Three Wishes

The awful things that were happening to Cat made it seem like she was a different person—and that was wrong. She remembered Cat’s and Lyn’s scarily polite behavior when Marcus died. She must try to not to be polite to Cat. Sympathetic. But not at all polite.

Cat was standing with her hand on the mirrored door of the bedroom cupboard. “All his clothes are gone. Look.”

“More room for you!” Gemma began to spread out Cat’s coat hangers so that the empty half of the wardrobe disappeared. “Hey. I haven’t seen that skirt before. Hmmm. That’s very sexy.” She held it up against herself and swiveled her hips. Cat sat down on the bed in front of her and lifted up the hem of the skirt.

“Good. I can wear it clubbing when I’m out on the prowl again.”

“Yep. You’d pick up in no time.”

“Give those twenty-year-olds a run for their money.”

“For sure.”

They looked at each other, and Cat smiled wryly.

“Actually, I don’t have a great track record competing with the twenty-year-olds, do I?”

Gemma put the skirt back in the wardrobe and sat down next to her.

She put her arm around her. “You could get a hot young twenty-year-old yourself. They’ve got all that stamina.”

“Yeah,” Cat sighed. “The thought of some twenty-year-old pumping away at me makes me feel exhausted.”

Gemma laughed. “He wouldn’t last long. You’d get breaks in between pumping.”

“You know what I found this morning?” asked Cat.

“What?”

“A gray pubic hair.”

“No! I didn’t even know you went gray down there! Are you sure? Let’s see it.”

“Get lost!” Cat elbowed her. “I’m not letting you see my pubic hair, for God’s sake.”

“Well, your fridge is on the way. What’s so funny?” Lyn stood at the bedroom door, half frowning and smiling.

Gemma said, “Lyn’s probably got an identical one.”

“An identical what?”

But Cat had looked up and seen something on the top shelf of the cupboard.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

She stood up and pulled down some sort of soft toy, it looked like a little furry football.

Gemma and Lyn watched as she held it gently and her face dissolved like a child’s.

She spoke as if she were telling them some very bad news that she’d only just received. “I’m never going to have a baby now.”

“Of course you are,” said Lyn firmly.

“No question,” said Gemma.

But it took at least twenty minutes before they could get her to stop crying.

Later that night, after Lyn had gone home and Gemma and Cat were on to their third bottle of wine, Cat said, “What did you do with Marcus’s engagement ring?”

“I gave it to a lady sitting on George Street.”

“What?”

“She was singing ‘Blowing in the Wind.’ She had a beautiful voice. I took the ring off my finger and put it in her guitar case.”

“It was worth ten thousand dollars!”

“Yes. Well, she was singing really nicely. And I’ve always liked that song.”

“I’m going to pretend Dan is dead. Like Marcus.”

“Oh. Good idea.”

“But I’m not going to give my ring to some busker, for God’s sake. What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t concentrate. That’s the problem with me.”

Gemma’s twenty-first birthday present from Marcus was a pair of ski gloves. Inside one of the gloves was a business-class ticket to Canada.

Her friends said, “Oh my God, Gemma, this guy is a catch!”

She’d been going out with him for eighteen months.

On their first day’s skiing, Gemma felt elated. The snowy peaks of Whistler were outlined against a cloudless blue sky. There had been a huge snow dump the day before, and people everywhere were in good moods, calling out things like, “Magic! Pure magic!” as they tramped in their boots through crunchy new snow toward the lifts.

She felt clean. She felt like they were a normal couple.

And then she forgot to concentrate.

It was because she hadn’t been skiing for a few years and she was overexcited, not thinking properly.

Skiing with Dad in the August school holiday was an annual event for the Kettle girls, an exuberant circle on Mum’s kitchen calendar, a brightly wrapped package of seven gleaming days. Sun reflecting off your sisters’ goggles. Exhilarated shouts. The rasp of skis sliding across ice on the early morning T-bars. Dad teaching you the fine art of pushing your way to the front of a lift queue without anybody noticing. Steaming hot chocolates with melting marshmallows and red, cold faces.

Skiing occupied a special place in Gemma’s heart.

That’s why she forgot she wasn’t a carefree little girl anymore. She forgot to be careful, she forgot to think about the consequences, and on their first run, she just skied straight to the bottom, without even looking to see what Marcus was doing.

It was fantastic. She stopped near the gondola, the scrape of her skis sending a shower of snow in the air, and turned around to squint into the sun, breathless and smiling, to look for Marcus.

As soon as she picked him out from the weaving colorful figures on the mountain, she knew. She punched the ends of her ski poles deep into the snow and waited. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He waited till he was right next to her. She smiled at him, pretending they were still normal people but she didn’t bother to say “Shhhh” when he started yelling.

She should have waited for him. She was f**king ungrateful. She was selfish and stupid. The problem with her was she didn’t think.

When he finished, he shoved his poles in the snow and skied off, banging his shoulder painfully against hers, almost knocking her off balance. She watched him go and took a shaky breath. It would be all right. In a few minutes he would calm down.

“You O.K. there?”

It was a woman in a bright yellow ski suit, with a long plait of blond hair. She had an American accent.

Gemma smiled politely at her. “Yes, thank you.”

The woman pushed back her goggles, revealing the fanatical skier’s raccoon face: a distinct white silhouette around her eyes.

She said, “Sweetie. The only part that’s your fault is that you stay with him.”