence begets violence.
She believed it absolutely.
And now she grabbed Maddie and smacked her hard. She smacked her very hard and very angrily, and Maddie’s startled cry reverberated around the bookstore like a child abuse victim.
“It’s O.K.,” said the nice woman, picking up her nice child. She had the same round blue eyes as her baby.
“I’m so, so sorry. She’s never done that before.”
And I’ve never done that before, either.
“It’s O.K. Really.” The woman rocked her baby to her shoulder. She had to raise her voice to be heard over Maddie’s ear-splitting wail. “Kids!”
Maddie backed herself up against the bookshelf and doubled over, crying with luxurious, hysterical abandon, only stopping to take a breath of air to help her reach a new level of volume.
People around them were now openly looking, some of them craning their heads over bookshelves to see. They stared blank-faced, their mouths slightly slack, like people in an audience.
“I’ll have to get her out of here. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” smiled the woman, jiggling her child on her hip. My God, she was freakishly nice.
Lyn picked up Maddie, who continued to scream relentlessly, arching her body and throwing back her head so it caught Lyn painfully on the chin. With her arms pinned tightly around her daughter’s violently wriggling body, she walked rapidly out of the shop. The mother-with-screaming-child walk of shame.
“Excuse me, madam!” A pounding of footsteps behind her.
“Yes?” Lyn looked up. Maddie’s legs continued to kick.
“Um.” It was a very tall teenager with a “How can I help you?” smiley badge pinned to his blue denim shirt. He looked apologetic about his height, as if he didn’t quite know how he’d got all the way up there. He locked big knuckles awkwardly. “Only, I think maybe you haven’t paid for those books.”
Maddie was still clutching Good Night, Little Bear and Lyn herself was holding a copy of Coping with Miscarriage as well as, humiliatingly, Taming the Toddler: A Survival Guide for Parents.
Well, why not? The sort of woman who hit her children would also do the occasional spot of shoplifting.
She marched back to the cash register, trying to smile ironically and humorously. If she had had someone with her, Michael or one of her sisters, then it would be funny. If she had both her sisters it would be pure slapstick. It would make their day.
But she was on her own and so she could only imagine it being funny.
“Wasn’t that Lyn Kettle?” she heard someone say as she paid for the books, including a second copy of Good Night, Little Bear, and stuffed change into her purse. “You know. The Brekkie Bus woman.”
Oh, funny. What a riot.
Maddie’s sobbing had subsided into piteous little hiccups by the time they got back to the car.
“Mummy’s very sorry she got cross,” Lyn told her as she buckled her into the seat. “But you must never, never hit little babies like that.”
Maddie stuck her thumb in her mouth and blinked, as if she was well aware of the lack of logic in Lyn’s argument and it wasn’t worth a response.
Her eyelashes were still wet from crying.
Guilt came to rest directly at the center of Lyn’s forehead. She imagined the nice woman describing the incident to her undoubtedly nice friends, while all their nice children frolicked quietly and shared their toys. “I mean it’s obvious where the child learned to behave like that.”
She turned on the “tranquility sounds” CD she’d bought as part of achieving her New Year’s resolution: Reduce stress in measurable, tangible ways, both professional and personal, by no later than 1 March.
The warbles and chirps of happy little birds filled her car, a waterfall gurgled, a single bell chimed.
Oh, Jesus. It was unbearable. She switched it off and reversed her car.
Where was the “exit” sign? Why did they make it so difficult to get out of shopping center parking lots? You’d done your shopping—they weren’t going to get any more money out of you. What was their objective here?
She couldn’t give Cat that miscarriage book. She’d sneer at her. Make some contemptuous remark. Make her feel like an idiot. The other day when she asked, “Who’s got Maddie?” her eyes were so hard and hate-filled, Lyn had felt herself flinch.
Dan. Something wasn’t right there. It didn’t matter what Gemma said, he was still seeing that girl. She could see it in his face. He looked right through them all. The Kettles didn’t matter to him anymore.
Around and around she went. The “exit” signs disappeared completely to be replaced by cheerful “more parking this way” arrows.
Gemma looping her hair around her finger. They all laughed at Gemma but—well, was she normal? At school she was the smartest of the three of them. “Gemma is extremely bright,” Sister Mary told Maxine, who had looked quite baffled. “Gemma?” And now Gemma seemed to be frittering away her entire life like a sunny Saturday morning.
NO EXIT. STOP. GO BACK.
This had to be a joke. There was no way to get out of this shopping center. Was there a hidden camera somewhere with some manic presenter about to jump out and shove a microphone in her face? Because it wasn’t funny. “That wasn’t funny,” she’d say.
She backed up and started driving again. Around and around.
Frank and Maxine on Christmas Day. That shiny, smug expression on Dad’s face. Mum all sweetly girly and stupid, stupid, stupid.
EXIT THIS WAY. O.K., fine. If you so say so. She swung the wheel.
Bloody, bloody hell. She’d forgotten cockroach spray. Maxine had suggested a promisingly murderous-sounding brand called “Lure & Kill.” This morning one had scuttled evilly across the pure white expanse of her fridge door.
NO ENTRY.
Fuuuuck!
She slammed on the brake.
And that’s when it happened.
She forgot how to breathe.
One second she was breathing like a normal person, the next she was making strange choking sounds, crazily gasping for air, her hands clammy and cold against the steering wheel, her heart hammering impossibly fast.
My God, I’m having a heart attack. Maddie. Car. Have to stop.
With stupidly shaking hands she turned off the car engine.
Pop Kettle died of a heart attack. Dropped dead in the backyard giving Ken from next door a tip on the doggies.
Now Lyn was going to drop dead in Chatswood Shopping Center. It would be in the papers. Women across Australia would all secretly ask, What sort of irresponsible mother drops dead with a toddler in the backseat?
Unadulterated panic pumped through her body. Her chest heaved, and her hands fluttered uselessly in the air.
She couldn’t breathe.
Droplets of moisture slid down her back.
Why couldn’t she breathe?
And just when she thought, O.K. this is it, this is the end, somehow, someway, she began to breathe again.
The relief was ecstasy. Of course she could breathe. Her heartbeat slowed more and more until it was almost back to its normal quiet, unobtrusive rhythm.
Limp with relief, she turned around to check Maddie. She was deeply, soundly asleep, her thumb still in her mouth, her head lolling trustfully against the side of her car seat.
Lyn turned back on the ignition and adjusted the rearview mirror to look at herself. Her face looked back at her perfectly calmly, her lipstick was still perfect.
She pushed the mirror back into position and drove straight out of the parking lot.
When Michael arrived home that night, Maddie went rocketing into his arms and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Daddy!” She gave his head an extra happy, pleased-with-him pat.
“Hello, my precious.”
“She hasn’t exactly been precious today.” Lyn kept chopping garlic and tilted her cheek to be kissed.
“Hello, my other precious. I thought I said I’d cook tonight.”
“I’m just doing a quick stir-fry.”
“You wanted to get your accounts done today.”
“This won’t take me long.”
“I did say.”
The unspoken accusation—Lyn-the-Martyr. She’d been hearing it all her life. If she just gave people a chance, they would get around to doing things. If she would just relax, chill out, loosen up.
“Feet, Daddy!”
Michael balanced Maddie’s bare feet on top of his own black business shoes and, holding on to her hands, he began to walk around the kitchen with exaggerated lifted knees.
“So what did our Ms. Madeline get up to today?”
“There was a little baby in the bookshop who reached out for Maddie’s book. So she backhanded her with it.”
“Ah.”
“So I smacked her.”
“Ah.”
Lyn turned around from the chopping board to look at him. He was grinning down at Maddie, who was dimpling up at him, her eyes shining. With their curly black hair, they looked like a perfect Daddy and daughter in a movie. Lyn had a sudden memory of Cat standing on Frank’s shoes in exactly the same way, except Frank was whirling her around the room in a crazy, dizzy waltz and Cat was pink-faced and shrieking, “Faster, Daddy, faster!” while Maxine yelled, “Slower, Frank, slower!”
Relax, Mum, they used to tell her. Poor Mum.
“I smacked her quite hard.”
“I expect she deserved it. You know what this proves?”
“What?” Lyn had gone back to the chopping board. So much for shared parenting values.
“It’s time for us to breed again! She’s ready for a sister or brother.”
Lyn snorted. “Right. So she can have someone to abuse on a daily basis.”
“I mean it. She’s the sort of kid who needs brothers and sisters. We did say we’d start trying this year. That was the five-year plan if you recall.”
Lyn didn’t answer.
Michael’s tone turned teasing. “I’m sure you’ve got it written down somewhere.”
Of course she had it written down. She’d planned to go off the Pill after her next period.
Lyn pushed the garlic into a neat little hill and poured oil into the wok. “Yes, well, obviously that’s got to be put on hold now.”
“What do you mean obviously?”
“Cat, of course.”
“Oh, Cat, of course.”
“Imagine how she’d feel if I just happily announced I was having a baby.”
“So how long do we put our life on hold for?”
“As long as necessary.”
“That’s ridiculous. What if Cat takes months to get pregnant again? Or has another miscarriage?”
“Don’t say that.”
She couldn’t understand why this wasn’t as black-and-white obvious to him as it was to her.
Lyn put the garlic into the hot oil and it sizzled and popped excitedly, while Michael lifted Maddie off his feet and allowed her to go running off on some mission.
“You’re serious.”
“I told you. The other day with Gemma and Mum, she was just, I don’t know. When we were sitting there eating bun, she had exactly the same sort of surprised hurt expression on her face that she got when Mum and Dad sat us down in the living room and told us they were getting a divorce. I’ve never forgotten it. Her little face just crumpled.”
“Well, your little face probably crumpled too.”
“I don’t know if it did or not. That’s just my memory of it. Cat’s face.”
“So. Do you think Cat would do the same for you if the situations were reversed?”
“Yep.”
“I bet she bloody well wouldn’t.”
“I bet she bloody well would.”
Kara appeared in the kitchen. “Yum, it smells good in here. I’m starved to death!”
Lyn’s eyes met Michael’s in shared surprise at this unexpected cheeriness.
“Shall I set the table?”
Michael’s mouth dropped.
“Thanks,” said Lyn, trying for the nonfussy, not-too-enthusiastic tone that Cat seemed to use so effectively with Kara.
“No problemo.”
She opened a cupboard door and began pulling down plates.
Michael gestured wildly and silently at Lyn. “Drugs?” he mouthed frantically, doing something peculiar to his forearm that was presumably meant to be his imitation of somebody injecting a vein.
Lyn rolled her eyes.
Kara closed the cupboard door. “What are you doing, Dad?”
“Oh! Just—you know!”
“You are such an idiot.”
Michael looked relieved and nodded agreeably.
“Mummy!” Maddie toddled back into the kitchen, an expression of perplexed delight on her face. “Look!”
She held up two copies of Good Night, Little Bear.
Lyn said, “Fancy that!” and Maddie plunked down onto her bottom with both books in front of her, her head turning back and forth, as she flipped each page, intent on solving this mystery. The smell of frying garlic filled the kitchen and Michael chomped on a piece of capsicum and the ghost of his childhood dimple dented his cheek as he happily poured too much soy sauce into the stir-fry. Kara rattled efficiently through the drawer for knives and forks and her bare shoulders were young and tanned with skinny white lines from her swimsuit. And for just a moment, in spite of all the reasons not to feel happy (like the sinister bruise of worry over today’s parking lot incident), Lyn experienced an unexpectedly lovely unfurling of happiness.
It didn’t last, of course.
Michael became overexcited by Kara’s sunshiny mood and asked too many offensive questions, like, “So! What have you been up to?” causing her to slump with disgust and ask if she could please eat her dinner in peace and quiet in front of the TV.
After dinner, Maddie had a sudden revelation that her nightly bath was actually a physically painful experience, tantamount to torture. At Michael’s insistence, Lyn finally succumbed to the ferocity of her tantrum and let her go to bed dirty, which went against all of her deepest-held beliefs about personal hygiene and good discipline.
And when the house was finally quiet and Michael and Lyn were settled around the dining room table with coffee and Tim Tams and their respective laptops, Lyn started to tell Michael about what happened in the parking lot and found she couldn’t find the right words.
She could have found the right words if it had happened to someone else. In fact, she’d be the first one offering a diagnosis. “You weren’t having a heart attack, silly!” she’d say and then she’d tell them that they almost certainly had a—and she’d use the words with such calmly knowledgeable, pseudo-psychologist, women’s-magazine authority—panic attack. Yes, a panic attack, which was really nothing to worry about. Oh, she’d be so enthusiastically sympathetic, so know-it-all, typical Lyn. She’d explain how she’d read all about these “attacks” and they were really quite common and there were techniques you could learn to deal with them.
But they weren’t meant to happen to her. Other, more fragile people were meant to have panic attacks. People in need of looking after. O.K., if she was being completely honest—slightly silly people.
Not Lyn.
An event occurred. You flicked through your mental filing case of potential emotional responses and you chose the appropriate response. That was emotional intelligence, that was personal development, that was Lyn’s specialty. So why was she suddenly having a panic attack over not finding an exit and forgetting to buy cockroach spray?
Maybe it was something medical.
Maybe she should talk to a doctor about it.
The problem was that the very thought of talking about it out loud, to Michael or even more so to a doctor, seemed to cause a perceptible quickening of her heart. She imagined trying to describe that horrible pain across her chest and involuntarily pressed her hand to her collarbone. God, it had been awful.
If she told Michael about it, he’d insist that she see a doctor. He would react with immediate, loving, husbandly concern. “Let’s rule out the physical reasons first,” he’d say. And then he’d go on and on about reducing stress in her life and delegating more and not taking on so much and hiring more staff and getting more sleep and a cleaner—and it would make her feel really, really stressed.
That was the problem with a perfect husband. A lesser man might laugh and say something like, “Well, you’re a bit of a head case, aren’t you!” and that was exactly the sort of unsupportive reaction she needed.
A little contempt might make it dwindle away. It would be like laughing at the scary bits in a horror movie.
She looked at Michael and thought about saying, “I’m going to tell you something and I want you to be unsupportive, O.K.?” He was sitting back in his chair, munching his biscuit and double-clicking in that casually authoritative way he had with computers, as if the laptop was an extension of his own body. Computers and other electrical equipment seemed to shrink when Michael was around, becoming malleable and obedient in his large hands. It was a pity he couldn’t do the same with every problem. Tap a few keys, frown in an interested way. “Mmmm, let’s give this a go, then,” and hey presto, confidence about the functionality of your personality rebooted and restored.
She would tell him another day.
Or perhaps she wouldn’t tell him at all.
She went back to the twenty-three unanswered e-mails that had just filled her computer screen. She could see the words “problem,” “urgent,” and “help!” featuring heavily in the subject headings.
“You’re not still worrying,” Michael looked over at her, “about Maddie missing her bath.”
“I’m not that anal.”
“She’s testing her boundaries.”
“Yes, and finding they can be knocked over with ease.”
“The solution is a sibling.”
“Pffff. She’s got too many Kettle chromosomes. Anyway, of course we’re going to have another baby one day. Just not right now.”
“For some reason I have a problem with Cat’s life having such a major impact on my life.”
“Well, that is life. People impact on each other. Siblings impact on each other.”
“Not mine.”
“Yours are weird.”
“Oh, please. From the mouth of a Kettle. Now that’s the kettle calling the pot black.” Michael chuckled contentedly at his own wit.
“Oh, very good, yes, good one, darling.”
Lyn applauded lavishly with one hand on the tabletop while using the other one to continue scrolling through her e-mail. She hadn’t really been concentrating on the conversation due to a distractingly intriguing e-mail that had just arrived from an address she didn’t recognize.
Hi Lyn,
Well, it has been a long time, hasn’t it? Too long. I think about you a lot and the other day I happened to see an article about a business called the “Gourmet Brekkie Bus.” There was your face smiling back at me. I couldn’t believe it. It seems to me that I might have played a small part in the success of…
With a pleasant buzz of anticipation—could it be?—she was scrolling to the end of the e-mail to see if the sender was who she thought when the phone rang.
“Hello?” Lyn snatched up the portable phone from the table in front of her and kept looking at her computer screen.
There was silence for a second, a muffled sound, and then, “Lyn.”
It was Cat. Her voice was wrong.
Lyn stood up, pressing her hand against her other ear.
“What’s the matter? What is it?”
“Well. One thing is that I’ve had an accident.”
“A car accident? Are you O.K.?”
“Oh! Yes, I’m O.K. Although one little problem. The thing is…The thing is I’m probably over the limit. I had maybe four glasses. Five glasses. Maybe one was a glass of water? Yes, rehydrate, like Gemma says. But. Yes. Too many glasses. And this guy’s wife, this stupid, stupid bitch, she wants to call the police. I said it’s not necessary, we can just exchange details. But she’s such a f*cking…I think they’re calling now.”
“Where are you?” Lyn was running toward her bedroom as she spoke.
“Me? Oh, I’m on the Pacific Highway. Down the road from the Greenwood.”
“What are you wearing?”
“What?”
“Cat—what—are—you—wearing?” She unzipped her shorts and wriggled out of them. Michael had followed her into the bedroom, carrying his chocolate biscuit.
“Jeans and a T-shirt. But look I have to tell you—”
“What color T-shirt?”
“Black. Lyn. What I’m calling to tell you…I need to tell you that Dan is leaving me. Yes. For that girl. He loves her. He doesn’t love me.”
“I’m coming now. Just stay where you are. Don’t talk to anybody.”
She hung up, threw the phone on the bed, and pulled jeans and a black T-shirt from her wardrobe.
“What’s going on?” Michael absentmindedly stuffed the rest of his biscuit in his mouth.
“Cat’s been in an accident. I’m going there.”
“O.K., and why are you changing your clothes?”
“She’s over the limit. She thinks the police are coming.”
“So…?” Suddenly he understood. “Oh, Lyn, don’t be so stupid. You can’t get her out of this.”
She finished zipping up her jeans and pulled the elastic from her hair and ran her fingers through it, I-don’t-care-what-you-think Cat-style.
“Probably not. It’s worth a try.”
“No, it’s not worth a try. You’re being ridiculous.”
His paternal, pompous tone was really irritating her. She ignored him and grabbed the car keys from the dressing table.
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “I’ll tell Kara.”
“No.” He would slow her down. She was running for the door to the garage. “No. Better stay here.”
“Don’t you drive too fast! Lyn, are you listening to me? You drive carefully, for Christ’s sake! You promise me? Promise me!”
The fear and frustration in his voice made her stop for a second and look at him calmly. “I promise. Don’t worry.”
“You three girls,” he called after her, as she ran down the stairs, her car keys held out in front of her like a sword, ready to push the button to deactivate the alarm, “You are so bloody, bloody…!”
“I know,” she called back, comfortingly. “I know.”
She prayed he didn’t hear the screech of tires as she accelerated out of the garage.
According to family folklore, swapping identities was a game Cat first played when they were just two years old and she was caught by her parents in the act of creating her own crayon Picasso on the living room wall.
Maxine and Frank exploded as one, “Naughty girl, Cat!”
Cat turned her head, red crayon artistically in hand, and realized from the identical expressions of horror on her parents’ faces that she had committed a terrible crime.
“Me Lyn,” she said craftily. “Not Cat.”
And for just a split second they both believed it was Lyn, until Frank lifted her up by the strap of her overalls for a closer look at Cat’s evil little sparky face.
When they were in primary school, the two of them regularly swapped classes, just for the sheer pleasure of conning their teachers. Lyn found it strangely exhilarating being naughty Cat Kettle, talking to the bad boys up at the back of the classroom and not listening to the teacher. In fact, she found it so easy and natural being Cat that when they went back to their own classrooms, she sometimes wondered if now she was just pretending to be Lyn. (And if she was pretending to be Lyn, she wondered, was there another Lyn—the real Lyn—deep down inside?)
When they turned sixteen the Kettle girls made the pleasing discovery that boys liked them, quite a lot. One night, Cat accidentally agreed to go out with two different boys on the same night. She only realized at the very last possible minute when one boy arrived to pick her up. The other boy was due to meet her at the movies in twenty minutes’ time.
It was a thrilling mix-up, with Cat dramatically clapping her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with the wonderful horror of it. They all fell about smothering whoops of laughter in Cat’s bedroom, while the poor boy made strained conversation with Maxine. The only solution was for Lyn to go meet the other boy, Jason, at the movies.
Lyn went off to the movies feeling pleasantly frightened, like she was on a covert mission to save the world. It was only when she saw Jason leaning against a wall outside Hoyts, chewing nervously on the tickets that he’d already bought, his face lighting up when he saw her, that she suddenly felt awful.
“Hi, Cat,” said Jason.
“Hi, Jason,” said Lyn, and remembered not to apologize for being late.
It all went well in the beginning. They saw Terminator and Lyn avoided giveaway girly gasps, instead grunting with satisfaction at the most violent bits. At one stage she did worry she might have overdone it—she was laughing raucously at Arnie pulling out his eyeball, when she noticed that Jason had turned his head to look at her. But when she said, “What?” he grinned and pretended a piece of popcorn was his eyeball and ate it, so that was O.K., although revolting.
It wasn’t until afterward, when they were standing outside the movies, that everything went horribly wrong.
Suddenly, without warning, he leaned forward and kissed her, slithering his tongue weirdly along her gums. It was horrible, disgusting, mortifying. It was like being at the dentist with your mouth forced agape and unexpected violations with strange instruments and excessive saliva buildup.
When he’d finally finished with her mouth and Lyn was feeling an urgent desire to gargle and spit, he stood back, narrowed his eyes, and said, “Are you Lyn? Are you Cat’s sister Lyn?”
She tried to explain, but he was squaring his shoulders and squinting his eyes with cold contempt, just like the Terminator. “You Kettle girls are bitches, prick teasers,” he said. “And you, you can’t kiss.” Then he delivered his final, devastating blow: “’Cos you’re frigid!”
Lyn went home on her own, disgraced, humiliated, and…frigid.
She told Cat and Gemma that they’d been caught, but she never told them about the absolute confirmation of her worst secret fears. All she said was, “I will never, ever do that again.”
She was too late.
The flashing blue lights were visible from a block away, illuminating the little group of people, policemen, cars, and tow trucks in ghastly turquoise, like a stage set for a play.
As she pulled over, her own headlights shone a spotlight on the sickening, crumpled, caved-in side of Cat’s precious car. It was a proper accident. The idiot could have killed herself.
The reality of it was shocking. Now she wished she’d let Michael come with her.
She parked her car and walked toward the circle of people. Cat was in the center, all eyes upon her as she blew into a little white tube held by a policeman who looked like a teenage boy.
As Lyn approached she heard him say in a somber tone, “I’m afraid your reading is well over the limit.”
“Oh well.” Cat kicked at the ground.
A woman said to the man standing next to her, “I told you she was drunk!”
“Good for you, Laura.” The man shoved his hands into his jeans and frowned.
Lyn fought the desire to say saying something crushing to Laura-the-bitch and walked straight up to the policeman.
“Hello, I’m Lyn Kettle,” she said, in her bright but stern working-day voice. “I’m her sister.”
The policeman looked at her and seemed to drop his own working-day tone. “Gee, you can really tell you’re sisters! People must get you mixed up all the time.”
“Yes, ha! They do sometimes.” Lyn smoothed down her hair uneasily and hoped he wasn’t trained to pick up guilty body language. “Um. What happens now?”
The policeman switched back to his somber voice of authority. “Well, your sister will have to come down to the station with us. I’m afraid she’s likely to be charged with negligent driving and driving under the influence.”
Cat looked around her vaguely, as if all this had nothing to do with her.
Lyn reached over and touched her on the arm. “Are you O.K.?”
Cat raised her hands in a sort of hopeless gesture. “Oh. Never better.”
Her hands were bare, Lyn noticed. No wedding ring.