“She does it all by intuition. Says it’s like roulette.”
“Ridiculous!” said Lyn and Maxine simultaneously.
“Did you two get into the bath with her?” asked Lyn as Michael appeared looking even wetter than Frank. Even his hair was wet.
“She kept throwing things at us,” he explained. “It was worth it because it put her in a good mood. I only had to listen to her read me Good Night, Little Beartwice.”
Maddie had recently decided to take on responsibility for reading bedtime stories. She flipped the pages, babbling in perfect imitation of the excited up-and-down rhythms of her parents’ reading voices, sneaking little glances at them to make sure they were enjoying the story.
“Are you talking about Gemma’s shares?” asked Michael. “Because from what she’s said to me, I think her intuition is based on some pretty astute reading of the financial pages.”
Lyn and her parents stared at him in disbelief. That seemed even less likely.
“Gemma only pretends to be a ditz,” Michael told them. He looked at the cake and with his arms held close to his side and his hands splayed began to totter around saying in a squeaky voice, “Oooh, yummy!”
“What on earth is he doing?” asked Maxine.
“He’s being a Teletubby,” said Lyn. Frank, who had never seen the Teletubbies but didn’t like to miss an opportunity to be stupid, began to totter around in a similar fashion, while Maxine giggled.
Watching them, Lyn scratched viciously at something invisible on her arm and wondered if her parents had only pretended to hate each other for all those years.
“I must be such a bitch,” Lyn said later that night, after her parents had left and she and Michael were packing the dishwasher. “I can’t bear the fact that my parents are happy, and I’m sick of feeling sorry for Cat.”
“You’re a very sweet bitch,” said Michael. He stuck his thumbs and fingers out like a rap singer and waved his arms around, “Yo mah bitch.”
Lyn smiled and had a sudden memory of Cat and Dan dancing together at Michael’s fortieth. They were laughing their heads off while they parodied rap moves, but they were actually pretty good, their bodies loose and rhythmic.
“Actually, I do feel sorry for Cat,” she said, removing the dishwasher powder from Michael’s hands before he overfilled it. “Sometimes, it makes me want to cry.”
“O.K., I think I’m having trouble following this conversation.”
The day of Cat’s court case was when Lyn’s sympathy had first begun to fray around the edges.
Frank, Maxine, Nana Kettle, Lyn, and Gemma all came to give their support. The atmosphere, Lyn felt, was inappropriately festive.
Cat could have killed herself that night. She could have killed someone else. Drunk drivers killed people, for heaven’s sake!
Frank was especially cheery, bouncing around, hugging Cat to him, and telling her he’d arrange the breakout when she got sent to jail.
“Managed to get away from work, did you, Dad?” asked Lyn. “That’s nice.”
Very nice. He’d missed Lyn’s university graduation and Maddie’s christening because he couldn’t take time off work but Cat’s drink-driving charge—oh well, that was a special event.
“Quite a crowd here,” said Cat’s solicitor as she shook hands with each of them outside the courthouse.
“It’s a nice day out for us all!” beamed Nana Kettle.
“They’re giving her a penalty, Gwen,” said Maxine. “Not an award.”
“Maxine, I’m not senile!” snapped Nana. She gestured at her multicolored Sydney Olympic Games Volunteers shirt. “That’s why I’m wearing this. So that the judge will see that Cat comes from a real community-minded family!”
She gave the solicitor a cunning look. “Smart thinking, eh?”
The solicitor blinked. “Yes, indeed.”
As if to prove her point, a man passing by saw the familiar uniform and called out, “Good one, love!” and gave her a thumbs-up signal. Nana smiled graciously and waved one hand at him like the queen.
In fact, Nana had done about five minutes volunteering before she tripped and twisted her ankle. She spent the next two weeks enjoying the events on TV. Her ankle was fine by the time of the Volunteers’ Tickertape Parade. She marched through showers of colored paper with her head high, giving her regal wave to the cheering crowds.
“Cat’s a good girl really,” Nana told the solicitor. “Although she does like a little drink now and then.”
Gemma looked at Lyn and began to laugh with her usual abandon.
“Her sisters are terribly upset,” confided Nana.
Gemma made a strangled sound.
Cat didn’t say anything. She was wearing sunglasses and looked pale and bad-tempered and not at all repentant.
The Kettle family squeezed into a row of seats at the front of the room. Lyn wondered if she should warn them not to applaud. Frank and Maxine held hands like teenagers at the movies. Nana complained loudly about the uncomfortable seats. Gemma, who was sitting next to Lyn, twisted back and forth, checking out the audience.
“What are you doing?” asked Lyn.
“Just seeing if there are any cute criminals.”
“What happened to Charlie?”
“Long gone.”
“Because of Cat?”
“Of course because of Cat.”
“That’s a bit sad.”
Gemma swung back around. “Well, you’re the one who said I should break up with him. The day Dan moved his things out.”
“If it wasn’t going anywhere!”
“Well, I guess it wasn’t going anywhere.” She was dismissive. Lyn took out her Palm Pilot and began scrolling through her day’s diary entries. Gemma looked at it and scrunched up her nose.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Lyn sighed. “It’s not pretentious. It’s practical.”
“Whatever.”
They had to sit through six dull cases before it was Cat’s turn, and by then the Kettle family was starting to fidget and whisper.
The magistrate herself seemed bored and businesslike. She frowned deeply as she flipped through the evidence of Cat’s driving records. “Fifteen speeding offenses in the last five years,” she remarked.