Ricochet Baby by Fiona Kidman

they liked. Edith was a wonderful hostess, although she did leave the wedding party earlier than Fay would have expected. She can still see Edith as she was that day; when Roberta walked into the garden with her father, wearing a simple Grecian gown and flowers in her hair, it was Edith whom Fay watched. Dressed in a burnt orange diaphanous gown that moved with her body, and a cloche hat with feathers sticking straight out behind, she was like a girl from the thirties, and Fay had felt positively vulgar.
    But their friends complimented the Cooksleys long afterwards , as if it was they who had chosen the venue and made the arrangements. Fay still feels she doesn’t know Roberta very well, although, it has to be said, Roberta does all the right things. She thinks she and her daughter-in-law will become closer after the baby.
    All the same, it is mid-morning of Christmas Day and Fay is irritated to find herself being driven by Milton in the direction of Walnut. She had had every intention of putting on Christmas dinner , but she has been outmanoeuvred.
    ‘Oh dear,’ Edith had said, over the phone, ‘but it’s my turn to have Glass’s family over. Oh, don’t be offended if we don’t come, but Glass is so, um, touchy, you could say, about things like that. If we change our minds now, I’d have a war on my hands.’
    Fay has been inclined to bring her daughter and her husband into it, but she knows it’s too late to summon them from Auckland. They have their own plans.
    ‘It’s not as if they come and visit us,’ Fay complains to Milton, in the car.
    ‘We’ll just have to make a firm arrangement with them for next year,’ says Milton. He is a placatory man with an instinct for survival. ‘I expect it will be pleasant enough today.’
    The dining room table is set for fourteen, with a long, snowy cloth and silver and a low arrangement of fresh roses and gypsophila from the garden. We’ll soon be roasting in here, Fay thinks to herself, as the temperature soars outside. She can’t imagine why Edith hasn’t set out lunch in the garden.
    ‘Kill a thirst, mate,’ says Glass, unzipping a beer and thrusting it into Milton’s hand. ‘Make yourselves at home.’ He and Paul have been for a walk around the farm, at Paul’s request, so he can see where the circles have been, which doesn’t seem to have pleased Glass.
    ‘There’s really nothing to see,’ says Paul, to his parents, who had the same thing in mind. ‘Just a sort of fuzzy outline.’
    Fay expects to have met everyone before, at the wedding, but there is a stranger among the women around the silver punch bowl, whom she meets after she has kissed Roberta and Paul.
    ‘This is my friend, Wendy,’ says Edith.
    Wendy stretches her hand straight out like a man and shakes Fay’s hand vigorously. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ she says, almost pulling Fay physically towards her. Fay, thinking Wendy is about to kiss her as well, withdraws as far as she can. The woman has a cultivated voice, but there is something nervous and excited about her, almost dangerous, Fay thinks. She is dressed rather rakishly in a blue denim jacket and a skirt that is too long for her.
    ‘I hope you’re enjoying the day so far,’ Wendy says, her voice trembling and high.
    ‘We went to church first thing.’
    ‘Oh I thought you would. C of E, I take it?
    Fay finds this an odd thing for Wendy to say, but she nods. ‘Anglican, yes. And you, Joan?’ Joan Vance is Glass’s sister, whom Edith surveys with barely disguised dislike. Yet they have interests in common. Joan and Arch are horticulturalists with a property further down the road. They supply Edith with her garden requirements , and she sends them clients.
    ‘Press-buts,’ says Edith.
    Bernard says, ‘Orla went to midnight mass. Catholic.’ He grins at Joan.
    ‘Oh, eeny meeny miney mo, churches are all the same.’
    And Fay realises that she, of all people, is breaking one of the basic rules of polite talk, and