“This O.K.?” called out Cat.

Lyn waved an approving hand, and Maddie went running drunkenly across the grass to be scooped up by Cat and spun around.

Kara and Gina didn’t offer to carry anything from the car. They also went straight to Cat, both of them pulling out sheets of paper from their knapsacks. Lyn craned her neck to watch as the three of them bent their heads over the papers, the two girls laughing and pointing. She wished Kara could be as relaxed and natural with her.

“What do you think those three are talking about?” she asked Michael, as she slammed shut the boot.

“Homework?”

“In your dreams.”

The birthday picnic was well under way when Lyn got a call on her mobile from her play-group friend, Kate. They weren’t coming because her little boy, Jack, had just come down with chicken pox.

“Maddie probably has it too,” said Kate. “Nicole’s kid was the culprit; she would have been contagious at Julie’s lunch. Anyway, good to get it crossed off! Some parents have ‘pox parties’ to pass it around.”

“I had Maddie immunized.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I looked into it obviously but—”

A child roared in the background, so Lyn was spared the sweetly veiled criticism she knew she was about to receive. She felt far too woozy for it.

“You know, you missed out on chicken pox, Lyn.” Maxine looked up from her foldout chair, where she was delicately balancing a paper plate on her knees. “Gemma and Cat caught it when they went on that Christmas holiday with their father.”

“Oh, don’t remind their father,” said Frank. “What a nightmare.”

Now she remembered that memory. It was the day Cat and Gemma drove off in Frank’s car for the water-slide holiday. They were both up on their knees in the backseat, their faces pressed against the back window, shouting things to her that she couldn’t hear.

Different things will happen to us, six-year-old Lyn had realized and felt a little sad and shocked but also almost immediately accepting. It was logical. It made sense. There was nothing you could do about it.

“We probably infected about a thousand kids on that water slide,” said Cat.

“Oh shit,” said Lyn. She was thinking about Julie’s lunch and how Nicole’s runny-nosed little girl had wrapped her arms around Lyn’s knees.

Everyone looked at her.

“I think I’ve got chicken pox.”

Gemma patted her shoulder in a motherly fashion. “Nooo, you’ve just got a little cold!”

Lyn pushed back her cardigan sleeve to look at her wrist where she’d been scratching. There was a tiny little red sore. “I think this is the start of the spots.”

Michael dropped his bread roll onto his plate.

“But what if you’re pregnant? Is it dangerous?”

“Pregnant?” said Cat. She was sitting cross-legged on the picnic rug, a bottle of beer in her hand. “Are you trying to have another baby?”

Lyn watched Cat and Gemma exchange loaded looks and closed her eyes. How many more people would she upset today? Suddenly she felt unbearably ill. She opened her eyes again.

“Where’s Maddie?”

Nobody took any notice of her question.

“So do you think you are pregnant?” asked Cat.

“Where is Maddie?”

She got to her knees on the rug and looked around wildly, fear clenching her heart.

“She’s right there with Kara and her friend.” Maxine looked closely at Lyn. “Darling, I don’t think you are well. Feel her forehead, Gemma.”

Lyn saw that Maddie was in fact only a few feet away, sitting on Kara’s lap.

She collapsed back down on the blanket and looked mutely at her family.

Gemma put her hand against her forehead and announced, “She’s burning up!”

“Right,” Michael stood up. “We’re getting you home.”

“You’re not to worry about Maddie,” ordered Maxine.

Gemma said, “We’ll sing her “‘Happy Birthday.’”

And before she knew it, Michael and Frank were on either side of her, practically carrying her off to the car.

“I’m not paralyzed,” she protested.

But her legs did feel strangely wobbly and her head was spinning and it was rather nice to be carried off, away from all those plates of food that needed handing around, candles that needed lighting, and Cat’s hard, closed-up face.

CHAPTER 20

Lyn woke up the next day to find an army of weeping, seeping spots had ravaged every part of her body. They crouched on her scalp, lurked in her pubic hair, huddled at the roof of her mouth.

“This is like a joke,” she croaked, as she lay in bed and lifted up her nightie to look with sick fascination at the vile rash of dots marching purposefully across her stomach. “This shouldn’t be allowed.”

She couldn’t remember ever feeling more ill.

Michael took time off work, and Maddie was packed off to Maxine’s house.

“I’ll be fine,” she told Michael pathetically. “Don’t use your holiday time.”

“For once in your life, will you just shut up and let me look after you! Now, I’ve rung the doctor about complications for pregnancy.”

She interrupted him: “My period came this morning, along with the spots.”

“Good. You’re my only baby to look after.”

Over the following days he did so much research on the Internet he became a chicken pox guru, nodding with rather annoying professional pleasure as each new symptom presented itself. When the spots started to itch, he was ready with cotton wool, a refrigerated bottle of calamine lotion, and damp cloths.

“Hmmm, this is rather erotic,” he said, as she lay facedown on the bed and he dabbed at the blisters on her bottom.

“I’m hideous,” she moaned into her pillow.

“Now I need to cut those nails,” he said, rolling her over. “So you don’t scratch yourself and end up with scars.”

“That’s for children, you big idiot. I’m a grown-up.”

The concentration on his face as he manipulated the nail scissors reminded her of Pop Kettle painting Nana’s nails. She had to look away and blink.

One afternoon she woke up from a sleep with a raging throat, to find a carefully quartered orange sitting on a saucer next to her bed, together with a jug of iced water, a pile of magazines, and three brand-new paperback novels.