“I told him you had a gas stove,” Maxine said irritably, but Cat saw her pat him gently on the lower back as she bustled by, filling up Cat’s freezer.

“What, no bun?” asked Cat in mock surprise.

Maxine pulled out a white paper bag. “Yes, of course. Make yourself useful, Frank. Put the jug on.”

Cat watched them acting as if they’d been these types of parents all her life.

“So, how’s the relationship going then?”

“Oh, your mother’s always been the woman for me!” said Frank.

“Bloody hell, Dad,” Cat said. “You barely spoke to each other for ten years.”

He winked at her. “I still adored her from afar.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake!” said Maxine.

“You two,” Cat reached for a piece of bun, “are very weird.”

“Weird, eh?” said Frank.

They both smiled at her, as if they couldn’t be more pleased to be weird.

There were moments when she thought she might survive. And there were other moments when she would catch herself thinking about her life as if it was a party she couldn’t wait to leave. If she lived to say eighty, then she was nearly halfway there. Death was the hot bath you promised yourself while you endured small talk and uncomfortable shoes. You could stop pretending to have a good time when you were dead.

One day at work, there was a mini-commotion outside Cat’s office door. She looked up to see a knot of cooing, rapturous women and sheepishly grinning men.

Somebody called out, “Come see, Cat! It’s Liam’s baby!”

Cat carefully plastered a delighted smile across her face and walked out to join them. She liked Liam, and this was his first baby, a little girl born back in November. Liam was worth a little fake delight.

“Oh, she’s beautiful, Liam,” she said automatically, but then she actually looked at the baby, clinging like a little koala against Liam’s chest, and she found herself saying, “Can I?” Without waiting for an answer she eased the baby out of his arms, responding to an overwhelming, physical desire.

“Someone’s feeling clucky!” cried the women.

The warmth of the baby’s body nestled against her own was an exquisite ache. The baby looked up at Cat pensively and suddenly smiled—a huge, gummy grin that sent the crowd wild.

“Oh! The little cutie!”

The noise frightened the baby, and she began to whimper.

Liam’s wife, a short, flowery, feminine woman, the sort who made Cat feel like a giant, said, “Oh, dear, I think she wants her mummy.”

She held up her arms with sweet authority, and Cat handed her back.

After they’d gone to visit another department, Cat sat back at her sterile computer screen and felt bereft.

Barb walked in with a pile of documents for her in-tray.

“Sweet baby,” she commented. “Such a pity she inherited Mummy’s ears,” and she made flapping moves on either side of her head.

Cat smiled. She was becoming rather fond of Barb.

“It’s nearly time for our ‘health and beauty weekend,’” Lyn said one day, pulling out the certificate Cat had given her and Gemma for Christmas.

There was something incongruous to Cat about that piece of paper. It was a cheerful relic of her former existence, like those miraculously unharmed possessions people retrieved from the ashes of their fire-ravaged homes. Even her handwriting looked different: unguarded and confident. “You should organize a trip with the boys for that weekend,” she remembered telling Dan, while she wrote the date on their wall calendar, never thinking that by January, everything would be different.

“You and Gemma go,” said Cat. “I don’t think I will.”

“I think you will, young lady. We’re not going without you.”

It was easier not to argue, and when Lyn pulled into her driveway to pick her up, with Gemma sitting in the front seat wearing Maddie’s Little Princess tiara in her hair, she felt a tiny gleam of happiness.

“Remember when we went away together up the coast after our last HSC exam?” said Gemma, twisting around in her seat to look at her. “How we all stuck our heads out the windows and screamed, even you, and you were driving! You want to do that again?”

“Not especially.” Although she did remember how good it felt, with the air rushing wildly into her lungs.

“Do you want to wear Maddie’s tiara?”

“Not especially.”

“Do you want to play a game where I play the beginning of a song and you guess what it is for a prize?”

“O.K.”

So, as they wound their way around the twisting mountain roads toward Katoomba and the air outside became cooler, Gemma played songs from an ancient mixed tape collection. After the first opening bars, Lyn and Cat shouted out the names of the songs, and Gemma awarded snake lollies as prizes.

“I’m predicting a draw with this one,” she said, and before she’d even pressed play, Cat and Lyn yelled, “Venus!” Bananarama’s “Venus” was their “oh-my-God-I-love-this-song!” from the year they turned eighteen. They used to dance to it on top of their beds, feeling almost unbearably erotic, until their mother came in and spoiled it, just by the expression on her face.

As soon as they walked into the resort and breathed in the heavily scented air, Cat’s sinuses began to twitch, Lyn dropped her bag and said, “Oh dear,” Gemma said, “What is it?” and then all three of them began to sneeze. And sneeze, sneeze, and sneeze.