She couldn’t stop. She didn’t want to stop. It was necessary to imagine every excruciating second-by-second detail.
In the middle of the night she woke Dan up to ask him what color underwear the girl was wearing.
“I don’t remember,” he said blearily.
“You do! You do!” She kept insisting until finally he said he thought it might have been black, at which point she burst into tears.
Now Cat looked at the people in the 4:30 P.M. Operations Meeting and wondered if this thing, this vile thing, had ever happened to them.
Sales Director Rob Spencer was in his favorite position by the whiteboard, enthusiastically scribbling flamboyant arrows and boxes. “Folks! I think this makes my point very clear!”
Rob Spencer. Well, that was a joke. For the last five years or so Rob Spencer had been having an affair with gorgeous Johanna from accounts. It was the company’s favorite secret. Telling new staff the Rob/Johanna legend was part of the induction procedure at Hollingdale Chocolates. The only people who didn’t know, presumably, were Rob’s wife and Johanna’s husband. Everyone stared with enjoyable pity at the two unfortunate spouses when they made their appearance each year at the annual Christmas party.
It occurred to Cat that she now had something in common with Rob Spencer’s pathetic wife. She was the faceless wife in Angela’s amusing story of a one-night stand with a married man. Well I feel sorry for the wife…the wife isn’t Angela’s responsibility…who cares about the wife, just give us the gory details, Ange!
She swallowed hard and looked down at Rob’s analysis for a quick way to humiliate him.
Colorful graphs. Nifty little spreadsheet. All done by his minions, of course.
Aha.
“Rob,” she said.
Ten heads turned in relieved unison to face her.
“Catriona!” Rob spun from the whiteboard, teeth flashing against solarium-yellow tan. “Always value your feedback!”
“I just wondered where those figures came from?” she said.
“I do believe the marvelous Margie did the number crunching for me.” Rob tapped his figures seductively, as if Margie had given him a rather marvelous blow job at the same time.
“Yes, but what figures did you give Margie to crunch?” asked Cat.
“Ah, let’s see,” Rob began shuffling vaguely through his paperwork.
She savored the moment before moving in for the kill.
“Looking at the marketing budget here, it seems you’ve given her last financial year’s figures. So your analysis, while fascinating, is also, hmmm, how can I put it best…irrelevant?”
Too bitchy. Male egos were so tender, just like their balls. She would pay for that one.
“Crash and burn, Rob, mate!” Hank from production thumped his fist on the table.
Rob held up both hands in boyish surrender. “Team! It seems the Cat has caught me out again with her razor-sharp eye for errors!”
He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly five on a Friday afternoon! People, what are we still doing here? Who wants to join me in drowning my humiliation at Albert’s? Catriona? Can I shout my nemesis a drink?”
His eyes were opaque little marbles.
Cat smiled tightly. “I’ll hold you to it another time.”
She bundled up her files and left the room, feeling quite ill with inappropriate-for-the-workplace hatred for Rob Spencer.
To: Cat
From: Gemma
Subject: Drink
Would you like to have a drink?
We can talk about the bad mood you’re not in.
Love, Gemma
P.S. Essential that you back me up on Kara issue!
P.P.S. Do you owe me any money by any chance? I don’t seem to have any.
Cat sat in a dimly lit corner of the pub with three beers in front of her and waited for her sisters.
She wasn’t going to tell them. She and Dan needed time to work it out for themselves. It wasn’t necessary to share every single detail of her marriage. It was weird and triplet-dependent. “You tell those two everything!” Dan always said, and he didn’t know the half of it.
If she told them, Gemma would hug her and rush off to buy supplies of ice cream and champagne. Lyn would be on her mobile ringing friends for referrals for good marriage counselors. They would inundate her with advice. They would argue passionately with each other over what she should and shouldn’t do.
They would care too much and that would make it real.
She took a gulp of her beer and bared her teeth at a man who was making hopeful gestures at the two stools she had saved.
“Just checking!” he said, hands up, looking hurt.
She definitely wasn’t telling her sisters. Look what happened when she went off the Pill. Her cycle became public property; every month, they’d call to cheerily ask if her period had arrived yet.
They had both stopped calling now but only after she’d said to Gemma that yes, it had come, and yes, she probably was infertile, and now was she satisfied? Gemma had cried, of course. Then Cat had felt sick with guilt as well as period pain.
“Are these seats?”
“Yes, they are seats, but no, they are not free.”
“What’s her problem?”
“Ignore her. Bitch.”
Two girls in matching Barbie-doll business suits tottered off disapprovingly on their high heels, while Cat examined her knuckles and imagined jumping up and punching their lipsticked mouths.
She wondered what that girl looked like.
Angela.
She was probably short and curvy like those girls who had now stopped to giggle and gurgle up at a group of, no doubt married, men.
Cat hated curvaceous little women. Feminine, doll-like women who tilted up their sweet faces to Cat like she was some sort of towering, lumbering giant.
Her sisters understood. Tall women understood.
But she didn’t want the humiliation of their understanding. In fact, for some reason the thought of their intensely sympathetic faces made her furious. It was their fault.
She searched her mind for a rational reason for blaming them.
Of course: it was their fault she’d ever met Dan in the first place.
Melbourne Cup Day over ten years ago. Twenty-one and delightfully drunk on champagne, back when you were still allowed to call cheap sparkling wine “champagne.” Betting spectacular amounts of money on every race. Laughing like drains, as their grandmother said. Making a complete spectacle of themselves, as their mother said.
They accosted every boy who walked by their table.
Gemma: “We’re triplets! Can you tell? Can you believe it? They’re identical but I’m not. I’m a single egg! They’re just half of the one egg. Half-eggs. Would you like to buy us a drink? We quite like champagne.”
Lyn: “Got any good tips? Personally, I like Lone Ranger in Race Five. We’re drinking the $9.99 bottle of champagne if you were thinking of buying us a drink. We’ve already got glasses, so that’s O.K.”
Cat: “You seem to have an unusually large head. It’s blocking the television and I’m about to win a lot of money. Could you go away? Unless you’d like to buy us a drink.”
The boy with the large head sat down in the booth next to Cat. He was very tall, and they all had to squash together to give him enough room.
He had evil green eyes and stubble.