“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**k your brains out.”
No one’s brains had been f**ked 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.