The Last Anniversary Page 6

  Anyway, when she thinks about a truthful description of herself it makes her wince.

  Thirty-nine-year-old moderately successful Human Resources Director. Interests include regency romances, reality TV, and baking large novelty birthday cakes for other people's children. Hobbies include drinking Tia Maria and eating Turkish delight in the bath and dining out with her mum and dad. Wanted to be a ballerina but didn't end up with a ballerina body; however, has been told she is an impressive dirty dancer when drunk. Knows her wine, so please just hand the wine list over. Godmother to nine children, member of two book clubs, Social Club Manager for the Australian Payroll Officers' Association. Suffers from a severe blushing problem but is not shy and will probably end up better friends with your friends than you, which you'll find highly irritating after we break up. Has recently become so worried about meeting the love of her life and having children before she reaches menopause that she has cried piteously in the middle of the night. But otherwise is generally quite cheerful and has on at least three separate occasions that she knows of been described as 'Charming'.

  Yep, that about summed it up. What a catch. If Sophie was a man she wouldn't date herself. She'd run a mile. 'Jeez,' she'd say, 'regency romances! Give me a scuba-diving, marathon-running, catamaran-sailing woman!' The problem is that Sophie wouldn't want to date the sort of man who would want to date her. She imagines too skinny a man with too nice a complexion, saying, 'Oh, regency romances, how interesting!' Blah.

  She looks up from her book to watch a family group setting up a picnic nearby. The daddy in his business suit, the mummy in a pretty pink cardigan and skirt, two frolicking angels with white-blond hair. They've come in to meet Daddy in his lunch break and he's so chuffed to see them! Good God, they look like something from a television commercial. Daddy is caressing Mummy's hand and she's giggling at something he's said. Is Mummy looking over and wishing she was a free, single career-woman like Sophie? Nope. No way. She's so blindingly happy it hurts to look at her.

  Oh stop it. You are not going to turn into one of those embittered, jaded single women. They're a lovely family. If you knew them, you'd be their friend. One of the blond angels comes toddling over to where Sophie is sitting under the tree. He holds out a grubby fist to her and shows her a piece of bark.

  'Wow!' says Sophie. 'That's very pretty.'

  'Sorry!' The mummy runs over and scoops up her child. 'Don't disturb the lady.'

  'It's OK,' says Sophie. It's perfectly OK that you appear to be at least ten years younger than me, and you already have two children, and I'm a 'lady' who doesn't even have a boyfriend. No problem. It's fine.

  There is something so undignified about being single when you're nearly forty. It's not glamorous any more, or funny. It's sad and sometimes it's lonely, even when you do have a Christmas card list numbering over one hundred and you can remember the birthdays of at least forty different people, not even counting their children. For God's sake, even the girls on Sex and the City all got matched up in the final episode.

  On Saturday afternoon, Sophie had talked to a friend who described what she'd done that morning: two loads of washing, grocery shopping, driving children to soccer and ballet, and so on and so forth. She might even have baked a cake. It was quite extraordinary.

  'What have you been doing?' asked the friend.

  'Oh, cleaned the bathroom, paid a few bills, you know, just pottering,' said Sophie, stifling a yawn.

  Actually, she was still in her pyjamas and all she'd achieved that morning was getting out of bed. She hadn't even managed to feed herself breakfast yet. It made her feel like a frivolous flibbertigibbet from one of her regency romances, except that frivolous flibbertigibbets don't have wrinkles that appear on either side of their mouths when the bathroom lights are too bright, and they don't feel sick when they see magazine articles about the decreasing fertility of women in their late thirties.

  She remembers a woman at her first job who used to sit at the desk next to her doing data entry and saying at regular intervals, 'Oops! Stuffed it up, buttercup!' It seems an appropriate description for Sophie's life: Oops! Stuffed it up, buttercup. You forgot to get a family!

  She reads a page of her book. The heroine in her regency romance engages in sparkling banter with her dashing suitor.

  Maybe Sophie should try out Internet dating. Maybe she is unrealistically romantic. Maybe she does think her life is a friggin' fairytale, like her friend Claire had said once when they were both very drunk. 'Sophie, your problem is that you think life is a friggin' fairytale. You're so friggin' optimistic you don't just see the glass as half-full, you see it as full, of, of...pink champagne! And the thing is, the glass isn't full, Sophie! It's half empty!' Claire said 'friggin' a lot when she was drunk. It was funny. She always denied it the next day.

  Sophie munches her way through her sandwich without really tasting it. She should just come clean with Al and tell him she's sick to death of salmon and salad and she wants something really loopy like curried egg and asparagus. She is in a rut. That's the problem. These sandwiches are a symbol of a life that's going nowhere.

  Ah, but then again, how could she have forgotten? Her life isn't in a rut! It's at a crossroads, a turning point. Her life actually is like a fairytale and Aunt Connie is her fairy godmother. She puts down the book and takes out the letter from her handbag to re-read it for about the hundredth time. It's weirdly compelling reading something written 'from the grave', so to speak.

  You would expect a letter from an old lady to be written in spidery handwriting on lavender-scented notepaper-it's typical of Aunt Connie that hers is perfectly typed in Microsoft Word and looks like a business letter. Apparently she did a computer course when she was eighty.

  Sophie tries to visualise Connie sitting at her computer to type it. She remembers an upright, white-haired woman with powdery, papery skin, a longish, fine-boned face and intelligent brown eyes that dared you to even think about treating her like an old person. Some elderly people look like they've always been old, but Connie looked like a young person who had aged a great deal. She was frail, and moved slowly but impatiently, as if she was driving too slow a car. You could tell that once upon a time she'd been the sort of person who never sat still.

  It had been a summer's day when Thomas had taken Sophie to visit, and there was the smell of an approaching storm in the air. Sophie was feeling flippant and skittish, while Thomas was in one of his stodgy grown-up moods that made Sophie want to act like a rebellious teenager. He didn't like going to visit his family on Scribbly Gum; he preferred it when they came into Sydney. 'It's such a hassle getting out there,' he'd say, in an exhausted tone, as if it involved a mountain trek. He'd only taken Sophie out to the island two or three times while they'd been dating, in spite of the fact that Sophie was always hopefully suggesting it.

  They'd had lunch first with his parents, Margie and Ron. It was Margie who had said it might be a good idea to stop in and say hello to Connie before they caught the ferry back. Connie's husband Jimmy had died just a couple of months earlier. Thomas hadn't complained-he was a good, dutiful son-but he was anxious to get off the island.

  'I just start to feel a bit trapped when I'm here for too long,' he'd told Sophie as they walked down the hill towards Aunt Connie's place. 'It's so small, you know what I mean?'

  '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, pain
ful 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 Cafe 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.

  14

  Gublet McDublet was a very naughty little elf.

  Every day, his mum said to him, 'Now, Gublet, do you think it's going to be a Good Gublet day or a Bad Gublet day?'

  Every day, Gublet answered the same way, 'A GOOD Gublet day!'

  But guess what? Every day turned out to be a Bad Gublet day.

  One day, Gublet said, 'Oh fuck it, Mum, you're a boring old hag,' and he took a knife and lopped off his sweet mummy's head.

  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.