"My husband?" I asked the doctor, in surprise.

I hadn't even been thinking of my husband.

"Yes, your husband," he said, sounding equally surprised. "You are a married woman, aren't you, Mrs., ah, Mrs. Webster," he said, consulting my notes.

"Yes, of course I am," I said, blushing. "But I was, er, you know, just making general inquiries. I wasn't actually planning on having intercourse with anyone." I thought if I said the word intercourse instead of the word sex it might help to neutralize this embarrassing and awkward atmosphere that seemed to have suddenly developed.

"Oh," he said baldly.

Silence and Dr. Keating's bewilderment hung heavy in the air.

Time to leave, I thought.

Come on, Kate.

"How did it go?" asked Mum as she answered the door to us.

"Fine," I said. "Fine. Kate's putting on weight nicely, the nurse says."

"And how are you?" she asked.

"Couldn't be better, apparently," I said. "I'm in tip-top condition. I've a vagina to be proud of."

Mum gave me a look of distaste.

"There's no need to be vulgar," she tisked at me.

"I wasn't being vulgar," I protested.

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"Come and have a cup of tea with me before Neighbours comes on," said Mum.

"Er, did anyone call for me while I was out?" I inquired of her, oh-so- casually, as I traipsed behind her into the kitchen.

"No."

"Oh."

"Why, who were you expecting to call?" she asked, looking at me closely.

"No one," I said, setting Kate's car seat down on the kitchen table.

"Well, why did you ask, in that case?" she said in a tone of voice which reminded me that, however much she might act like one, my mother was no fool.

"And take the child off the table!" she said, whacking my arm with a tea towel. "People have to eat off that."

"She's perfectly clean!" I protested, outraged.

How dare she.

So Adam hasn't called, I mused as I drank my tea. I wondered if he was still annoyed with me. Maybe he was never going to call me again. Not that I'd have blamed him, with me behaving all neurotic and argumentative.

And I didn't have his number, so I couldn't call him.

So that was probably the end of that.

The fling that never was.

The passionate affair that was never consummated.

The soulmates who were divided by circumstances.

The lovers who loved from afar.

Although then again it wasn't even lunchtime yet.

Give the guy a chance.

But he didn't call.

I hung around all afternoon feeling bored and dissatisfied.

I didn't want to do anything.

I couldn't be bothered reading.

And Kate was whining and crying and I didn't feel very patient with her.

I halfheartedly watched the afternoon soaps with Mum, because I couldn't come up with a good reason for why I shouldn't.

I think I would have preferred to sit through several third-

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rate Antipodean dramas, with the same actors reappearing in each success- ive program, than get into another conversation with Mum on how my university education had made me a snob.

And she knew that something was wrong.

"You're very gloomy-looking," she said.

(Although her actual words were "Claire, you're like a tree over a blessed well.")

"Why the hell wouldn't I be?" I snapped back.

"Sorry," she said. "God knows it's not easy for you."

Well, she was quite right, it was not. But she was obviously referring to my situation with James. And not my lack of one with Adam.

"No, I'm sorry," I told her, feeling rotten for biting her head off.

It was six o'clock and Dad's key was in the door before I realized with horror that I hadn't called James.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

I really had meant to do it but because of all the things going on--the big event of going to the doctor and the major event of Adam's not call- ing--I had just totally forgotten.

I resolved to do it first thing in the morning.

The debacle that was dinnertime took my mind off things for a while.

Helen came home with Dad and was demanding McDonald's.

"No, Helen," shouted Dad. "We only eat McDonald's on holidays."

"Well that's stupid," she shouted back. "Other families, normal families, eat there on ordinary days."

Oh, but she could be very cruel.

So the upshot was that Helen got her way as usual and Dad drove off like a Grand Prix driver with a long and complicated order to McDonald's.

Helen roared after him, "No pickles on the Quarter Pounder!"

But he was already gone.

I shamelessly latched onto Helen for most of the evening,

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hoping that she might say something about Adam. Of course, I could have taken the bull by the horns and just asked her for his number, seeing as she wasn't going out with him or anything. But I still couldn't bring myself to do it. Although I had established that he had no interest in her, I wasn't at all sure how Helen felt about him.

After dinner, which by the way, poor Dad had got all wrong--pickles on Mum's apple pie, cheeseburgers instead of Quarter Pounders with cheese (which, of course, gave rise to the accusation of "Cheapskate"), Coke instead of diet Coke--Dad ordered Helen to go to her room and study.

Poor Dad.

He must have been doing some kind of assertiveness training.

Amazingly enough, Helen went with only the most cursory of protests.

She called Dad a bastard and made references to the regime in the house being similar to the one in Nazi Germany. But she actually went to her room.

That was nothing short of miraculous.

I gave her a few minutes, then I took Kate and we went up and knocked on her door. There was a major scuffling. She seemed to be stuffing some- thing down the side of the bed.

"Oh Jesus, Claire, don't do that! I thought you were Dad," she exclaimed, her eyes big and wide in her white face.

She retrieved a magazine called True Crimes or something similar from the gap between her bed and the wall.

"Do you ever study?" I asked her with curiosity.

"Noooooh," she said scornfully.

"What'll you do if you fail?" I asked her as I sat on the bed.