“But Mum and Dad sat us down in the lounge room and told us they were getting a divorce,” said Cat and Lyn, years afterward, when she told them her childhood theory. “How could you forget that? It was awful. Mum was doing this weird twisting thing with her hands, and Dad kept bouncing up from his seat and walking around the room and then sitting back down again. We were so mad at them.”

“I was probably thinking about something else at the time,” said Gemma.

It had happened at intervals throughout her life: a piece of news of major social, political, or personal significance somehow slipped right past her.

When she was aged around ten, she asked her sisters, “What’s an ‘abba’?” They were staggered.

“Abba is a band!” cried Lyn. “A really famous, cool band!”

“Be careful what you say in front of people,” advised a shaken Cat. “You’d better check with us before you say anything.”

The first time Gemma registered the “divorce” word was the day they found out they were going on the fastest water slide in the world. The whole family was in the kitchen and Maxine was bent down by the oven, lifting up the corner of the foil to check on a yummy roast chicken. There had been a complicated incident involving Cat and a Barbie doll, and Gemma was just about to launch into a detailed account when Frank announced, “Lyn’s staying here with Mum for the holiday.”

Gemma took one look at the secretive expression on Lyn’s face and instantly grasped the situation. A similar event had occurred at school just the other day when she went to buy an Icy Pole at the tuck shop. When she came back, Gemma’s best friend, Rosie, had recruited Melinda as her new best friend. In the space of two minutes alliances had shifted!

Quite obviously, Mum wanted Lyn to be her best friend! She always did have a noticeable preference for Lyn. It was because she tucked in the corners so tidily when she made the bed and didn’t drop stuff. Now they were going to have their very own little holiday together. They’d probably start whispering and giggling together at the dinner table. It would be awful.

The only solution was to get Mum and Lyn to come on holidays too. Surely Mum didn’t want to miss going on the fastest water slide in the world!

But no. No, that couldn’t happen; that was a typical laughable Gemma idea because Mum and Dad were getting a “divorce”—an ugly-tasting word, very similar to “zucchini.”

And that was when one of Gemma’s worst secret fears came thumping to the surface.

Cat and Lyn had recently decided to inform Gemma that she was adopted. They were a little surprised she hadn’t worked it out for herself.

“If you were really our sister you’d look like us,” said Cat with rock-solid logic. “Triplets are meant to all look the same.”

“We still love you like a real sister,” said Lyn kindly. “It’s not your fault. But you have to do what we say.”

“No, Gemma, you’re not adopted, for heaven’s sake,” said Maxine as Gemma cried into her lap. “Your sisters are liars—they take after their father.”

But she was never really quite convinced, and when she heard that ugly “divorce” word in the kitchen that day, the enormity of what was about to happen stunned her. It was like that movie The Parent Trap they’d seen at Nana’s place, where the divorced parents each took one little blond girl. There was no little redheaded girl in the movie.

Clearly, Mum was going to take Lyn, and Dad was going to take Cat. Neither of them would want Gemma because she was adopted.

What would happen to her? Where would she live? What would she eat for dinner? She didn’t know how to cook a chicken! She didn’t even know how to buy a chicken. What did you say? One chicken, please? What if they laughed at her? How much did a chicken cost anyway? She only had $3.00 saved up. That would probably buy her only, say, ten chickens. After that, she would be so hungry!

Six-year-old Gemma felt dizzy as she struggled not to collapse under the weight of everything she didn’t know. Her parents and sisters receded into the distance. She was a tiny penciled dot on a huge white sheet of paper. There was only her and she reached only as far as the tips of her fingers and the tips of her toes and beyond that there was nothing.

She didn’t even notice Barbie’s head roll out of her unclenched hand and onto the floor.

Diving like Dolphins

It drives me bananas the way women tiptoe into the surf, flinching each time another body part gets wet. Look at ’em. Flapping their hands, scrunching up their faces. It takes them three hours to get their hair wet. And when there’s more than one of them, it’s even worse. Squealing and bleating and backing up and inching forward and backing up again. I ask you, what is the bloody point?

When I was about fifteen, the age when I was just starting to worry if a girl would ever deign to sleep with me, I saw these three girls sun-baking down at Freshwater Beach. They were probably about eighteen, and they were gorgeous. Legs up to their armpits. Athletic-looking. I was giving them the surreptitious once-over from behind my reflective Miami Vice shades, when all of a sudden the three of them jumped up and ran down into the surf. They got to about their knees in the water and then they dived under at exactly the same moment. That’s what got me. Their synchronicity. It was bloody sexy for some reason. Three bodies suspended in midair, like dolphins.

If only those girls knew how many nights they spent with me and a box of Kleenex under the duvet. Ah, the fun we shared that year. I was fair, of course. All three of them got the treatment.

Anyway, I always swore I’d marry a woman who ran straight into the ocean, like they did.

I didn’t of course. Would you bloody look at her? Get in, woman! Stop being such a girl!

CHAPTER 12

“Hello, you,” said Charlie. “Happy Boxing Day.”

He held his front door open with his foot and placed his hands on her cheeks to kiss her.

“Mmm.” Every time Gemma kissed Charlie, she accidentally said “Mmm” as if she’d just taken her first mouthful of an unexpectedly delightful dessert.

Was it physically possible to break up with someone who tasted like that?

“I’ve been very domestic this morning,” she said when he finally let her go and pulled her inside. “I’ve made us a proper picnic—and I’ve put it all in my backpack so I can sling it jauntily over my shoulders.”