I think the ferry guy would have ignored them, but passengers started calling out, Wait, wait! So he rolled his eyes and put the walkway back out again and they all came clattering on, laughing and panting. Some of the passengers even cheered them. It looked like they’d just come straight out of the ocean. The little girls all had dripping wet ponytails sticking out of the back of baseball caps and bare feet caked in sand. The father had their beach towels over one shoulder and he said, “Thanks, mate!” and slapped the guy on the shoulder.
They walked right by us and I could hear them saying, “That was so funny, Dad!” “Let’s have an ice cream now, Daddy!” I realized they must have been sisters. Well, being only an only child living in sad, sodden old Manchester, it seemed to me that they led dream lives.
I thought, I bet you girls have no idea how lucky you are.
That’s when I decided I was going to come and live here when I grew up. It felt like the first grown-up decision I’d ever made. I remember looking at my parents and feeling sorry for them, because they’d miss me when I moved all the way to Australia.
They do too.
CHAPTER 7
Gemma skidded wildly through the crowded shopping center, dodging and weaving past Christmas shoppers. “The problem with families is they typecast you,” Charlie had said the night before with the tips of his fingers light against the back of her neck. “I’m the voice of sanity. Sometimes I wouldn’t mind a turn as the voice of insanity.”
“Yes!” Gemma agreed too violently because his fingers were making her shiver and she still had one date to go before she succumbed. “You’re exactly right!”
Today, just for fun, she was going to break free of at least one stereotype. For once she was going to be right on time to meet her sisters. It had been a Herculean effort, but it looked like she was going to make it. (How did they manage their relentless punctuality? You had to plan everything so far in advance! It was exhausting!)
She pounded to the top of the packed escalator, apologizing as bag-laden shoppers moved aside for her. As she reached the top, her unzipped handbag flew upward and its entire contents went cascading in a noisy clatter down the escalator. Gemma watched in horror as the crowd bent as one to scrabble for her things. As they stepped off the escalator she accepted each new item they handed her. Handfuls of loose change. Purse. Mobile phone. Lipstick. Scrunched-up tissues.
“Thank you,” she said. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.”
A little old lady carefully pressed a tampon into her hand. “Thank you, I appreciate it.”
Sweet Jesus, please don’t let there be a condom.
Finally, her entire, thankfully condom-less, bag was restored to her, and she ran breathlessly to the designated coffee shop, now five minutes late. Neither Cat nor Lyn was there. She was first! Triumphantly she sat down at a table and ordered a pineapple juice.
They were shopping for a combined Christmas present for their mother. It was their annual challenge to find something she might actually keep. Maxine consistently returned every gift she received. “Yes. Well. That’s lovely, girls,” she would say as she unwrapped their agonizingly selected gift and doubtfully turned it back and forth. “Perhaps you could give me the receipt, just in case.”
Sipping her juice, Gemma contemplated the woman at the next table, snapping irritably at a little boy of about Maddie’s age. Gemma wrinkled her nose at him over the edge of her glass to try and make him feel better. He stared back at her, seemingly stunned. Idiot child. Wait till Maddie and Lyn arrive, she thought, they’ll show you two.
Gemma was in awe of Lyn’s mothering ability. The day they took Maddie home from the hospital for the first time, she couldn’t believe that Lyn was allowed to actually keep this real, live baby. Her own sister, walking out of the hospital, holding that fragile little bundle, chatting away to Michael, even occasionally taking her eyes off the baby! Gemma kept expecting some official to tap them on the shoulder and say, Now wait just a minute there, where do you think you’re going with that!
If Gemma had a baby she’d be terrified she’d accidentally drop it or feed it something poisonous. What if she simply forgot she even had a baby and then remembered days later?
She had a sudden image of herself running up the escalator and a baby flying from her clumsy hands, hurtling through the air, shoppers looking up with mouths agape, the tampon lady tossing aside her walking stick to hold out both hands to catch it.
She snorted through her straw.
She remembered the first time she and Cat baby-sat Maddie for Lyn. Cat was lying on her stomach on the floor reading a magazine, while Gemma sat on Lyn and Michael’s bed cradling the warm, sweet-smelling swaddle against her shoulder. It suddenly occurred to her that the baby had gone extremely still.
She carefully turned Maddie over.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I’ve killed the baby.”
Cat didn’t look up from her magazine. “Well, Lyn’s going to be really mad at you.”
“Cat! I’m not joking!”
Cat threw aside the magazine and bounced to her feet. Together they stared at Maddie’s flushed, creased face. Cat poked her gently in the stomach. The baby didn’t move. Gemma pressed her hand to her mouth. “What have I done?”
Cat poked again, harder—and Maddie’s face crumpled as she erupted into a scream of rage. Cat picked her up and began to jiggle her. “Yes, I know, darling, we won’t let that murderous Auntie Gemma hold you anymore.”
It had been the most terrifying moment of Gemma’s life.
“Gem! Gem! Oh! Gem!”
Gemma looked up to see Maddie running through the coffee shop to her, followed by Lyn pushing an empty stroller. Maddie was wearing blue denim overalls and a gaudy pink and silver tiara in her hair. Gemma had bought her the Little Princess tiara, secretly coveting it for herself.
“Over there! Gem!” called Maddie to the little boy at the next table as she went running by, pointing her out, as if to say, Are you mad? How could you have missed seeing this extraordinary person sitting right next to you!
Gemma swooped her onto her lap, and Maddie placed both her tiny starfish hands firmly on Gemma’s cheeks and immediately launched into an incomprensible story.
Lyn remained standing, clutching the stroller handles. “What’s the matter?” she demanded.
“What do you mean?” asked Gemma, turning her head and letting Maddie turn it back again.