Maxine coughed meaningfully. Gemma elbowed Lyn, and they both dropped their heads, sharing Cat’s guilt.
The magistrate’s face remained bland as the solicitor presented affidavits to prove Cat had been overwrought due to her miscarriage and the breakdown of her marriage.
“My client regrets her actions. They were the result of severe and unusual stress.”
“We all suffer stress,” the magistrate commented irritably, but she sentenced Cat to only a six-month license suspension and a thousand-dollar fine.
“The best you could have hoped for,” the solicitor said afterward.
“Six months will fly by!” agreed Frank. “Lyn and Gemma can give you lifts!”
Lyn gritted her teeth. “Or you can just pretend you’ve still got a license and keep driving.”
Everybody turned on her.
“What a silly thing to say, Lyn!”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” The solicitor spoke without irony. “The risk is too high.”
Lyn groaned and suppressed a childish desire to tattle, Ask her about the truck she’s been driving!
“I was joking,” she said.
Cat pulled her to one side as they all walked toward their cars.
“I’ve given back the truck to the smash repairers. So don’t get all f**king sanctimonious.”
Lyn felt her pulse accelerate in response to Cat’s contemptuous tone. It was like turning the dial on her gas stove. This is my biological fight or flight response, she reminded herself. Breathe! Cat was the only person who could make her feel this angry. It was like every fight they’d ever had over the past thirty years was all part of the one endless argument. At any moment, without notice, it could be started again, hurtling them straight into the middle of irrational, out-of-control, name-calling fury.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to get here today?” she said furiously.
“You came because you wanted to gloat, and now you’re disappointed because you think nobody took it seriously enough.”
The colossal injustice of the first accusation, combined with the element of truth in her second, made Lyn want to pick up her briefcase and slam it into Cat’s face.
“That night, I was going to take the blame for you! I was going to try and get you out of it!”
Cat wasn’t listening. “I’m not an idiot. Do you think I don’t know I could have killed somebody? I know it! I think about it!”
“Well, good,” said Lyn nastily. “Because it’s true.” Suddenly Lyn felt her fury slide away, leaving her weak with remorse. “O.K. then. Well. Want to go for a run this weekend? Do the Coogee to Bondi?”
“Oh sure! I’d love to!” Cat hammed it up, and they grinned at the absurdity of themselves. “Could I trouble you for a lift?”
Lyn rolled her eyes. “Of course.”
It was always like that. They never said sorry. They just threw down their still-loaded weapons, ready for next time.
The weather chose to be kind for Maddie’s birthday. The air was crisp, the sun warm, and it was a pleasure to look at the sky. A birthday picnic at Clontarf Beach would be just right.
Maddie, thankfully, had woken up as sweet and sunny as the weather, but Lyn’s cold had gotten considerably worse. She dosed herself up on aspirin and felt wooly-headed, muffled from the world.
They were just about to leave the house when the phone rang.
“It’s for you, Lyn,” called Michael.
She called back, “Take a message! We have to get going!”
A couple of minutes later he came down into the kitchen and picked up the giant picnic basket to take out to the car.
“Who was it?” asked Lyn. She was squatting down, retying the laces on Maddie’s shoes. Maddie’s hands rested gently on her head.
“It was Hank.”
She looked at the bright red laces on Maddie’s shoes and felt as caught out as if she’d been unfaithful to him.
“Did he leave a message?”
“Yes. He said he got your e-mail about your panic attacks and to hang in there, because you’re not alone, and he’s got lots of really helpful information he’s putting together for you.”
Lyn finished tying up Maddie’s shoelaces and stood up, swinging her onto her hip. “O.K. Look. It’s nothing.”
“It’s something.” He was agitated, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, swinging the picnic basket. “You’re telling some bloody ex-boyfriend your problems. Some strange guy I’ve never met telling me about my wife’s problems!”
Lyn put a hand on his forearm and deliberately allowed a fragile note to creep into her voice. “I’ve got a cold. I’m really feeling terrible. Can we please talk about it after the party?”
He immediately, as she knew he would, lifted Maddie out of her arms and said without malice, “Of course.”
Oh, Georgina, no wonder you cried when I stole him.
With her head heavy against the passenger car seat and the Teletubby birthday cake safely on her lap, Lyn let her eyelids sink and wondered if she’d make it through the day.
Maddie kicked and chattered in her car seat between Kara and one of her more likable best friends, Gina. The girls were taking turns playing Around and Around the Garden, like a teddy bear tracing a circle on Maddie’s palm, causing her to chortle with rising anticipation until they tickled her tummy and she completely dissolved.
Every time she laughed, everyone in the car laughed.
As they pulled up at a set of lights on the Spit Road, there was a loud bip of a horn.
Michael looked out his window and said, “Look who made it after all.”
Lyn leaned forward and saw Cat in the passenger seat of Gemma’s car. They were both waving extravagantly. Cat wound down her window and held out a bunch of brightly colored balloons.
Watching their lips move excitedly and silently reminded Lyn of some moment in her life when she had understood something, for the first time. Something sad and inevitable. Her blocked sinuses and muffled head wouldn’t let her pin down the memory.
The lights changed and Gemma’s car sped off down toward the blue-green glitter of the harbor, the balloons still bobbing merrily out of Cat’s window.
Maddie went wild when they arrived at Clontarf and saw Gemma and Cat already unpacking picnic things and tying balloons to a tree.
“Mummy! Look! Cat! Gem!”