The Last Anniversary (7 page)

‘Not really,’ Sophie had answered, taking in a deep breath of salt-tanged air.

Connie had seemed graciously, if not effusively, pleased to see them. She made them cinnamon toast and chatted articulately with Thomas about his favourite topics: federal politics and cricket. Sophie could sense in Connie a terrible restrained grief for her husband. She had sad pink half-moons under her eyes and Jimmy’s presence was still everywhere: an old man’s cardigan draped over the back of a chair, a pair of muddy black boots on the front porch, framed prints of newspaper articles he’d written, including, of course, his story breaking the news about the Munro Baby Mystery.

Connie had given Sophie a slow, painful tour of the house, and she’d seemed to appreciate it when Sophie said how much she liked it, so Sophie hadn’t held back with her compliments. Not that they weren’t genuine. She’d never been in a house which had appealed to her so much before; she’d never been in someone else’s home and thought to herself, ‘I’d give anything to live here.’

Oh dear, thinks Sophie now, perhaps I didn’t just think that, maybe I actually said it out loud to Aunt Connie. Still. She hadn’t meant it as a
hint
.

She’d just honestly fallen in love with that house. Ever since she got the news from Thomas she has felt like hugging herself with glee each time she remembers something new. The jasmine-covered archway at the top of the garden path leading to the front door. That gigantic green claw bathtub. Honey-coloured floorboards. Stained-glass windows reflecting reds and blues in the late afternoon sun. Glittering pieces of river from every window. The tiny looping staircase to the main bedroom. The window seat where you could curl up with a regency romance and a Turkish delight. It really was like a house in a fairytale.

But is it wrong to accept it? She reads the letter one more time, trying hard to be objective, trying to see herself through Aunt Connie’s eyes. She lingers over the PS. She is trying not to take the PS too seriously. Nothing will come of it, of course. It’s just a bit of fun. Just a bit of heart-lifting fun.

Sophie’s mobile rings and she answers it, her mouth full of sandwich, still thinking about the PS.

‘Sophie, this is Veronika.’

Sophie makes a strangled sound. ‘Oh,
hi
!’ she says brightly and falsely, as guilty as a murderer.

‘I just thought it was polite to let you know that we’ll be contesting Aunt Connie’s will. Everybody in the family is terribly hurt by what you’ve done.’

Sophie holds the phone slightly away from her ear. Veronika always speaks too loudly on the phone, and when she is angry it’s even more painful than usual.

‘Just remind me exactly what I’ve done?’

‘Ha! You know, I used to pride myself on being a good judge of character but it just goes to show how wrong you can be. I would never have thought you capable of this! Manipulating a defenceless old lady like that! I thought you were a
friend
! I even thought you were a
good
friend! But, oh, I see
exactly
what you are now. You may think you can walk all over Thomas but the rest of us aren’t quite so stupid. I just got off the phone from my cousin Grace and she could hardly bear to talk about it, she was so appalled by what you’ve done.’

‘Really?’

For some reason the thought of Grace, who Sophie barely knows, thinking badly of her is more distressing than Veronika, her friend of many years, thinking she is an evil manipulator of old ladies. Sophie has only met Grace just once, years ago, at Veronika’s wedding, but she has a schoolgirl crush on her. Grace is beautiful–achingly, ridiculously beautiful: the unfair sort of beauty that made it a painful pleasure just to look at her. Plus, there is that comment in Aunt Connie’s letter about Grace.

‘Tell Grace not to be upset with me,’ she says frivolously. ‘Tell her I’m a big contributor to her royalties. I’m always buying her books as presents!’

Ever since Veronika had mentioned that Grace wrote and illustrated a series of children’s picture books about an evil little elf called Gublet, Sophie has been buying her books as presents for her friends’ children. The illustrations are gorgeous, full of detail and an intriguing touch of menace that kids, especially the brattier ones, seem to love. The Gublet books only add to Grace’s mystique.

‘You’re not even taking this seriously!’ explodes Veronika. ‘I have nothing more to say to you, Sophie. I forgave you for what you did to Thomas but this is genuinely unforgivable. My family will be fighting this all the way to the highest court in the land. And I will not say another word to you in my
lifetime
!’

‘Starting from…now?’ asks Sophie.

But Veronika is true to her word and hangs up.

She must be genuinely upset to actually stop talking.

Whenever Veronika gets on her high horse about anything, from her opinion on a movie to her views on abortion, it brings out a flip, sarcastic side of Sophie’s personality. Afterwards she always feels bad, and now she feels particularly guilty.

Part of her had been thinking that this whole thing with Aunt Connie’s house had been all about destiny. It had been her destiny to become friends with Veronika, even though it was an annoying friendship at times. It was her destiny to date Veronika’s brother, Thomas, even though it had all ended so horribly. It was her destiny to live in Aunt Connie’s wonderful home on Scribbly Gum Island. That was the final pay-off. She deserved it!

But now it occurs to Sophie to wonder if perhaps she had been subconsciously manipulating her destiny.

She remembers when she first met Veronika at a friend’s baby shower. Sophie was supervising the cutting of the cake–one of hers, of course–featuring a pair of baby booties made out of cup cakes, when she heard somebody saying in a clear, sharp voice that she’d grown up on Scribbly Gum Island.

‘Did you really?’ Sophie had chimed in, leaning across another woman to hand the stranger a piece of booty. ‘What was that like?’

Sophie had a thing about Scribbly Gum Island. She’d adored it ever since her first visit on a school excursion when she was a child. She disagreed passionately with people who described the island as ‘a bit twee, don’t you think?’ She’d done the Alice and Jack tour a dozen times, staring with fresh fascination at the clothes still hanging in the cupboard, the baby’s crib, the newspaper sitting open on 15 July 1932–the crossword halfway completed. She’d picnicked at Sultana Rocks, had birthday lunches at Connie’s Café and convinced friends that the blueberry muffins and hot chocolates were worth the train and ferry ride, especially on a cold winter’s day. She once had a terrible fight with a boyfriend when they were holidaying in the Greek islands over whether the view from Kingfisher Lookout on Scribbly Gum Island was prettier than the view from their hotel window in Santorini. (She said it was, he said she was deliberately being ridiculous.)

When Sophie learned that Veronika was the granddaughter of the Munro Baby, she was as thrilled as if she’d met a favourite celebrity.

It was true that Veronika had been the one to rather aggressively pursue the friendship. She had invited Sophie to lunches and drinks and bullied her into doing a belly-dancing course with her. Sophie had enjoyed the course. She thought it was a hoot. When she managed to restrain her gales of laughter she was rather good at it–the teacher’s pet in fact. Veronika was the worst in the class but took it all terribly seriously, listening intently to the instructions and zealously trying to jiggle her skinny hips. That was when Sophie became fond of Veronika. Sophie’s other friends would have been collapsing with giggles or refused to really try. There was something endearing about Veronika’s hopeless persistence.

Still, the Scribbly Gum connection probably helped make the friendship more attractive and made up for Veronika’s more aggravating characteristics, such as her energy-draining intensity over
everything.
One of the guys at work had openly admitted to cultivating a friendship with someone who owned a yacht. What if Sophie had subconsciously been doing the same with Veronika, even while she was congratulating herself on her saintly fortitude?

But what would she have been hoping to achieve? Veronika hadn’t even taken her to meet her family on Scribbly Gum Island–‘Oh, why would you want to go there?
Boring!
’ It wasn’t until Sophie had started dating Veronika’s brother that she got to visit. Unless, of course, dating Thomas had been the next step in her dastardly plan.

She looks at her watch. It’s time to get back to work. She has a meeting at two. She will read Connie’s letter to her parents tonight over dinner and see what they think. If they say it’s wrong to accept the house she won’t take it.

I’m a good person, Sophie reminds herself. Everybody loves me. I give to charity. I recycle. I buy things I don’t want from door-to-door salesmen. I’ve been a bridesmaid seven bloody times. I’m not the sort of person to manipulate an old lady.

‘NOOOOOO!’

Sophie looks up to see the angelic blond toddler in the middle of a ferocious tantrum, flipping his body back and forth while his mother tries to strap him in his stroller and yells at the other child to ‘STAY STILL, HARRY’. The daddy has escaped, striding back to work, his tie swinging.

Actually, thinks Sophie, as she stands up and brushes crumbs off her skirt, she’s quite looking forward to her meeting on graduate recruitment strategies.

Grace looks at the line drawing she has scribbled of a ferociously grinning elf with blood dripping from a butcher’s knife. Oh dear. It isn’t going to be a Good Gublet day for Grace, is it? Next thing she’ll have Gublet raping his best friend, Melly the Music Box Dancer–ripping off Melly’s sparkly tutu and giving it to her right there on the pink satin music-box floor.

Where are these perverse and strangely bitchy thoughts coming from? They aren’t at all appropriate for a new mother. Her head should be full of lullabies and bunnies, not blood and rape.

Grace pulls the sheet of paper from her sketchbook and screws it up into a hard ridged ball.

It is eleven a.m. on her second day at home alone with the baby. He is asleep upstairs, fed and burped and clean and swaddled (‘like wrapping a burrito’ Callum said when the nurse showed them at the hospital) and, most importantly, breathing. She is successfully keeping him alive and so far she hasn’t broken any important rules or made any fatal errors, but still, every move she makes continues to feel fake and forced, like she’s pretending to be this baby’s mother and the real mother will be along soon to look after him properly. She can’t shake a constant, underlying feeling of terror.

All new mothers are nervous, she tells herself.

Not like this.

Yes, of course they are.

It’s perfectly normal.

I am perfectly normal. I am a new mother sitting down with a cup of tea.

She tries again to draw Gublet’s familiar features. He stares back at her with a new cold, bland expression.

This hasn’t happened to her before. It has always been such a pleasure to work on Gublet. She was never stuck for inspiration; all she needed was time.

Grace has been working on her Gublet McDublet books for over four years now. He started as a doodle. Whenever she was talking on the phone, a wicked elf character would appear on her notebook. She became fond of him and eventually, just for fun, not really thinking too hard about it, she made up a funny story about Gublet’s first day at school. It was Callum who secretly sent it off to a children’s book publisher he’d picked out of the
Yellow Pages
and, astonishingly, they agreed to publish it as a hard-bound picture book for three-to five-year-olds. So far she hasn’t made enough money to be able to give up her day job as a graphic designer for a company that specialises in beautiful annual reports. There isn’t that much money in the children’s picture-book market unless you are phenomenally successful, and besides which, so far each of the two Gublet books has taken her over two years to complete. ‘Two
years
!’ people always say with disbelief and a hint of derision. They seem to think she should be able to knock one off in a couple of weeks, when each illustration is actually an oil painting on canvas, a labour of love one generous reviewer described as ‘exquisite works of art’.

When her first book was launched, the local pre-school invited her to read her Gublet book to a group of cross-legged, squirming four-year-olds. She was nervous. Children made her feel huge and awkward and she was never sure exactly how to correctly pitch her conversation for their age group, worrying that she was speaking to them as if they were retarded or deaf. When friends suddenly (bizarrely!) put their heavy-breathing toddlers on the phone to talk to her, Grace would more often than not just sit there in tongue-tied silence. What in the world was she meant to say? ‘So, what have you been up to lately?’ ‘Hear you just learned to walk, hey? How’s that going, then?’

She was convinced the pre-schoolers wouldn’t like her. After all, people generally didn’t. Friends were always cosily informing her how much they’d disliked her at their first meeting. ‘You just seemed so cold and standoffish.’ The children probably wouldn’t hide their dislike like grown-ups. They’d probably boo and hiss. Maybe they’d all suddenly attack her like rabid little rats. Who knew what they’d do? They were another species.

She was sure that she sounded ridiculous as she read her own words to the pre-schoolers, but then she got her first laugh. It was the part where Gublet jumped up and down on his mum’s yucky pumpkin pie like a trampoline. The children whooped. One got up to demonstrate how he would jump in a similar situation. The teacher, sitting at the back of the room, gave her a thumbs-up, as if she knew Grace had been nervous, and the kids sat back down and looked up at her with open flower-like faces, eyes shining expectantly, ready for the next funny part. So
this
was what people saw in children.

After she’d finished reading, when the teacher asked them if they had any questions, every hand shot in the air, straining high for her attention.

‘Is Gublet so naughty all the time because he wishes he didn’t have pointy ears?’

‘Would Gublet like to come to my party? Do you think he would jump up and down on my cake? My mum would be pretty cross with him!’

‘Gublet is
funny
when he’s naughty! I laughed so much! I laughed until
forever
!’

‘That time when Gublet’s mum sent him to the moon for being naughty and he rang up Melly and then they ran away to Mars, well, guess what, that happened to me too! But guess what, it wasn’t real! It was a
dream
!’

Hearing a client say ‘The CEO was quite impressed with your design concepts’ could never compare with the intense pleasure Grace felt hearing a four-year-old say ‘I laughed until
forever
!’

So that was the day she decided that what she really wanted to do with her life was work full-time on her Gublet books. When she got pregnant and her mother had offered them her house on Scribbly Gum, she and Callum had gone out to dinner and worked out a whole life plan.

She would take maternity leave from the graphic-design studio, but hopefully she’d never have to go back. When the ‘baby’ (it was so amazing to think that there really
would
be an actual real baby, separate from herself) was asleep, she’d work serenely on the third Gublet book and get it finished by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Callum would take on extra music students outside of school hours. The builders would do what they said they were going to do and their dream home in the mountains would be finished in plenty of time for them to move in when Laura returned from overseas. Within two years they would save up enough money so that Callum could start up his Music School for Adults. They would work out a sensible investment plan. They would take multi-vitamins and drink carrot, celery and apple juice every day. (They would need to buy a juicer.) They would be healthy, happy and successful. They would have one more child. Maybe even two more! Why not? So far it seemed pretty easy!

Callum wrote it all down on a notepad. Grace added amusing sketches to illustrate each point. They ate duck with crab-meat sauce. They were pleased with themselves.

Grace draws her pencil back and forth across the page in deep zig-zags, remembering that night. Their plans had been so very, very
pat,
hadn’t they?

She remembers how she’d poked at her stomach to make the baby kick back and how she and Callum had laughed, high on the possibilities of their future. What was so different about her imagined life from the reality of it? It’s all going according to plan. Here she is, with her baby sleeping, sitting at her mother’s dining-room table, ready to do Gublet–and everything seems bland and pointless, just plain old yawning dull.

Gublet. A trite, not especially original picture book in an overcrowded market which doesn’t sell that well or make that much money.

Her marriage. She remembers all that fuss she’d made when she first met Callum. So prissy and girly.
Oh, oh, I just love him so much!
Did she really feel any of that? He is just a man, for God’s sake. A slovenly man who doesn’t do enough around the house, who is getting a bit fat around the tummy, who has really horrible breath in the morning, who is infuriatingly convinced he is always right.

She says out loud, ‘Oh, stop being such a
bitch
, Grace.’

She remembers the day the call came through from the publisher about Gublet. ‘There’s someone on the phone for you,’ Callum had said, failing to repress an enormous grin. Grace, mystified, had taken the phone, and Callum had carefully watched her face until he saw her start to smile, at which point he’d performed a wild, silent victory dance around the kitchen.

How can she not love Callum?

Well, she does love him. Of course she loves him.

The baby is crying. She looks at her watch. It has happened again. Two hours vanished.

This is not normal.