“I thought I was producing a serious publication!”
Cat read the front page:
INTERVIEW WITH POP KETTLE!
Mr. Les Kettle (sometimes known as Pop Kettle) is a tall, very elderly man aged approximately sixty years old. His hair is gray and his favorite foods are baked dinners and Tooheys beer. His favorite hobbies are reading the paper, betting on the doggies, and doing his wife’s nails. His least favorite things are mowing the lawn and broccoli. This reporter has sometimes seen him sneaking broccoli to his dog under the table. Pop Kettle has three granddaughters (they are triplets) and when they’re all together he calls them all by the same name, which is “Susi.” He doesn’t know why he does this. Our undercover reporter asked which Susi was his favorite. His answer was “CAT.” “But don’t tell your sisters,” commented Mr. Kettle quietly and under his breath. Mr. Kettle did not know that he was speaking to an undercover reporter at the time but this is what he said. This is an example of FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.
Next to the article was glued a blurry photo of Pop Kettle that Cat remembered taking herself. At the bottom of the page was a star: Look out for next week’s issue of the Kettle Scoop when we reveal who are Gemma’s real parents! As everyone knows, Gemma Kettle is adopted.
Maxine wiped tears of laughter from her eyes.
“Give it to me,” she demanded. “I’m not letting it out of my sight again.”
Cat handed it over. She liked hearing herself described as a “funny, passionate kid.”
“So,” Maxine folded the page neatly in two and tapped it against her hand, “just what are you going to do with your life?”
“Sorry?”
Typical. The very moment she became the slightest bit likable, she had to repair the damage by reverting to bitch mode.
“Well? Not many people get a chance like you’ve got. I hope you’re not going to mope around forever, throwing cutlery at people whenever you don’t get your own way.”
Cat stared at her. She couldn’t believe it. And here she was helping move out Nana’s stuff while Lyn and Gemma spent the day with their happy little families. Cat had been feeling like the old maid daughter, the saintly one, Beth in Little Women—except she wasn’t dying, unfortunately.
“What do you mean?” Heavy, resentful bitterness filled her voice. “Not many people get the chance to enjoy a miscarriage and a divorce? How unfortunate for them.”
“Not many people get the chance to choose a new life,” said Maxine. “You’re young, smart, talented, you’ve got no ties, you can do whatever you want.”
“I’m not young! And I want ties! I might never get the chance to have children!”
“You might not,” agreed Maxine. “Would that really be the end of the world?”
“Yes!” It came out like a self-pitying sob of fear.
Maxine sighed. “Look. When I was your age I had three teenage daughters who were all convinced I was trying to ruin their lives. I had a dead-end job and an ex-husband with a bizarre habit of introducing me to all to his new girlfriends. I felt trapped, depressed—and now I think about it, a little bit insane. I would have given anything to be you with all those choices.”
“But I don’t have any choices. Not any that I want.”
I want to be sitting on a plane next to Dan. I want my baby. I want Sal. I want to be somebody else.
“But you do, you infuriating child.”
Nana’s voice trilled imperiously down the hallway. “Maxine! Cat! Where are you both?”
“Look at your grandmother,” said Maxine.
“What about her?”
“Oh, well, now you’re just being obtuse.”
Nana called again, “Maxine!”
“Just a minute, Gwen!”
At that moment a plane flew overhead, and Cat put her hands on the balcony fence and watched it turn into a speck on the horizon.
Maxine opened the screen door to go back inside.
“France was Dan’s dream,” she said, her hand on the door. “Why don’t you come up with some of your own?”
“That’s not true,” said Cat furiously, but her mother was gone, the screen door slamming behind her.
It was pride that was holding her back. There was something pathetic about the rejected wife bravely pulling herself together, joining a tennis club, doing a photography course, cutting her hair, venturing timidly back out onto the single scene. It was like accepting the punishment handed over by the malevolent forces of fate. She wasn’t going to be a good little girl stoically picking up the pieces.
While her personal life was being pulverized, her professional life had been ticking along nicely. The “Seduce Yourself” Valentine’s Day campaign had been an unqualified success, with sales rocketing. There were even complaints! She’d always wanted to do a campaign that generated complaints. (“It was certainly not our intention to offend anyone,” said Marketing Director Catriona Kettle.) Breakfast show DJs made risqué jokes about Hollingdale Chocolates. “What are you going to do next, Cat?” asked Rob Spencer. “Give away a vibrator with every box of chocolates?” “Now you’re talking,” said Cat.
Rather than being embarrassed about their night together, Graham Hollingdale seemed to find it all rather delicious. He gave her twinkly little nudge, nudge, wink, wink looks in meetings. Sometimes she twinkled back. He was too dorky to be lewd. Polyamory was just a really interesting new hobby he’d taken up.
One day, he called her into his office and told her that he was giving her a promotion. Her lengthy new title would be “General Manager—Marketing and Sales, Asia-Pacific Region.” Rob Spencer and his team would report to her. (Rob Spencer would rather be savaged by a rabid dog.) She’d receive a twenty percent increase in her salary.
Graham grinned, and Cat thought, Did I just sleep my way to the top?
“Twenty percent?” she said.
“Yes,” said Graham fondly. “The Board is over the moon about the last quarter results. Your new strategy is so powerful!”
How far could she push this? Could she get more? Could she double it?
“Triple it,” she heard herself say.
“You want a sixty percent increase?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
Bloody hell!