A few days later their father took them to see his new flat in the city.

It was on the twenty-third floor of a very tall building. Through his windows you could see the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House and little ferries chugging frothy white trails across the flat blue water.

“So what do you think, girls?” Dad asked, spreading his arms wide and turning around and around in circles.

“It’s very, very pretty, Daddy,” said Gemma, running happily through each room and stopping to caress different things. “I like it a lot!”

“I’d like a house with a window like this.” Lyn pressed her nose thoughtfully against the glass. “That’s what I’m going to have when I grow up. How much does this cost, Dad? Quite a lot?”

They were both so stupid. Didn’t they see? Everything in Dad’s new house gave Cat a bad feeling in her stomach. Everything he had—his own fridge, his own TV, his own sofa—proved that he didn’t want their TV or fridge or sofa. And that meant he wasn’t coming back and this was what it would be like forever and ever.

“I think it’s a really dumb place to live.” Cat sat down on the very edge of her father’s new sofa and crossed her arms tight. “It’s all small and squashy and stupid.”

“Small and squashy and stupid!?” Frank opened his eyes very wide and let his mouth drop in shock. “Now would a house be small and squashy if you had a room to swing a cat? But where could I find a cat to test it out? Hmmmm. Let me think.”

Cat kept her arms folded tight and compressed her lips, but when Dad was being funny it was like the very tip of a feather dancing ticklishly across your cheeks.

She was already laughing when her father grabbed her under the arms. “Wait a minute! Here’s a cat. A really big grumpy one!” and swung her wildly around the room.

There was no point being mad with Dad. It was all Mum’s fault. She would just stay mad with her, until Daddy came back home.

“You’re up.” Dan was at the door, car keys in his hand.

“Yes.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes.”

Cat stood in her dressing gown with her hair wet from the shower and her limbs heavy and doughy. She imagined her arms falling straight to the floor like stretched-out plasticine.

Someone should mold her into a nice, neat smooth ball and start again.

He said, “I was just going to Coles. I thought maybe a nice steak for dinner.”

Dan always thought maybe a nice steak for dinner.

“Oh. Good.”

“You want a steak too?”

“Sure.” The thought of steak made her want to gag.

“O.K. I won’t be long.” He opened the door.

“Dan?”

“Yeah?”

Do you still love me? Why were you talking in that cold, hard voice? Do you still love me? Do you still love me? Do you still love me?

“We need more tea.”

“O.K.” He closed the door.

She would ask him when he came back. She would match his cold tone. “Is something going on with that girl?” and there would be no undignified catch in her voice.

She sat down at the kitchen table and placed her hands flat in front of her and bent her head till she was close enough to examine the tiny pores and wrinkles on the joints of her fingers. Her hands looked elderly in close-up.

Thirty-three.

At the age of thirty-three, she thought she’d be a proper grown-up doing whatever she pleased, with a snazzy car that she could drive wherever she wanted and everything—all the confusing parts of life—worked out and checked off. In fact, all she had was the not especially snazzy car. She had more worked out when she was twelve. If only bossy, know-it-all twelve-year-old Cat Kettle were still around to tell her what to do.

There was a messy pile of bills sitting on the kitchen table from today’s mail. Bills bored Dan. He threw them down in disgust when he saw one, leaving them half sticking out of their envelopes for Cat to worry about.

She pulled the sheaf of papers toward her.

The bills would keep on coming, no matter what else was happening in your life and that was good because it gave you a purpose. You worked so you could pay them. You rested on the weekends and generated more bills. Then you went back to work to pay for them. That was the reason for getting up tomorrow. That was the meaning of life.

Electricity. Credit cards. Mobile phone.

Dan’s mobile phone bill.

She picked it up almost eagerly, a sick sense of satisfaction, a refreshing injection of adrenaline. Twelve-year-old Cat Kettle always wanted to be a spy.

The paper quivered in her hand. She didn’t want to find something bad, but she almost did. For the sheer satisfaction of solving a tricky problem. For the pleasure of the “gotcha!”

Many of the phone numbers she recognized. Home. Work. Her own mobile.

Of course, there were a lot she didn’t recognize. And why should she? This was stupid. Silly. She was smiling mockingly at herself as she scanned the page and then, there it was:

25 Dec. 11:53 P.M. 0443 461 555 25.42

A twenty-five minute call to someone late on Christmas Day. Cat had gone straight to bed as soon as they got home from Lyn’s place. On the way home in the car they were O.K. They’d talked, calmly, without fighting, about the day’s events. Angela turning up in Lyn’s kitchen. Frank and Maxine getting back together. They’d even managed to laugh—Dan a touch warily, Cat a touch hysterically—about how horrible it had all been. Nana with the lepers. Michael clicking his fingers to his awful Christmas music CD. Kara finally collapsing face-first on the tabletop.