She sighed and thought of her mother telling her to come up with some dreams of her own.
“The thing is,” she said to Graham. “I don’t really want to sell chocolates anymore.”
He looked at her with doleful sympathy. “No. No, neither do I. What do you want to do instead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
They laughed guiltily, like two teenagers sitting outside the careers adviser’s office.
“Wednesdays still no good for you?”
“No, Graham.”
It was a Sunday afternoon, and Cat was legally behind the wheel for the first time in seven months. Driving again after so long was an enjoyable sensation. It reminded her of that flying-free feeling of her first solo drive as a teenager. Not nearly as good but then, all her adult emotions felt like shadows, self-conscious imitations of those intensely real feelings from her childhood.
She had passed her driving test the first time, at 9 A.M. on the morning of her seventeenth birthday—the earliest possible moment she was allowed to try for it. Her sisters didn’t bother. Lyn wasn’t in a hurry, and Gemma couldn’t stop driving into things.
Frank had been waiting for her in the registry office, his head down reading the newspaper. When he glanced up and saw the expression on her face, he grinned, folded the paper in half, and tucked it under his arm. “That’s my girl.”
He let her take his brand-new Commodore for a drive. “Please don’t kill yourself. I’ll never hear the end of it from your mother.”
She drove all the way to Palm Beach. No alert-eyed grown-up in the passenger seat, the car felt so empty! Accelerating around each new swoop of the road made her delirious with freedom. She could do anything! If she could parallel park—she could take on the whole world!
Her future back then, thought Cat now, was like a long buffet table of exotic dishes awaiting her selection. This career or that career. This boy or that boy. Marriage and children? Maybe later—for dessert, perhaps.
She didn’t realize they’d start clearing the plates away so soon.
Somebody pulled into the lane in front of her without signaling, and Cat slammed on her brake and her horn simultaneously. That was it. The novelty of driving had taken approximately four minutes to wear off.
She was going over to Lyn’s place for coffee.
The famously gorgeous Hank, Lyn’s American ex-boyfriend, was in Sydney, and Lyn, for some unfathomable reason, wanted Cat to meet him.
“You’re not trying to set me up with him, are you?” asked Cat. There was a suspicious breathlessness in Lyn’s voice.
“No!” said Lyn. “And anyway—well, you’ll see. Just come. Bring a cake.”
Cat pulled over across the road from the bakery and hopped out of the car. The traffic was beginning to slow and a truck pulled up beside her. The passenger, his arm resting along the windowsill and his feet up on the dashboard, glanced down at her and gave a relaxed wolf whistle.
Cat looked up and met the guy’s eyes. He grinned. She grinned back. The traffic moved and she ran across the road, the sun warm on the back of her neck.
As she waited in the bakery for her turn, Cat the sneering sideline observer popped into her head. You do know why you’re feeling a little bit happy, don’t you? It’s because that guy whistled at you! Instead of feeling objectified like a good feminist should, you’re actually feeling flattered, aren’t you? You’re feeling pretty! You’re even feeling grateful! You must be getting old if you feel good when some guy in a truck whistles at you. You make me sick!
“What can I do for this beautiful young lady?”
The little man behind the counter gave her a big flirtatious wink.
“Mmmm. I don’t know. What are you offering to do for me?” said Cat, and the little man roared with appreciative laughter, slapping his hand on the counter.
“Hoo-eee! If I was twenty years younger!”
Bloody hell. Now you’re getting off flirting with old men.
Shut up, you boring cow! Get off my back!
As she drove toward Lyn’s place, the cake in its white paper bag on the seat next to her, together with a free chocolate éclair—“Don’t you be telling my wife!”—she remembered how Nana Kettle always flirted outrageously with the butcher and the man in the fruit shop. When you went shopping with Nana it was like shopping in a village. “Here comes trouble!” people would call out as she approached.
Cat reached over for the chocolate éclair and took a gigantic bite. Chocolate, pastry, and cream exploded sweetly in her mouth.
Nana would have to make all new friends in her new local shopping center. She would too. She’d probably know all their names after the first week.
Cat was there when Nana had walked through the empty rooms of her house for the last time. Her bruises had faded to dirty yellow. Her hair was bouncy and curly again. “Looks much bigger now, doesn’t it, darling?”
Then she took a big breath, turned on her heel, and walked out the front door.
“That’s that,” she said firmly.
Cat drove with one hand on the wheel and licked cream from her fingers.
She pulled into Lyn’s street and took another gigantic mouthful of éclair.
The sun really was quite warm. The éclair really was quite delicious.
She parked the car and peeled off her sweater as she got out of the car and walked up the driveway to knock on Lyn’s door; she listened for the sound of Maddie’s footsteps pattering excitedly down the hallway, about to catapult herself into Cat’s arms.
Maybe it wasn’t that hard to be happy.
Maybe tomorrow morning, she would walk into Graham Hollingdale’s office and hand him a letter of resignation, launch herself free, and see what happened.
Maybe she’d sell the unit.
Fuck it, maybe she’d even get her hair cut.
Steady on, girl, said sideline Cat.
Maybe it wasn’t giving in. Maybe it was fighting back.
Approximately two hours later Cat came back out to her car. She put on her seat belt, and turned the keys in the ignition.
There were goose bumps of possibility on her arms. Her fingers danced a celebratory jig on the steering wheel.
CHAPTER 27
Hank was about to arrive, and Lyn went into Kara’s bedroom to ask her whether her new shirt looked better buttoned or unbuttoned with a camisole underneath. One of Lyn’s new goals was to ask the people in her life for help more often (“Make at least two requests per week, whether needed or not”). So far, it was working surprisingly well. Everyone was so pleased to be asked (her mother-in-law almost cried with joy when Lyn asked her to bring a dessert to dinner), and occasionally their help actually was somewhat helpful.