But the girl with the notepad was relentless. She said, “Number one, he had disgusting eczema.” The miserable girl said furiously, “He did not!” But all the girl writing could think about was how to spell eczema!

Then the other one of them went off to the counter and came back with a caramel sundae. In a very dramatic voice, she said, “This sundae has magical healing properties. Just one mouthful and you will be cured!” She tried to force the spoon into the sad one’s mouth and they all three started to laugh. The girl finally took a mouthful and the other one slapped her across the forehead like a faith healer, and said, “Be gone, sadness demon!” They just had such infectious giggles, all of sudden I surprised myself by laughing out loud.

It was the first time I had laughed, properly laughed, since she died. It felt like a turning point, realizing I could still laugh.

It’s funny. I bet those girls don’t even remember that day. But for me, it really was a magical caramel sundae.

CHAPTER 9

Dan couldn’t seem to take it in at first. He stood in their living room staring at her, the ends of his hair still damp with sweat from his squash game.

He seemed bewildered. “A baby,” he kept saying slowly. “We’re going to have a baby.”

“Yes, Dan, a baby. You know—floppy head, makes a lot noise, costs a lot of money.”

And then finally he seemed to get it and let his squash racket fall to the floor and hugged her hard around the ribs, so that her feet almost lifted off the ground.

Rob Spencer caressed his tie lovingly. “Masturbation. Interesting.”

“The message is pleasure,” responded Cat. “Self-indulgent pleasure.”

“Yes, but she’s masturbating, isn’t she? I mean what we have here is a woman in a bath, mas-tur-bat-ing.”

People began to shift uneasily in their chairs. Marianne, who was taking the minutes, threw down her pen and put her hands over her ears. “Could you please stop saying that word, Rob!”

It was the last day before Hollingdale Chocolates closed for the Christmas break, and Cat was giving a presentation on a new advertising campaign for the following year’s Valentine’s Day. A full-page ad was projected via her laptop onto a large screen at the end of the room. The ad showed a woman lying in a bath, smiling wickedly, her eyes closed. One languid hand was allowing an empty Hollingdale Chocolate wrapper to flutter to the floor. The other hand wasn’t visible. The headline read, Seduce someone special this Valentine’s Day.

Cat was pleased with the campaign. She’d got the idea after Gemma told her how decadent she felt eating Hollingdale Chocolates in the Penthursts’ bath. Some guy at the agency contributed the “self-pleasure” element. (What a lovely idea! said Gemma when she heard, looking rather inspired.)

“The focus groups loved it,” said Cat.

“Oh yes, and they’re never wrong, are they? Ha!” Rob looked jovially around the meeting room. He lowered his voice. “Two little words: Hazelnut Heaven.”

“Arrggh!” People clutched their chests as if they’d been shot. Others buried their heads in their hands. Sidelong glances were shot down the end of the table where the CEO of Hollingdale Chocolates, Graham Hollingdale, chewed a pen lid and looked bored out of his mind.

Hazelnut Heaven had been last year’s new-product disaster. When it happened, the entire company ducked wildly for cover, hurling blame like hand grenades over their office cubicle walls. They passed the buck so furiously and successfully that it stopped nowhere. Twelve months later, recalling the experience created a warm glow of camaraderie.

Cat gave the obligatory rueful chuckle. “You’re right, Rob. There are no guarantees. But I do think we’ve got all the right elements for our target audience.”

“Love your work, Cat!” said Rob. He leaned forward and pressed a finger to his lips. “But to be frank, I have some real concerns about this one.”

Aha. It had been a few weeks since she’d pointed out his error in the Operations Meeting. Rob had been biding his time, cradling his wounded ego, waiting to pounce. If this had happened yesterday, her adrenaline would have been pumping. Today, it all seemed like an amusingly childish game. It was only a job—a means of making money. And she was having a baby. At the thought of the baby magically curled in her womb, Cat felt an exquisite burst of joy.

“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.