The Last Anniversary (42 page)
Read The Last Anniversary Online
Authors: Liane Moriarty
She very carefully paints a fractured egg dripping blood. It takes up one whole tile.
Finally, she puts down her paintbrush and gets to her feet and stands with her hands on her hips looking at her life and her family spread across the kitchen floor, before she finds the mop and washes it all away, while she steadily eats her way through an entire packet of chocolate biscuits.
The next day, when Sophie comes to visit with an invitation to her fortieth birthday party, there is a sweet smell in the air that Rose explains must be the nutmeg in her sponge cake. The floor is white and pure, and Rose looks just like a dear little old lady whose only secrets are recipes.
A special thank you to my friends Petronella McGovern, Marisa Medina and Vanessa Proctor for the time they spent reading and commenting on drafts of this novel. I’m also in debt to my sisters Nicola and Jaclyn Moriarty for all their suggestions and wonderful encouragement. My Grandma, Lily Dennett, provided lots of helpful information about the Depression, and my parents, Diane and Bernie Moriarty, helped with research and ideas and excursions on the Hawkesbury River! Thank you to my agent Fiona Inglis for being such a great supporter of my writing career. Finally, I am so lucky and grateful to have Cate Paterson as my publisher and editor–she made it a much better book.
Liane Moriarty
is an advertising copywriter turned author who grew up in Sydney, Australia.
The Last Anniversary
is her second novel. Her first novel,
Three Wishes,
was published in seven countries.
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THE LAST ANNIVERSARY
. Copyright © 2005 by Liane Moriarty. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moriarty, Liane.
The last anniversary / Liane Moriarty.—1st Harper pbk. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 0-06-089068-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-089068-1
1. Family—Australia—Fiction. 2. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PR9619.4.M67L37 2006
823'.92—dc22 2005055047
EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200867-1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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