Cleo

We no longer went to huge lengths not to be seen in public with the children. At least, I didn’t think so. So when the four of us drove to town one Saturday morning on a T-shirt shopping mission, we parked on the main street and bundled out of the car. Walking down the footpath, Philip completed one of his elegant mud-protecting moves. The kids galloped ahead into the store. I felt like someone in a movie whose life has turned out wonderfully, when people have finished their popcorn and the credits are about to roll.

“I like this one,” Lydia said, holding up a T-shirt featuring teddy bears dressed as fairies. The color was predictable.

“She’s going through a three-year-old pink phase,” I said to Philip. “I’m not fighting it. If I do she’ll probably end up on a shrink’s couch someday, blaming me for denying her an essential part of her development.”

He didn’t laugh. In fact, he’d frozen like a cat that has spotted a rottweiler.

“Sarah!” he said, smiling broadly over my shoulder.

I turned. Standing outside a changing room in a bikini so miniscule it could have doubled as dental floss was a blonde with legs longer than Barbie’s. I recognized her from the photo board at the lake, one of the famous “boring” girls. Ticks in every single box.

“Philip!” she beamed. “Where have you been? We haven’t seen you at tennis for ages. I’ve been missing you.”

I waited for Philip to introduce me, but he snapped himself inside a Perspex bubble that denied any connection with me. I was just another shopper he happened to be standing next to, and the kids were invisible.

“Work’s been full-on,” he said, moving towards her. “You know what it’s like this time of year.”

“Same at the surgery,” she said, rolling her eyes and flicking her golden mane. “There’s heaps of cosmetic work these days. Everyone wants perfect teeth. You’re looking so well!”

“So are you!” His voice ricocheted off the walls into my ears, collided inside my brain, spun down my spinal column and ruptured something in my chest.

“And your parents? How are they?”

As their conversation grew warmer and more intimate I stood like a Charles Dickens character shivering out in the snow and peering through a window at a flickering hearth surrounded by happy faces.

“Let’s go!” I said quietly to Rob.

“But I want this pink one,” said Lydia.

“Not now!” I said, thrusting it back on a neatly folded pile.

Grabbing her hand, I swept out of the shop with Rob jogging to catch up with me.

“Shouldn’t we wait for him?” Rob asked, as we charged through a sea of faces.

“I don’t think he even knows we’ve gone.”

What a fool I’d been. A consummate moron. Why on earth hadn’t I listened to Nicole and Mum and everyone else who’d warned me? They’d been right all along. The boy-man and I had no place in each other’s worlds. He was no more capable of fitting in with my journalist crowd than I was of suddenly becoming a twenty-four-year-old Barbie dentist. Let alone the kids. It would take an incredibly special man to encompass my kids in his future.

How wrong of me to expose them to someone so shallow and immature. And yes, conservative. So damned conservative and dull he might as well take up smoking a pipe and marry a dentist.

“Wait!” Philip, panting from running to catch up with us, touched me on the shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

I sent Rob into a McDonald’s to buy himself chips and Lydia an ineptly named Happy Meal.

“Ashamed of us, are you?” I yowled.

“What do you mean?” he asked, feigning innocence.

“Why didn’t you introduce us?”

“I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“You mean you didn’t think she’d be interested!”

“Look, I…” An inquisitive shopper paused to absorb as much of our argument as was politely possible.

“I thought you said Sarah was boring.” I hated the vindictive quaver in my voice. It was hideously unattractive and about as un-ticks-in-boxes as anyone could get. “You did a pretty good impression of not being bored.”

“She’s…just a friend.”

“If that’s the case why did you act as if we weren’t there?”

Philip stared up at a neon sign above our head. In a merciless act of cruelty it flashed the words “Engagement Rings.”

“Do you think this is easy for me?” he erupted. “It’s not that I don’t like the kids. I think they’re wonderful. It’s just…”

I waited as a thousand shoppers changed color under the flashing sign.

“I’m not sure I want to be an instant father.”

When he dropped us home and drove off I discovered Cleo’s collar was missing. She’d finally chewed it off and claimed her freedom.

Witch’s Cat

Sometimes it’s easier to love the moon.

There aren’t many options for a brokenhearted woman with attitude, except perhaps to become a witch. Witches fight off curses. They create their own luck. Witchery had potential. Cleo, with her ability to appear on a rooftop and in front of a fireplace almost simultaneously, was the perfect witch’s cat, not to mention the ideal color.