Plus, she knew she did have a tendency to be oversensitive. Her sisters had been telling her about this tendency all her life.
Perhaps she was overreacting. People got angry sometimes.
And so it began.
They went on the picnic and at first she was a little tense but then he made her laugh and she made him laugh and it was another wonderful night, in a string of wonderful nights. The next day when Cat said to her, “So how was your night with the big hunk?” she said, “He told me he loved me! Involuntarily!”
There was no need to ruin the lovely picture she could see reflected in her sisters’ eyes by telling them a silly story about a bottle opener. So she pressed it down, brushed it away, crumpled it up.
And she would have forgotten all about it, if a few weeks later, it hadn’t happened again.
This time there was sand on her feet when she got in his car.
Well.
He loved his car—and he’d been under so much pressure at work and she should really have washed her feet more carefully.
Selfish. Stupid. Lazy. Did she just not care? Did she just not listen? He pushed her out of the car, and it was her own fault for being so clumsy that she dragged her foot along the gravel parking lot, ripping a chunk of skin off her big toe.
There was a family in the parking lot at the beach, two little boys with pink-zinked noses and foam surfboards under their arms and a mum with a flowery straw hat and a dad with a beach umbrella. The little boys stared, and the parents hurried them along, as Marcus roared and swore and thumped his fist against the car.
Afterward, she put her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and felt grimy with a strangely compelling sort of shame.
Marcus was singing along to a song on the radio, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Good day, hey?” he said, reaching over to pat her on the leg. “How’s that toe of yours, you poor little thing. We’ll have to get a Band-Aid on it.”
Sometimes it happened every day for a week. Sometimes a whole month would pass without incident. It was never in front of anyone they knew. With their families and friends, he was charming and adoring, holding her hand, laughing affectionately at her jokes. It was a dirty little secret that they shared, like a peverse sexual habit. Imagine if they knew, Gemma would think, imagine if they ever saw, how shocked they would be, when they think we’re normal and nice, just like them.
But it was fine. She could deal with it. All relationships had their problems after all. There was no need for her blood to turn to ice the moment she saw him pause, become still, the muscles in his back tensing.
He never hit her, after all. He would never do that. He only hurt her accidentally when she didn’t get out of his way quickly enough.
She just had to work out an appropriate response for these little “episodes.” Yelling back Cat-style? Calm, rational reasoning Lyn-style?
But both tactics only amplified his rage.
The only thing to do was to wait it out, to fold herself up inside, to pretend she was somewhere else. It was like ducking under a big wave when the surf was especially rough. You took a deep gulp and closed your eyes and dropped as far as you could beneath that raging wall of white water. While you were under it pushed you and shoved you as if it wanted to kill you. But it always passed. And when you broke the surface, gasping for air, sometimes it was so calmly-lapping-gentle you could hardly believe the wave ever existed in the first place.
It was fine. Their relationship was fine! They loved each other so much.
And she was forgetful and annoying and clumsy and selfish and hopeless and boring.
And it was highly unlikely that anyone else would put up with all of Gemma’s faults. She was, after all, fundamentally irritating.
She started having very long, very hot showers, scrubbing hard at her skin. Other women, she noticed, were so much cleaner than her.
“Right,” said Lyn. “Deep breaths.”
The three of them were standing outside Cat and Dan’s place, except that now, the moment they opened the door, it would only be Cat’s place.
Dan had spent the morning moving his stuff out.
“I’m fine,” said Cat. She went to put her key in the door, and Gemma caught Lyn’s eyes as they both looked away from the clumsy tremor of her hands.
They walked in and stopped. Gemma’s stomach turned as she saw the blank spots on the walls and the dusty grooves across the carpet where pieces of furniture had been pulled. She hadn’t really believed he would do it.
Dan was such an automatic, everyday part of the Kettle family. It seemed like he had always been a part of their family dinners and birthdays, Christmas and Easter celebrations, making jokes, slouching on the sofa, complaining and teasing and giving his opinions, loudly, Kettle-style. Maxine told him off without formality. Frank opened the fridge door and tossed him beer bottles without looking. Dan knew all the family stories, he even starred in some of them, like “the time Frank tossed the beer bottle over his shoulder to Dan only Dan wasn’t there” and “the day Cat bet Dan that he couldn’t make a pavlova and he made the most stupendous pavlova of all time for that barbecue and Nana Kettle trod on it and the cream went up to her ankle!”
What would happen to those stories now? Would it be like they never happened? Would they have to rewrite all their histories as if Dan weren’t there?
Gemma realized she was feeling somehow hurt by Dan, as if he’d left her too. And if she was feeling betrayed and shocked, then she couldn’t even imagine the depth of Cat’s feelings.
She had to say something.
“Oh dear,” she said.
Lyn rolled her eyes and said, “You didn’t tell me you were letting him take the fridge, Cat.” She took out her mobile from her handbag. “I’ll call Michael now and you can have that old one we’ve got in the garage.”
“Thanks,” said Cat vaguely. She was standing at the kitchen bench reading a handwritten note without picking it up. It was sitting next to a set of keys.
She pressed her fingertips gently against the piece of paper and then walked into the bedroom.
Gemma looked at Lyn, who was issuing bossy instructions to Michael. She gestured with her head for Gemma to follow Cat.
Gemma pulled faces at her. “What should I say?” she mouthed.
“Gemma’s being pathetic,” Lyn told Michael, and she pushed her firmly between the shoulder blades toward the bedroom.
Feeling slightly sick, Gemma allowed herself to be shoved.