CHAPTER 8

“This is going to sound bad,” said Dan, with the courageous expression of a bloody-lipped boxer stumbling back to his feet for another round. “But I sort of—forgot.”

“You forgot you slept with my sister.”

“I forgot.”

“You forgot.”

“Yes.”

“How is that possible?” Cat felt insulted on Lyn’s behalf. “She lost her virginity to you!”

“I hadn’t even thought about it for years,” confessed Dan, “until Annie asked. All I remembered was going out with her a few times. But if Lyn says we did, then we did. I wouldn’t argue with Lyn. She probably records every shag on a spreadsheet.”

Cat refused to smile.

“I was young, I got around. It feels like another world.”

“You still get around.”

He flinched and took it like a man.

Cat believed him. He could remember rugby league grand final scores from fifteen years ago and quote whole slabs of Simpsons dialogue, but his memory of personal events was notoriously shocking. It hadn’t mattered before. If this revelation had come before Angela (long black hair tumbling, black bra strap sliding, stop it, stop it, stop it) maybe she would have laughed. Yes, she probably would have laughed. She would have exaggerated her shock, milked it, but not really cared, because she took Dan’s faithfulness for granted. Everything else in her life could and probably would go wrong, but she thought she and Dan were a given.

Naive. Pathetic.

“I would never have gone out with you if I’d known. Do you know that? Lyn’s leftovers. You would have had no chance.”

“Just as well I didn’t tell you then.”

“Is it?”

She could have had a different life.

Once, when she was waiting for a leg wax, Cat read a magazine article about a study of identical twins separated at birth. When they were reunited years later, they discovered amazing similarities in their lives. In spite of very different upbringings, they had ended up with the same jobs, hobbies, habits, pets, cars, and clothes, even the same names for their children! This proved, according to the author, that personality, just like the color of your hair, was decided at conception. Your destiny was indelibly carved in your genes.

Bullshit, thought Cat, flipping the page irritably and wondering how much longer the bloody beautician would keep her waiting. Look at Lyn and me! Look at those what sits name twins from school. But the author was ready for her. The reason that identical twins brought up together were different, he retorted, was because they deliberately set out to be different from each other.

“Hmmmph,” muttered Cat. It seemed to her that there was a fundamental contradiction in his argument. If environment didn’t matter for the separated twins, why did it matter so much for the poor twins forced to live side by side with their doppelgangers?

But while the beautician ripped hair from her calves and tried to sell her moisturizer, Cat buried her nose in a lavender-smelling towel and wondered whether it was she or Lyn who was leading the “right” life, the one they were predestined to lead. Nana’s next-door neighbor once said to her, Are you the one that’s done so well for herself? Bev! cried Nana. This is Cat! She scuba dives!

Or were they both leading hybrid versions of the right life? Perhaps Lyn should have married Dan? And what about Gemma? How did a shared fraternal twin muddle the formula?

“There you go, my dear! All defuzzed!” The beautician patted Cat’s legs with uncalled-for intimacy. “I bet you feel like a new woman!”

And Cat had said ungraciously, “I bet I don’t.”

It was still light on a Monday evening and Cat had just pulled into her driveway after work, when she saw Gemma’s battered green Mini come screeching around the corner.

The Kettle girls were all speed freaks, but Gemma combined her need for speed with a spectacular lack of ability. She regularly drove into things—other cars, walls, the occasional telegraph pole.

Cat dropped her briefcase, pushed her sunglasses up onto her head, and leaned back against her car with folded arms to enjoy watching Gemma reverse park across the street.

After four bizarre attempts that each ended with the car crunching straight into the curb, Cat finally pushed her glasses back down onto her nose and walked across the road.

As she got closer to the car, the nasal whine of a scratchy cassette tape assaulted her ears. One of the multitudes of ex-boyfriends had been a country music fan and left Gemma with an unfortunate passion for Tammy Wynette. It was like, Cat thought, he’d given her herpes.

Gemma smiled radiantly when she saw Cat. She was singing, thumping her hands on the steering wheel in time to the music. “Stand by your man!”

“Get out and let me do it,” yelled Cat above the music.

Gemma switched off the tape. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Cat pulled on the door handle. “Come on.”

Gemma hopped out of the car holding a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag.

This was clearly a peacemaking mission.

“Shall I direct you?”

“No.” Cat got behind the wheel and pulled on the handbrake. “There’s room enough to park a truck here, let alone this matchbox.”

She parked the car in two moves. (You drive like a guy, Dan always said. It’s very sexy.)

Cat slammed the car door shut and handed Gemma her keys. “You give women drivers a bad name.”

“Yes, I know. I’m very ashamed. How are you?”

“You already asked me that. Was there a message in that song for me?”

“What do you mean?” Gemma looked alarmed.

“Stand by your man.”

“Oh. Goodness. No. I mean, stand by him if you want—it’s really up to you.”

“Gemma!” Cat had glanced down to see her own black summer sandals on Gemma’s feet. “I was looking for them just the other day!”

“Oh! Sorry. Are you sure they’re not mine? I seem to have a memory of cleverly bargaining for them at the Balmain Street markets.”

“I bargained for them at the Balmain markets. Help yourself to my memories, why don’t you, as well as my shoes. I let you wear them to Michael’s fortieth, remember?”

“Oh dear, this isn’t going too well,” said Gemma. “I’m meant to be fixing things. I’ve got a whole speech ready.”