Three Wishes (3 page)

If she were on
Med School,
one single tear would have been trickling so slowly, so heartbreakingly down her cheek. Instead, she was making strange, wheezy sounds as if she’d been running.

“Please don’t be upset. Cat. Babe.”

“Don’t be
upset!”

Dan placed his palm tentatively against her arm. She pushed it violently away. “Don’t you touch me!”

They looked at each other in horror. Dan’s face was pasty-white. Cat was trembling with the sudden chasm-opening revelation that he must have touched this woman she’d never seen. Properly touched her. He must have kissed her. All the tiny, trivial details of sex.

“Did you take her bra off?”

“Cat!”

“I mean obviously her bra came
off.
I just want to know if she took it off, or you? Did you reach your hand up her back, while you were kissing and undo it? Have any difficulty? Was it a tricky one? Those tricky ones are bad, aren’t they? Been a while since you’ve had to worry about that. How’d you do? Breathe a sigh of relief once you got it undone?”

“Please stop it.”

“I will
not stop it.”

“I took her bra off, O.K.! But it was nothing. I was drunk. It was nothing like with us. It didn’t—”

“It didn’t mean anything. Yes, I know. What meaningless position did you choose?”

“Please, Cat.”

“Did she have an orgasm?”

“Please don’t.”

“Oh, darling. Don’t worry. I’m sure she did. Those little techniques of yours are so
reliable. I’m sure she was very appreciative.”

“Cat, I’m begging you to stop.” There was a tremor in his voice.

She wiped sweat from her forehead. It was too hot.

She felt ugly. In fact she was ugly. She put her hand to her chin and felt the pimple. Makeup! She needed makeup. She needed makeup, wardrobe, a hair stylist, and an air-conditioned set. Then she’d feel clean, beautiful waves of grief like the stars of
Med School.

She got to her feet and picked up both their plates.

The back of her throat itched unbearably. Hay fever. Right now, of all times. She put the plates back down on the coffee table and sneezed four times. Each time she closed her eyes to sneeze, an image of a sliding bra strap exploded in her mind.

Dan went into the kitchen and came back with the box of tissues.

“Don’t look at me,” she said.

“What?” He held out the tissues.

“Just don’t look at me.”

That was when she picked up one of the plates of spaghetti and threw it straight against the wall.

Cat wondered if her face looked different. It felt different, as if it were bruised and swollen. Both her eyes as if like they’d been punched. In fact, her whole body seemed strangely fragile. She’d been holding herself stiffly all day, as if she were sunburned.

It was surprising really, how much this hurt and how
consistently
it hurt. All day at work she kept thinking that she ought to
get a painkiller and then remembering that she wasn’t actually in physical pain.

She hadn’t slept much the night before.

“I’ll sleep on the sofa bed,” Dan had announced, looking heroic and pale.

“No, you won’t,” said Cat, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

But when they got into bed and she lay there looking at the ceiling and listened to Dan’s breathing starting to slow—he was actually going to
sleep
—she had snapped back on the light and said, “Get out.”

He went, clutching his pillow sleepily to his stomach. Cat lay in bed and imagined her husband having sex with another woman. She was right there, under the covers with them, watching his hands, her hands, his mouth, her mouth.

She couldn’t stop. She didn’t want to stop. It was necessary to imagine every excruciating second-by-second detail.

In the middle of the night she woke Dan up to ask him what color underwear the girl was wearing.

“I don’t remember,” he said blearily.

“You do! You do!” She kept insisting until finally he said he thought it might have been black, at which point she burst into tears.

Now Cat looked at the people in the 4:30
P.M
. Operations Meeting and wondered if this
thing,
this vile thing, had ever happened to them.

Sales Director Rob Spencer was in his favorite position by the whiteboard, enthusiastically scribbling flamboyant arrows and boxes. “Folks! I think this makes my point very clear!”

Rob Spencer. Well, that was a joke. For the last five years or so Rob Spencer had been having an affair with gorgeous Johanna from accounts. It was the company’s favorite secret. Telling new staff the Rob/Johanna legend was part of the induction procedure at Hollingdale Chocolates. The only people who didn’t know, presumably, were Rob’s wife and Johanna’s husband. Everyone
stared with enjoyable pity at the two unfortunate spouses when they made their appearance each year at the annual Christmas party.

It occurred to Cat that she now had something in common with Rob Spencer’s pathetic wife. She was the faceless wife in
Angela’s
amusing story of a one-night stand with a married man.
Well I feel sorry for the wife…the wife isn’t Angela’s responsibility…who cares about the wife, just give us the gory details, Ange!

She swallowed hard and looked down at Rob’s analysis for a quick way to humiliate him.

Colorful graphs. Nifty little spreadsheet. All done by his minions, of course.

Aha.

“Rob,” she said.

Ten heads turned in relieved unison to face her.

“Catriona!” Rob spun from the whiteboard, teeth flashing against solarium-yellow tan. “Always value your feedback!”

“I just wondered where those figures came from?” she said.

“I do believe the marvelous Margie did the number crunching for me.” Rob tapped his figures seductively, as if Margie had given him a rather marvelous blow job at the same time.

“Yes, but what figures did you give Margie to crunch?” asked Cat.

“Ah, let’s see,” Rob began shuffling vaguely through his paperwork.

She savored the moment before moving in for the kill.

“Looking at the marketing budget here, it seems you’ve given her last financial year’s figures. So your analysis, while fascinating, is also, hmmm, how can I put it best…irrelevant?”

Too bitchy. Male egos were so tender, just like their balls. She would pay for that one.

“Crash and burn, Rob, mate!” Hank from production thumped his fist on the table.

Rob held up both hands in boyish surrender. “Team! It seems the Cat has caught me out again with her razor-sharp eye for errors!”

He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly five on a Friday afternoon! People, what are we still doing here? Who wants to join me in drowning my humiliation at Albert’s? Catriona? Can I shout my nemesis a drink?”

His eyes were opaque little marbles.

Cat smiled tightly. “I’ll hold you to it another time.”

She bundled up her files and left the room, feeling quite ill with inappropriate-for-the-workplace hatred for Rob Spencer.

Cat sat in a dimly lit corner of the pub with three beers in front of her and waited for her sisters.

She wasn’t going to tell them. She and Dan needed time to work it out for themselves. It wasn’t necessary to share every single detail of her marriage. It was weird and triplet-dependent. “You tell those two
everything
!” Dan always said, and he didn’t know the half of it.

If she told them, Gemma would hug her and rush off to buy supplies of ice cream and champagne. Lyn would be on her mobile ringing friends for referrals for good marriage counselors. They would inundate her with advice. They would argue passionately with each other over what she should and shouldn’t do.

They would care too much and that would make it real.

She took a gulp of her beer and bared her teeth at a man who was making hopeful gestures at the two stools she had saved.

“Just checking!” he said, hands up, looking hurt.

She definitely wasn’t telling her sisters. Look what happened when she went off the Pill. Her cycle became public property; every month, they’d call to cheerily ask if her period had arrived yet.

They had both stopped calling now but only after she’d said to Gemma that yes, it had come, and yes, she probably was infertile, and now was she satisfied? Gemma had cried, of course. Then Cat had felt sick with guilt as well as period pain.

“Are these seats?”

“Yes, they are seats, but no, they are not free.”

“What’s
her
problem?”

“Ignore her. Bitch.”

Two girls in matching Barbie-doll business suits tottered off disapprovingly on their high heels, while Cat examined her knuckles and imagined jumping up and punching their lipsticked mouths.

She wondered what that girl looked like.

Angela.

She was probably short and curvy like those girls who had now stopped to giggle and gurgle up at a group of, no doubt married, men.

Cat hated curvaceous little women. Feminine, doll-like women who tilted up their sweet faces to Cat like she was some sort of towering, lumbering giant.

Her sisters understood. Tall women understood.

But she didn’t want the humiliation of their understanding. In fact, for some reason the thought of their intensely sympathetic faces made her furious. It was
their fault.

She searched her mind for a rational reason for blaming them.

Of course: it was their fault she’d ever met Dan in the first place.

Melbourne Cup Day over ten years ago. Twenty-one and delightfully drunk on champagne, back when you were still allowed to call cheap sparkling wine “champagne.” Betting spectacular amounts of money on every race. Laughing like drains, as their grandmother said. Making a complete spectacle of themselves, as their mother said.

They accosted every boy who walked by their table.

Gemma: “We’re triplets! Can you tell? Can you believe it? They’re identical but I’m not. I’m a single egg! They’re just half of the one egg. Half-eggs. Would you like to buy us a drink? We quite like champagne.”

Lyn: “Got any good tips? Personally, I like Lone Ranger in Race Five. We’re drinking the $9.99 bottle of champagne if you were thinking of buying us a drink. We’ve already got glasses, so that’s O.K.”

Cat: “You seem to have an unusually large head. It’s blocking the television and I’m about to win a lot of money. Could you go away? Unless you’d like to buy us a drink.”

The boy with the large head sat down in the booth next to Cat. He was very tall, and they all had to squash together to give him enough room.

He had evil green eyes and stubble.

He was gorgeous.

“So,” he said. “You’re all ex–womb mates.”

Gemma thought this was hilarious and dissolved into tears of laughter. Cat sat back, sipping her drink, waiting for the gorgeous boy to fall in love with Gemma. Men generally fell in love with Gemma when she laughed. They couldn’t hide their sheepish grins of pride. It became their life mission to make her laugh again.