“We agreed on this concept over a month ago,” she said calmly. “You loved it, Rob.”

“Hey, I hate to admit it but I can be wrong! This has got to be an open forum, Cat. No finger-pointing. No politics. Just honest opinions.”

Cat swallowed a guffaw.

“O.K. then,” she said. “Let’s look at the creative rationale again. We wanted something strong enough to break through the clutter. It does. We wanted something to appeal to single women in their thirties. It does.”

Rob held up his palms like he was testing the weight of two things. “Masturbation. Hollingdale Chocolates. Anyone else worried about what this says about our brand values, our brand heritage? Graham?”

Rob swiveled his chair to face the CEO. Graham sighed in an exhausted fashion and chewed harder on his pen lid. He was a strange, inscrutable man, with a disconcerting habit of allowing his eyelids to droop, turtlelike, whenever any of his staff spoke. The longer they spoke, the more it seemed he was drifting into a deep, comfortable sleep.

Rob stared at him for an agonizing few seconds and then swiveled his chair back to Cat. “I’m just not convinced you’ve cracked it this time, Cat. I know you’re the creative genius. But just run with me here while I throw a few ideas around. What if she was lying in the bath dreaming of her lover? You could have one of those little bubbles coming out of her head, you know, to show she was dreaming.”

“Yeah, now that sounds like a good compromise, folks!” contributed Derek, who was a moron. “Give her a lover!”

“She doesn’t want a lover,” said Cat. She doodled “July 23” on her notepad. It was the date her baby was due.

“Why not?” asked Graham suddenly. “Why doesn’t she want a lover?”

Everyone turned in surprise to look at him. Cat looked at the slightly awkward jut of his chin. Perhaps, she thought, Graham Hollingdale was just shy. Perhaps his eccentricity wasn’t arrogance after all. Maybe it was just plain, old-fashioned, teenage-boy gawkiness disguised by the authoritative uniform of a balding, middle-aged business executive.

She smiled at him—a Gemma smile—open, radiant, and guileless.

“She might like a lover at some point, but the message of the ad is that you don’t need a lover to give yourself pleasure on Valentine’s Day. All you need is a bath and Hollingdale Chocolates.”

She looked at Rob. “There’s no need to feel threatened by it.”

Rob rolled his eyes. “I’m thinking about the impact on the brand—”

“Run it as is,” said Graham. “I like it.”

“Great.” Cat slammed shut her laptop. “I’ll e-mail you all PDFs.”

“Fine.” Graham subsided sleepily back into his chair.

Rob didn’t look up. He was using a gold ballpoint to jab a straight line of vicious little blue dots across his notepaper. No revelations there. He was still the slimy prick he’d always been.

“Happy Christmas, everybody!” said Cat warmly.

She and her baby sailed from the room.

It was the night before Christmas Eve, and Annie the marriage counselor was celebrating with gigantic Christmas trees dangling from her ears. They had red and green lights that flashed disconcertingly on and off, on and off.

“Love the earrings, Annie,” said Dan. He was holding Cat’s hand as they sat thigh to thigh on the green vinyl sofa.

“Thank you, Dan.” Annie gave her head a merry little swing. “Now, if you don’t mind me saying, you two seem a lot cheerier than when I saw you last.”

“We’ve had some news.” Dan squeezed Cat’s hand.

“I’m pregnant,” said Cat.

“Oh!” Annie clasped her hands together. “Congratulations!”

“It’s not like that means everything is suddenly O.K.,” said Cat. She didn’t want Annie thinking they were going to fork out one hundred and twenty bucks for an hour’s worth of trilling and cooing.

“Of course not!” Annie’s smile disappeared in tempo with her flashing lights. “But it is wonderful news after you’ve been trying for so long.”

“Yes.” Cat leaned forward to look at Annie seriously. “I want us to fix everything before the baby’s born. I hated having divorced parents. I hated the way they spoke about each other. I’m not putting my child through that.”

She sat back, embarrassed by her intensity. She hadn’t even realized she felt that way until the words came out of her mouth. In fact, up until now, she’d always told people the opposite—that she couldn’t care less about her parents’ divorce.

Now their marriage was something they needed to fix before the baby was born. It was a task that had to be ticked off the list some time over the next nine months, like transforming the study into a nursery and installing a baby capsule in the car.

Annie was the expert. That’s what they were paying her for.

“I still feel angry with Dan about what he did,” said Cat. “Sometimes I can’t even bear to look at him I feel so angry. Actually, sometimes I feel sick when I look at him.”

“Are you sure that’s not morning sickness?” asked Dan. “Because that seems a bit extreme.”

Cat and Annie ignored him. “Obviously,” said Cat, “I need to stop feeling that way before the baby is born.”

She looked at Annie expectantly. Dan cleared his throat.