The Last Anniversary

by Liane Moriarty

  Well, Sophie wouldn't be doing any fluttering around Grace.

  Her mother had trained her in the delicate art of suddenly remembering an invented social engagement. Sophie, like Gretel, was extremely good at it and never even came close to blushing because it was crucial that the other person didn't guess you were faking and have their feelings hurt.

  'Saturday?' she said brightly. 'That would be really nice. I'm sure I'm free. Oh, no, wait!' She crunched her forehead regretfully and gave her handbag an annoyed little slap. 'I'm not free! I've got a friend's birthday lunch on that day. Oh what a pity. I don't even want to go, to be honest. Well, perhaps another time.'

  'Oh. But, well, what about Sunday?' asked Grace, and suddenly she didn't seem cold, she seemed desperate, as if she was pleading for Sophie to come to lunch.

  Well, if she was needed, that was different! Sophie felt her heart melt on cue. 'You're a soft touch, Soph,' her dad, who was the softest touch of all, always told her. She abandoned her mythical 'such a bore' BBQ and went straight into normal flutter-like-a-moth mode. 'Oh, Sunday would be lovely. It's so nice of you to ask me.'

  So now here she is, driving that familiar route down the freeway, seeing her first glimpses of the river, mysterious slate-grey today, beneath a heavy layer of pearly mist hovering just above the water.

  In just a few short hours it will all be over and she will be in the pub with Claire, telling her about it. That's the way to get through today's lunch; it's just a new story to tell Claire, so the worse it is the better it will be for comedic value. The funeral had provided Claire and her boyfriend Sven with virtually a whole night of entertainment. Actually, thinks Sophie, she seems to spend a lot of her time providing entertainment for her couple friends. They love having Sophie over for dinner, sympathising with the latest disasters in her life, saying to each other, 'There must be someone we can set her up with!' The men flirt outrageously with her and the women tell her they're jealous of her single state. Sophie suspects that after she leaves they always have better sex than normal. She gets at least one dinner invitation a week. One couple even eagerly suggested she become their flatmate and move into their spare room. For some reason, Sophie is the perfect third partner in a non-sexual menage a trois. She gives them something they need. She doesn't know what, but it's nice to be helpful.

  She wonders if Grace and Callum will expect her to fill a similar role. They'd probably love to know about her attraction to Callum; it might invigorate a stale relationship. Although it seems unlikely that women who look like Grace are ever in stale relationships.

  Rain splatters on the windshield. Sophie puts on the wind-screen wipers and leans forward slightly to concentrate more on the road ahead. It's easy to forget to think about driving on these long, straight roads.

  Yes, Grace had been odd when she issued this lunch invitation. Perhaps she is very shy. Or just not a very nice person. Or devastated by Aunt Connie's death. Or perhaps she was behaving oddly because Sophie is going to be forced to undergo some bizarre Scribbly Gum Island initiation ceremony, with chanting and incense and walking across hot coals. Or maybe the whole family is going to confront her about Aunt Connie's will. It will be like an intervention, or a mock courtroom, with Veronika presiding as judge. Sophie will be found guilty, of course. 'We find the defendant GUILTY as charged!' They will blindfold her and frogmarch her to the highest point of the island where they'll toss her over to certain death on the vicious rocks below. After all, the family is probably perfectly capable of murder. They're all a bit strange. Look at their mysterious history. Look what happened to Alice and Jack-the last non-family members to live on the island! But then, against all odds, Sophie will survive! She'll need extensive plastic surgery, of course, and months later she'll come back even more beautiful than Grace (but essentially still Sophie) to confront them all with their crime. 'Gad, who is that intriguing woman?' Callum will say, peering through his eye-glass, inexplicably dressed and talking like a regency gentleman.

  Sophie chuckles out loud in the car at her own fantasies. She has a special, slightly dirty-sounding chuckle she only uses in private. As her mum always says, one of the advantages of being an only child is that you have no trouble amusing yourself.

  As she pulls off the freeway at the Glass Bay exit, Sophie feels her heart lift, like it did when she was a child and her parents were taking her for a day out on Scribbly Gum. At this point her father would always make the same joke. 'Only another hour to go, Soph!' when really they were only minutes away. Daddy was being a trickster!

  The opening bars of a new band's song comes on the radio and Sophie quickly flicks up the volume. A good omen. She's been listening out for the song for ages. She's in the early stages of falling in love with it, where she knows the chorus but not the verses and she makes up pretend words so she doesn't have to stop singing. She sings lustily, enjoying how stupid she must look to other people, with her mouth opening and shutting and her face twisting in rock-star anguish.

  By the time she pulls in at the ferry wharf she is in a fine and feisty mood.

  25

  Gublet McDublet was running away from home. He'd had enough of Mummy and Daddy and his best friend, Melly the Music Box Dancer.

  LEAVE ME ALONE, he wanted to shout, but you weren't allowed to shout. It wasn't nice. So he was going to live on the moon all by himself. It would be dark and cool and silent. He would be weightless and free, taking giant floating footsteps inside his big spacesuit.

  Or maybe he would just kill himself. Commit hari-kari like a Japanese samurai. Or put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. He hadn't really decided yet.

  Grace is brushing Jake's hair for Sophie's visit. It's raining hard now and Callum has gone down to the wharf to meet her with a big golf umbrella.

  It's the first time Grace has used the soft little blue hairbrush with the teddy bear on the handle. It came in the huge cellophane-wrapped basket she got from the girls at work. 'Ohhhh,' everybody said when she held up each new item.

  The baby seems to like having his hair brushed. He looks up at her with ruminative, wise-old-man eyes. He has an ugly pimply rash across both his cheeks, which is apparently very normal, according to Aunt Margie and Enigma, but Grace wishes he didn't have it at the moment. 'A face only a mother could love,' Ron said the last time he saw him, glancing briefly in the pram, and Grace was filled with a rage so murderous she had to avert her head.

  She brushes the baby's hair flat with a part down the side and his whole face is transformed into that of a 1950s geek. All he needs is the bow tie. She fluffs it back up again so he looks like a baby. His head is so soft.

  She imagines smashing his tender head with the side of the hairbrush, again and again and again. He would cry but he wouldn't try to wriggle away because he doesn't know how. He'd just lie there inert, while his head was transformed into a mess of blood and bone.

  Grace trembles. Her heart races.

  She stands up with the baby held lightly in her arms and walks rapidly to the pram. She breathes shallow short breaths as she places him flat on his back.

  The baby is crying as she walks carefully out of the room and stands in the hallway. She silently pummels her body with clenched fists, punching the tops of her arms and thighs, slapping herself across the cheeks. The pain is exquisite.

  After about a minute she stops. Her body aches, her cheeks sting. She breathes in deeply through her nostrils and then turns her head and practises smiling in the empty hallway-a warm, welcoming smile to no one.

  The baby wails. Outside, the rain picks up.

  'It's all right,' she says softly, to him and to herself. 'Everything is going to be all right. I'm going to find a way to fix it.' Sophie's coffee and walnut liqueur cake recipe had called for one cup of finely chopped walnuts. The sides of the cake are decorated with half-walnuts carefully pressed into the icing in a pretty pattern.

  It is an especially nutty cake, which is unfortunate because Grace has a life-threatening allergy to
nuts. If she eats even the tiniest mouthful of Sophie's cake she'll experience anaphylactic shock. Her throat and mouth will swell up, her heart will race and she'll collapse. Within seconds she'll be dead. She has something called an 'EpiPen', which must be jabbed into her leg, straight through her clothes, giving her a dose of adrenaline. 'Wham! Just like that scene in Pulp Fiction,' explains Callum, cheerfully demonstrating with his fist.

  'It's a beautiful cake,' says Grace. They are all standing in the kitchen observing Sophie's deadly offering and listening to the rain, which is now pounding down relentlessly. Grace is holding the baby up over one shoulder. The baby has a single drop of milk hovering on his bottom lip, and flushed cheeks. His arms flail. Sophie is entranced by the delicate curve of his floppy dark head.

  'All that work you put into baking it,' says Grace. 'I'm so sorry I can't eat it.'

  'I'm so sorry I brought it!' says Sophie, while Claire and Sven guffaw in her head.

  'It's not your fault,' says Callum. 'How would you have known?'

  The thing is that Sophie actually did know about Grace's nut allergy. Both Thomas and Veronika have on different occasions regaled her with the legendary story of Thomas's sixteenth birthday, when Grace had kissed a boy who had just finished eating three satay chicken skewers. There had been a terrifying, exciting race across the river on Uncle Jimmy's speedboat to the waiting ambulance. The boy she'd kissed had been quite traumatised by the event and later turned out to be gay. Apparently his mother still blamed Grace for what she considered to be her son's unfortunate choice of sexuality.

  But Sophie had forgotten all about the nut allergy when she'd made the cake.

  'Actually, I think I did know but I forgot,' she admits, and battles unsuccessfully with a blush. Too late. Here it comes. Oh shit! These are the worst situations, where she really isn't embarrassed. After all, it's perfectly understandable that she would forget Grace's allergy, and this sort of situation must happen to her all the time. She's like the growing gluten-free, wheat-free, dairy-free brigade, constantly having to say, 'Oh, no, I couldn't possibly eat that.' So even though it's a bit mortifying that her cake is so conspicuously nutty, she doesn't feel that bad. Unfortunately, the moment there is a likelihood that other people might conceivably think she could feel awkward, she blushes, and is therefore embarrassed by the blush, not the original situation.

  Yes, it is a cruel disorder.

  Her face throbs.

  Her neck burns and blotches.

  She watches Callum and Grace slide their eyes away to opposite corners of the kitchen. I'll take the twitch next time, thinks Sophie.

  'Thomas and Veronika both told me about the birthday party where you nearly died,' she says, talking normally, calling upon thirty years of blushing experience to get her through.

  'Aha! Satay-stick boy!' crows Callum, and he looks Sophie straight in the eye, grinning, as if she isn't blushing at all. 'I think Sophie is trying to bump you off, Grace. Lucky we uncovered her cunning plan. The walnuts all over the cake were a bit of a giveaway.'

  Oh bloody, bloody hell. She really, really likes him.

  'People forget about my stupid nut allergy all the time,' says Grace nicely, but still with that perceptible touch of ice. 'My own mother forgets. Please don't worry about it. Callum can have my piece. I'm still watching what I eat anyway. I'm trying to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight.'

  Grace is wearing jeans and a pristine long-sleeved white shirt. She is tall and slender and utterly perfect.

  'As long as he doesn't kiss you after he eats it,' teases Sophie, a bit daringly, as if they are all old friends. She stands there with her scarlet face, like a silly mask, resigned to it.

  'Actually, I never forget Grace's allergy. I'm in a constant state of terror I'll have to use the EpiPen on her,' says Callum, and Sophie, watching him watching Grace, sees that he truly adores his wife. Well, of course he does.

  'I'll have two, no, three pieces of cake,' he continues. 'Just so you don't feel bad, Sophie, but then I'll gargle with disinfectant.'

  'A disinfected mouth doesn't sound very kissable,' says Sophie.

  'Yes, I think I'd rather risk it with a walnut mouth.' Grace smiles and her whole face is transformed.

  There is a cosy moment of three-way camaraderie in the kitchen. Oh dear, thinks Sophie. I think I'm falling in love with both of them.

  But Grace's smile vanishes like sunlight obliterated by a cloud and she seems impatient. 'All right, well, why don't you two go and sit down in the dining room and I'll just finish off making the lunch. It's a pity the weather is so bad. Otherwise we could have sat on the balcony. Here, Sophie, would you like to hold the baby? He's just had his feed so he's in a good mood.'

  Before Sophie can answer, Grace dumps the baby in her arms.

  Sophie makes a strange 'ha!' sound and clutches the baby tight. Although she adores babies she is also terrified of them. As godmother to nine children (it's very expensive, and two of them she secretly dislikes, to her intense shame) she has extensive experience with first-time mothers. Generally, they are quite wearing. Sometimes they hand the baby over only to immediately snatch it back, and Sophie can always feel their eyes on her and their baby, watching her like a hawk, which only adds to her nervousness. Grace, however, instantly turns her back and is chopping an eggplant into cubes, the knife thudding hard against the cutting board, thud, thud, thud. Her back in the white shirt is very still; Sophie imagines all the muscles contracted. She feels sudden, unaccountable pity for Grace. What is it, honey? What's the matter? Well, how ridiculous. Grace is a woman leading a dream life.

  Callum leads Sophie into the dining room. She walks stiffly, imagining tripping or accidentally banging the baby's head against something. She's always slamming her own elbows against doorways. Callum and Grace probably wouldn't be quite as understanding as they were about the walnut cake if she smashed their baby's head. It's a relief when she is seated.

  The dining room, like the rest of the house, is elegant but austere, like a display home. There isn't enough real 'stuff' lying around. The colours are too neutral. The surfaces too shiny.

  'Do you like living here?' she asks Callum when she is settled with relief at the table, the baby a comforting weight in the crook of her arm.

  Callum sits at the head of the table, next to her. He's wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt with a T-shirt on underneath. His jaw is unshaven, unlike at the funeral. He obviously doesn't shave on the weekends. He's a big lumbering lump of a man really, but there is just something delicious about him. Oh for heaven's sake, Sophie! Get a grip. You obviously need to have sex with somebody, anybody, very soon. Celibacy is sending you mad.

  If you blush again I'll murder you.

  'I like living on the island,' says Callum. 'It's great. I'm not so fussed about living in my mother-in-law's house. It's all a bit stiff and clean for me. I grew up in a house with six boys.'

  'Five brothers!' Surely one of them is single. Another version of him! An identical twin, perhaps? Perfect! She hadn't made such a mistake in the cab. She'd just had a slight, understandable mix-up between brothers.

  'Yep. I'm the baby. We're all married with kids now. Jake is the youngest of sixteen grandchildren.'

  Of course not. There is no such thing as a single man. They're all gone. They were sold out by the early Nineties.

  'Gosh. Fifteen cousins.'

  Callum is refilling Sophie's wine glass with the sauvignon blanc. He takes a sip from his own glass and smacks his lips. 'Even a philistine like me can tell this is really good wine.'

  'I've been trained since birth. My parents used to take me on wine-tasting trips for school holidays.'

  'That's the difference. My parents took me to Budgewoi Caravan Park. Were you a spoiled little princess?'

  'If you hid a pea under my mattress I wouldn't sleep a wink.'

  This is most certainly not chemistry. This is a beautiful woman's husband who is so happily married he can afford to be nice to plain, single women
.

  Sophie looks down at the baby and finds herself doing that thing women do where they ask babies who can't talk questions meant for other people.

  'Who do you look like, Jake? Your mum or your dad?'

  Callum obligingly answers her, leaning forward to look at the baby in Sophie's arms. She can smell his aftershave. 'I'm hoping he'll get Grace's looks rather than mine, for obvious reasons. I don't think he really looks like either of us at the moment. I think he most closely resembles an elderly monkey.'

  'A little monkey, eh?' Sophie bares her teeth in a monkey-face and makes a chattering sound at Jake. The baby looks up at her with wandering dark eyes, and all of a sudden they pause and it's like he's caught sight of his first ever fellow human being. His eyes lock on to hers and a corner of his mouth curves up tentatively in a wonky attempt at a grin.

  'Was that a smile?' Callum leans forward on his chair, his arm pressing against Sophie's. 'I think that was his first smile!'

  Jake's eyes waver and then focus on Callum. He gives his father an even bigger lopsided smile. This time his eyes crinkle at the corners. Callum almost tips forward off the chair in ecstasy. 'Hello there, mate! You don't look like a monkey at all! No, you're a good-looking guy!'

  There is a tender, teary feeling in Sophie's chest.

  Grace walks in at that moment, carrying a gigantic platter of food.

  Callum grabs Grace around the waist. 'He smiled at us! You should have seen it. Sophie made a monkey face and he smiled for the first time! Do it again, Sophie!'

  Feeling like an idiot, Sophie makes a half-hearted monkey noise, thinking, I'm sure she's really going to appreciate missing her baby's first smile.

  But the effort of trying out brand-new facial movements has obviously tired Jake out and he is suddenly fractious. As Grace leans towards him he throws back his small head and gives a screeching, red-faced wail.

  'Oh,' says Grace.

  Sophie expects her to take the baby from her, but she just gives a wintry smile and sits down on the other side of the dining-room table, indicating the platter.