'She looked fine to me,' says Grace.
'Oh don't be ridiculous. She's monstrous.'
Poor, cuddly Aunt Margie. Grace thought she'd looked quite uncomfortable in that blue suit. She probably should have had a size twenty-two.
She says, 'So, but apart from the food you're enjoying yourself?'
Her mother's voice drops and becomes almost emotional. 'Oh, Grace, you can't imagine the state of the toilets. In some of them you have to squat right down on the ground. It was the most horrific experience of my life.'
Surely you've had worse experiences than squatting on a toilet, thinks Grace. How about your husband leaving you for his dental nurse? Or your father dying of cancer?
'Good for your thighs,' comments Grace. 'Squatting.'
Laura brightens. 'Yes, that's a point.'
'Have you bought a rug?' asks Grace.
'Oh, yes, I've done the tourist thing. Sleazy men ran around giving us all apple tea. So sugary-sweet! Terrible! I bargained as well as I could. No doubt they were laughing their heads off at the price I paid. I probably won't be able to get it through customs back in Sydney. I wouldn't blame them. I'm sure it's not hygienic.'
'Is it nice and hot?' tries Grace. 'It's very cold here.'
'Oh, the heat! The humidity! I'm so dehydrated. Terrible.'
'Right,' says Grace.
She doesn't really understand why her mother is taking this world trip. She doesn't seem to be enjoying it at all. It's like she is forcing herself to undergo one of her more rigorous diet and exercise regimes.
She says, 'Mum, I'm afraid I've got some bad news...'
But Laura doesn't seem to hear her. 'How is Jake?' she asks urgently.
For a moment, Grace can't think who Jake is. Her mother said the baby's name in such a grown-up way.
'He's fine.' Grace feels a dead feeling in her stomach. 'Beautiful.'
'Breastfeeding OK?'
'Yes.'
'I didn't breastfeed you. I couldn't stand the thought of it. I remember saying to Margie, I'm not a cow, I'm not a pig! Still, I wasn't informed. We thought that formula milk was just as good. I should really have breastfed you.'
Oh my word, thinks Grace. Is she drunk?
'And any other news on Scribbly Gum?' asks Laura.
'Yes, there is. I'm sorry. I tried to call yesterday but I couldn't get through on the number on the itinerary. Aunt Connie died. The funeral is tomorrow.'
There is a sudden hissing silence on the phone.
'Mum? I'm sorry to break-'
Her mother's voice overlaps her own. 'Was it pneumonia? I told her a thousand times she'd catch pneumonia. She would never wear anything warm around her neck. I gave her a perfectly nice skivvy last Easter. She acted all hoity-toity about it. She said, "Would you wear this, Laura?" And I said, "Well, I might if I was approaching ninety, Connie!"'
'It wasn't pneumonia. She just died in her sleep. Aunt Margie found her. They all think she knew she was going to die. She had all her papers in a pile next to her bed.'
'I suppose I'd better call. How are they taking it?'
'Grandma Enigma has been crying a lot.'
'I can imagine,' says Laura disgustedly, sounding more like herself again. 'Mum likes to cry. I've tried to tell Margie that.'
'The other news is that apparently Aunt Connie has left her house to Thomas's ex-girlfriend, Sophie. Aunt Rose told Thomas. There was a letter for her.'
'That's contemptible! That is just so Connie.'
'Veronika wants to contest the will.'
'Good for her. Someone should stand up to Connie. She's been bossing this family around for far too long.'
'Yes, well, she's dead now, Mum. She's not going to be bossing us around any longer.'
Laura says, 'But Sophie's the one who left poor Thomas at the altar!'
'Not exactly at the altar.'
'How very tactless of Connie.'
Seeing as her mother had once told Thomas to stop being such a 'soppy sap' when he was grieving over Sophie, Grace doesn't think she is qualified to give a lecture on tact. She changes the subject. 'Veronika thinks that Aunt Connie always knew the secret of what really happened to Alice and Jack. She thinks the secret will die with her.'
'Oh, Alice and Jack,' says Laura dismissively. 'Do you know, I'm so bored with the whole Alice and Jack business. Travelling has really put things like that in perspective for me. All my life-Alice and Jack, Alice and Jack. I'll tell you what happened to Alice and Jack!'
There is another hissing pause and then Laura says irritably, 'How old are you?'
'Sorry?'
'You're thirty-four, aren't you?'
'Yes. What's that got to do with anything?'
'Oh, I don't know. Look, Alice and Jack is a business. A profitable business, which we've all done very well out of; I'll give Connie that. And as she always said, if the mystery was solved it would be bad for business. There is probably some dull solution, but who really cares?'
'Veronika cares. She's always cared. And now she wants to write a book about it.'
'No doubt she'll find some new project before she gets past the first chapter.'
It's true that over the last three years Veronika has started three different university degrees, a novel, six new jobs, a children's book to rival Harry Potter, dozens of community college courses, a pet-washing business and a 'clear your clutter' consultancy. Veronika has always been flighty, but since her divorce she has become quite frenzied.
'Probably.'
'Oh shit! This ridiculous phone card is-'
The line goes dead.
Grace hangs up. That had been a very strange phone call. Her mother had sworn too. The 'shit!' had been just as out of character as the 'oh my word'.
'What did she say?' calls out Callum from the living room.
There is plenty of material from the conversation that Callum would enjoy hearing. The tomatoes, the Turkish toilets, Aunt Connie's skivvy, the implication that Laura knows more about the Alice and Jack mystery.
He comes into the hallway and looks down at her eagerly. Grace feels her head begin to cave in again with that horrendous headache. It is just too much effort to be funny and entertaining and loving. It is just too much effort to talk, really.
'What's the gossip?'
'Nothing,' she says. 'I'm going to have a bath.'
18
A thin layer of frost makes the Scribbly Gum wharf glitter in the sun. The island is closed for business. Family members still on the island are catching the ferry across for Aunt Connie's funeral.
'Oh, would you just look at him!' clucks Grace's Aunt Margie, peering into the stroller at Jake, who stares back at her solemnly, his chin wet with dribble. 'He looks adorable. You dress him so beautifully, Grace! Of course, you dress yourself so beautifully too. You get it from your mother. I'm afraid I have no style whatsoever, do I, Ron?'
Her husband, immaculate in a dark suit and dark glasses, stops his pacing up and down the wharf. 'I'm assuming you don't actually require an answer to that inane question, Margaret. Good morning, Grace.'
When Grace was a child she thought her Uncle Ron, so handsome and debonair, so cleverly sarcastic, was exactly the sort of man she would like to marry one day. When she got older she decided he wasn't clever at all, he was just nasty and Margie was a stupid fool for putting up with it. Now, she just accepts them. After all, Thomas and Veronika don't appear at all concerned by their parents' relationship. Every marriage, every family, has its mysteries.
'You look very stylish, Aunt Margie,' says Grace.
In fact, Margie looks her usual frumpy, cuddly self. She is wearing a white blouse and a black skirt straining valiantly to hold her in.
'It's hard to know what to wear to a funeral these days,' says Margie. 'Everything is so much more casual. You don't think I look like a cocktail waitress, do you, Grace, darling?'
'Not in the slightest.' Grace thinks that Margie actually looks like a lovable diner waitress in an American road movi
e. All she needs is the pot of coffee and some gum.
'I've been going to my Weight Watchers quite regularly,' confides Margie breathily, leaning forward while her eyes dart over to her husband. 'Your mother will be relieved. She thinks I'm grossly overweight.'
Grace looks at her aunt's carefully made-up face, brown foundation collecting in the pores of her nose. 'Oh, no, I'm sure she doesn't,' she says finally, wondering if she waited too long to answer. She has a strange, not unpleasant sense of disconnection from everyone, as if she is floating somewhere high above her head and operating her body by remote control. Stretch lips to smile. Fold palms of hands around pram handle. Tip head towards child in motherly fashion.
The night before, Jake had woken up at one a.m. and refused to settle after his feed. He would pretend it was his intention to go to sleep and then all of a sudden he'd give a violent shudder and scream furiously, his face bright red and wrinkled tightly like a walnut. Grace had turned on lights and paced the house, grimly rocking the baby as she walked around the perimeter of each room, upstairs and downstairs. When her route took her past the main bedroom she would see the silhouette of Callum, asleep, flat on his back, snoring blissfully. It was because he'd drunk red wine at dinner. It always made him sleep like a corpse. He would have wanted Grace to wake him but she preferred to play the martyr. She was the mother. It was her job. It was her duty. It was her punishment, for God knew what terrible crime she'd committed. At five thirty in the morning, Grace looked down and realised that the baby had finally fallen asleep, frowning deeply, his cupid's-bow lips slack. Grace had got back into bed beside Callum and stared with burning dry eyes at the ceiling until seven, when Callum had sleepily rolled onto his side, pulling her to him, asking, 'Did you sleep well?'
'You look a little pale, darling,' says Margie. 'How is the baby sleeping?'
'Beautifully,' answered Grace. She steals Callum's joke. 'Like a baby.'
'Like a baby!' giggles Margie. 'Oh, that's a good one, Grace! Ha, ha!'
Grace tries to laugh and is horrified at the weird sound that comes out of her mouth, but Margie doesn't seem to notice.
She imagines telling Margie the truth:
'Here's the thing, Aunt Margie: it's just that I really, truly don't like being a mother. It's not that I'm tired or a bit emotional. It's just not the job for me. It's not that I'm having a few problems bonding with my baby; I don't even like him! I feel nothing. I want out. Oh, please, please, I want out.'
Margie sighs and tugs at the waistband of her skirt. She glances at her husband, who is standing at the end of the wharf, his back very straight, one hand shading his eyes, looking out for the ferry. She smiles brightly back at Grace and shivers theatrically. 'Isn't it cold! It was quite hot on Tuesday! It's been such a funny old winter, hasn't it? Well, darling, I think it's going to be a really lovely funeral. We've done everything just as she wanted. Not that Connie left anything to chance. She had a manila folder with step-by-step instructions. It's called "Instructions for my Funeral". She's practically done all the catering for her own funeral, you know. That freezer of hers! Oh, I'm going to miss her so much. I don't know how the island is going to get by without her. I thought we'd have her for another ten years at least. Oh my, would you look at what they're wearing!'
Grace looks up to see her grandmother and Aunt Rose coming down the hill, the two of them sitting erect on their 'mobility aid' scooters. There is a missing space where Connie should have been. It was normally Enigma, Rose and Connie, three abreast, although with Connie just slightly ahead. They were like an elderly biker gang, zooming around the island's one road, going as fast as the bikes would let them, which was pretty fast because one day Connie had called up one of Jimmy's nephews who was a mechanic and said, 'I want you to "hot up" our bikes for us, Sam. They're too slow. It drives me mad.' Sam had responded to the challenge with alacrity, replacing the engines with ones from lawn-mowers. Connie had given him a high five the first time she revved up her new engine. 'We're real hoons!' Grandma Enigma always said. 'We hoon around the place!' Enigma really enjoyed saying the word 'hoon'.
'The wharf might be slippery!' cries out Margie frantically.
'It's frosty! Be careful, Mum, Rose! Oh why must they always go so fast!'
'Oh, relax, darling.' Enigma comes to a neat stop next to them. 'My word, it's chilly. But otherwise a lovely day for it, isn't it?'
'I must say, you two look very...colourful,' says Ron.
Enigma, who comes up to Ron's waist, is wearing a fire-engine-red jacket with a diagonally striped skirt. With her short, permed purplish-grey hair and apple-pink cheeks, she looks like a brightly wrapped lolly. Rose is tall and ethereal, with long, impractical white hair that she still wears the same way she wore it when she was sixteen, clasped at the back with the same tortoise-shell hairclip. For Connie's funeral she is wearing a gorgeously coloured turquoise suit with a matching long, filmy scarf that changes from blue to green in the sun. She has tied a piece of the same material around her walking frame. Actually, they look quite presentable; Grace knew Margie had been worried they'd have flowers or birds painted on their faces, which did cause people to stare.
'Yes, we do look colourful!' says Enigma snappishly. She doesn't take any rubbish from her son-in-law. 'That's because we're celebrating Connie's wonderful, colourful life!'
'Colourful,' says Ron. 'That's an interesting choice of word, Enigma. Makes it sound like Connie might have rather unsavoury secrets in her past.'
There is a moment of strange, loaded silence. Margie wrings her hands. Enigma punches her fists into her sides and narrows her eyes ferociously. Rose's nostrils become pinched and regal. 'What a remarkably inappropriate thing to say,' she announces with devastating disdain, and gives Ron a look as if he were a filthy boy, caught in the act of doing something truly repugnant.
It is always interesting to see Rose switch from vague and dreamy to crushing and cold; unless, of course, you are on the receiving end, which Grace had been occasionally when she was a teenager, especially when she went through her brief but memorable pierced nose and shaved head stage.
'My sincerest apologies, Rose.' Ron is as smooth as expensive liqueur. 'You're right. It was a poor attempt at humour. I should leave the jokes to my witty wife, shouldn't I, Margie?'
19
The morning of Aunt Connie's funeral there is frost on the grass outside Sophie's flat.
'Sophie, Sophie, Jack Frost has been!' Gretel used to call on mornings like this, with such excitement in her voice that Sophie would leap from her bed and run to her window to see their white-spangled front lawn.
Sophie had believed in Jack Frost, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for an embarrassingly long time. It was her mother's fault. She was too good an actress. For example, she described accidentally running into Santa Claus one night in the kitchen when she went to get a glass of water in such authentic-sounding detail: Santa had had such a fright that he'd said 'Lordie me!' and had to sit down and have a Milo and an Iced Vo Vo. He'd got crumbs in his beard. From outside on the driveway Gretel could hear the sleigh bells jingling in the breeze and the reindeers snorting and pounding their hooves.
On Christmas Eve and frosty mornings Sophie still feels a faint shivery tingle of that old magic. It makes her feel better as she eats her porridge. Aunt Connie's funeral seems like some sort of horrible public-humiliation test.
She wears the black dress because Claire had been so adamant that it was right. Sophie has lost all confidence over what is right or wrong about this whole thing.
The funeral is at noon at Glass Bay. She plans to go in to work for a couple of hours and then catch a train from the city to Glass Bay, where she can get a cab to the church. She has allowed an hour and a half, to give herself plenty of time. Timing is crucial. Too early will appear too eager: OK, let's get this over with so I can get my hands on the old biddy's house. Too late will appear blase: Just dropping by to pay my respects...by the way, where are the keys to this
house I've been hearing about?
In the end she is running late. A girl tumbles excited into Sophie's office to make a report of sexual harassment. She has clearly not been sexually harassed (you should be so lucky, Sophie catches herself thinking, rather unprofessionally) but these things must be gently defused like a ticking explosive device.
Then the train stops inexplicably for twenty minutes in between stations. By the time she gets to Glass Bay and she is pelting up the stairs in her stilettos, she is hyperventilating with a mix of guilt and nerves.
There are pounding footsteps behind her and a man in a suit is suddenly running by her side. 'You're not going to Connie Doughty's funeral, are you?'
'Yes, I am,' she says breathlessly as they both keep running.
'Me too,' he says. 'We'll share a cab then. That train-could you believe it? I was bashing my head against the window.'
Sophie laughs. 'I was thumping my fist against the seat in front of me.'
She manages to get a fleeting impression of a big nose and deep laugh-lines. He is running easily, his briefcase held under one arm.
Stop it, she thinks. Stop it. It's not him. If you think it's him, it won't be him.
'Here's one!'
She watches him run ahead and flag down a cab.
Nice square, broad back. Stop it!
He turns around and smiles at her. 'Our luck's changing.'
Well, mine certainly is. His smile is funny and friendly and sexy all at once. Stop it, stop it, stop it!
He opens the cab door for her and she slides across the seat. He hops in beside her and gives the cabbie the address of the church. It seems like the space in the back of the cab is very small and intimate. She can smell his aftershave. As he pulls back his sleeve to check the time she can see his very masculine-looking forearm. Oh, for heaven's sake, Sophie!
'Well, hello,' she says. She can feel her smile is radiant and possibly beautiful. 'I'm Sophie Honeywell.'
'Aha,' he says. He raises one quizzical eyebrow, James Bond style. He really is extraordinarily sexy. 'So you're Sophie.'
Oh God, it seems like it has been years since the last time she has felt this. Instant mutual attraction. She is not imagining this. Chemistry is frothing and fizzing all over the place. She can feel it in her kneecaps.
The Last Anniversary Page 10