'The woman had balls,' agrees Veronika.
'Really?' Sophie widens her eyes. 'Gosh. How did Jimmy feel about that?'
'This isn't funny. She murdered my great-grandparents and she got away with it! She probably laughed all the way to her grave!'
Veronika blows her nose noisily and Sophie feels remorseful, because if Aunt Connie did kill Alice and Jack she'd find it more intriguing than dreadful. Murders that happened over seventy years ago don't seem quite as serious as murders that happen today. After all, the victims would be dead by now anyway, so the point seems sort of moot. But Veronika acts as if it all happened last week.
'Would you prefer a hot lemon drink to the wine?' Sophie asks Veronika.
'No,' snuffles Veronika. 'The wine is OK. Look, I want you to help me prove that Aunt Connie killed Alice and Jack. Then I'm going to write a book about it. I'll mention you in the acknowledgements, of course. You owe me. You wouldn't have got this house if it wasn't for me.'
'But how could I help you?' Sophie is aghast. It doesn't seem good etiquette to help prove someone a murderer after they've left you a house and a selection of potential new boyfriends.
'You can talk to my family. Rose and Enigma. Even Mum and Dad,' says Veronika. 'They're all hiding something. I know it. I've always known it. I used to hear comments all the time. Once I overheard Mum and Dad fighting and he said, "I could blow this whole Alice and Jack thing sky-high at any time," and Mum just laughed and said she didn't mind, it would be Aunt Connie he'd have to face. I confronted them of course, and they just laughed at me. It happened when I was about fourteen. I keep forgetting about it for years at a time and then remembering and getting angry. It's a cover-up! My own family is involved in a cover-up and I don't know the truth.'
Sophie thinks about how hurt Veronika would be if she knew what Enigma and Rose had said to her. Now Sophie is involved in the cover-up too. Even though she has no idea of exactly what she's covering up. It's quite exciting.
'I really think you should ask them yourself.' She tries to sound soothing and not patronising.
'Oh, you think I haven't? Like a million times? My family likes you better than they like me!' Veronika drains her wine glass and pushes it towards Sophie for a refill. 'Not one of them would back me up about Aunt Connie's will. They didn't want to help me contest it. They didn't want me to have the house. They wanted you to have it. They'd rather have you living here than me. I annoy them. I'm fundamentally annoying. Are we going to eat soon? Do you think you should check that chicken again?'
Veronika crunches her cough lolly between her teeth and looks meaningfully towards the oven, seemingly determined to prove that she is indeed fundamentally annoying.
At that moment the oven timer shrieks like a fire alarm and they both jump.
'I think Aunt Connie might be cross with us,' jokes Sophie a touch nervously as she opens the oven for the chicken.
Veronika shakes her fist at the ceiling. 'I'm going to prove you did it, Aunt Connie! You always told me I needed to focus; well, I'm focusing all right. I'm focusing on you! Murderer!'
Sophie puts the chicken on top of the stove, noting hopefully that it smells delicious, and watches Veronika curiously. 'Are you OK? You look a bit pale.' And you're acting even nut-tier than usual.
'I guess I shouldn't be drinking when I'm taking antibiotics.' Veronika's words are softening at the edges. 'Also, I think I forgot to eat today. Oopsie!'
And at that point her eyelids droop and the top half of her body tips forward in slow motion until her forehead rests gently on the table.
The next morning Sophie leaves Veronika sleeping in Aunt Connie's spare bedroom. She is lying flat on her back, breathing snuffily through her mouth, one thin arm thrown dramatically across her eyes as if she can't bear the sight of something. It's strange to watch Veronika sleeping; she's so rarely quiet. Watching someone sleeping, thinks Sophie, is a bit like sneaking through their house when they're not home. Sophie notices for the first time that Veronika has elfin, pointy-tipped ears and she feels a rush of motherly affection for her, so much so that she even considers tucking the blanket under Veronika's chin, except she doesn't want to risk waking her and feeling her affection evaporate.
After stealthily leaving a cup of tea, a glass of water and some Panadol next to Veronika's bed, she tiptoes out of the house. It's Sunday, and Sophie is meeting Grace for her first training session on the Alice and Jack tours.
She reaches the Alice and Jack house via the paved private footpath that snakes along the island shore. It still gives her a thrill to ignore the friendly but firm signs saying, 'Sorry! Only Scribbly Gum residents past this point!'
The river is different every day. Today it's grey-blue and choppy, like someone vigorously shaking out a picnic rug. A huge pelican makes an ungainly landing on the rocks just beneath her. 'Good morning!' calls out Sophie. The pelican modestly lowers its swooping beak and shoots her a glinting glance from its mean squidgy yellow eyes.
As she rounds the corner she sees Grace already waiting at the house. No baby. Callum must be minding him. Grace sits on the steps at the front of the house, wearing black jeans and a cream-coloured fleece, her hair scraped back from her forehead and tied in a single plait, looking like a supermodel in a perfume ad, but without a scrap of make-up. Each time Sophie sees Grace it takes a few seconds to adjust to her beauty. It really is a bit much first thing in the morning. Sophie goes to wave but then stops when she sees Grace's demeanour. She is sitting completely still, her hands resting limply on her knees, and the expression on her face is one of terrible desolation. Sophie feels a punch-in-the-stomach feeling of fear. She runs towards her. Something terrible must have happened. The baby? Callum?
'Grace?' Her voice cracks. 'Is everything OK?'
But Grace looks up and smiles her gorgeous glacial smile.
'Of course. Why?'
'You looked so sad. Actually, you looked devastated.' Grace stares at her with polite interest and Sophie feels as if she's just said something embarrassingly indiscreet.
'I must have been deep in thought.' Grace stands up, pulling on the knees of her jeans. 'I was trying to remember all the things I'm meant to tell you. Aunt Connie will be looking down at me, saying tch, tch, tch, if I get a word wrong.'
Oh, rubbish, thinks Sophie crossly. That was the saddest face I've ever seen. Who do these private people think they are?
'I wanted Margie to come and help me,' continues Grace.
'She does most of the tours these days. But she was off to some Weight Watchers all-day meeting today.'
'All day? On a Sunday?' says Sophie. 'Oh dear. I was going to go around after this and let Margie know that Veronika is sick in bed at my place-I mean Aunt Connie's place-' She stops, feeling awkward about claiming ownership of Connie's house.
'It's all right. It is your place now. Not Aunt Connie's.' Grace gives Sophie a half-glimmer of a smile. 'You should be the one looking devastated if you're nursing Veronika.'
Sophie laughs, somewhat overenthusiastically. She tries to encourage these moments when it seems Grace is relaxing enough to tease her. It gives her a glimpse of the friend she could be, if she'd just loosen up a bit, like that day when they laughed at the kookaburras. (Maybe they should get drunk together next and talk about sex?) 'Veronika is more manageable when she's not talking. Actually, last night she was talking about this book she wants to write. She has a theory that Aunt Connie killed Alice and Jack and hid their bodies. She thinks Connie was having an affair with Jack.'
Grace doesn't look especially interested by this. 'Veronika has been coming up with new, more outlandish theories for what happened to Alice and Jack since we were children. I don't think it was anything as exciting as that. I think they just did a runner. They were behind on their rent. People were abandoning houses all the time during the Depression.'
'But what about the boiling kettle? The cake! All their clothes still in the cupboards. And why would they abandon their baby like that?'
Grace shoves her hands in the pockets of her fleece and gives Sophie an odd, narrow-eyed look. 'Maybe it was a split-second decision. Maybe the baby was crying and crying and Alice couldn't stand it any more. Maybe she thought she was going mad. Maybe she thought the baby would be better off with someone else. Maybe she just didn't like her baby!'
Is she imagining it, or is there a note of rising hysteria in Grace's voice?
'Maybe,' agrees Sophie gently. This family! Was it in their genes? Something in the water? In-breeding? Surely Grace wasn't implying that she didn't really like her own beautiful, kissable, heart-melting little baby?
'Veronika is just so irritating sometimes.' Grace brushes away an invisible insect. 'Aunt Connie always said it would be terrible for business if the Alice and Jack mystery was ever solved. She said the whole point of a mystery is that it's unsolved. So, look, shall we get started?'
'Sure.'
'Here's the script you'll have to learn off by heart. Aunt Connie didn't approve of reading from notes. I used to scribble cheat notes on my hands.'
She hands over a typed document and Sophie reads: '(SPEAK LOUDLY, CLEARLY AND DRAMATICALLY. IF ANYONE TALKS DURING YOUR PRESENTATION, STOP AND LOOK POLITELY AT THEM UNTIL THEY STOP.) Welcome to the home of my great-grandparents, Alice and Jack Munro! (OPEN ARMS WIDE AND SMILE.)'
'You'll have to take out all the references to great-grandparents, of course,' says Grace. 'Even though you are practically family now.'
Is that an edge to Grace's voice? Sophie looks up, but Grace just surveys her impassively.
Sophie continues to read: 'Some of you may have heard of a famous, mysterious ship called the Mary Celeste.'
'You'll see the script makes a lot of comparisons to the Mary Celeste,' comments Grace. 'It's like Scribbly Gum's "Sister Mystery". I've got an old book of Aunt Connie's about the Mary Celeste if you'd like to read it. Anyway, come in.'
Grace turns and opens the door to the Alice and Jack house with a large old-fashioned key and Sophie feels a frisson of excitement. All the other times she's been in the house she's been one of a shuffling, head-craning tour group.
'Did Thomas ever give you a private tour of the house?' asks Grace as they enter the gloomy hallway.
'No. He didn't even like coming to the island much. I could never understand it. It's so beautiful.'
'I think it's different when you grow up somewhere like this. It's like people who grow up in a small country town and want to escape to the big city. When I was thirteen I wrote in my diary, "This island is like jail" and drew a very dramatic picture of me peering out from behind bars. Connie gave us each a boat-just a second-hand tinny-for our sixteenth birthdays, so then at least we could come and go as we pleased, more or less. But mostly we just imagined how great it would be to order pizza whenever you wanted, or go to the movies without travelling for two hours.'
'I can remember seeing the three of you playing when I visited the island as a child,' says Sophie. 'Have I ever told you that? The last ferry was leaving and I looked back and saw you all playing some sort of game on the beach. I was so jealous. I thought you were like children living in a storybook.'
But Grace, in her disconcerting way, stops acting like a normal person and abruptly gets back to business.
'OK. Rule number one. Keep an eye on your tour group at all times. We've had a lot of trouble with people trying to steal souvenirs. It's always the most unlikely people too. Once, Veronika insisted this old lady empty her handbag and she'd taken two lace doilies. She said they reminded her of her childhood home.'
'Oh, poor thing,' says Sophie.
'Rule number two. You probably know this from when you've done the tour yourself. Nobody except you goes into the corded-off rooms. They have to stand in the doorway while you point things out. Some of them will beg you to let them in. I remember one man even offered Thomas a bribe.'
'He told me about that. He was horrified, of course.'
'Yes, he's always been a good boy. If it was Grandma Enigma taking the tour, she'd probably have negotiated for more.'
Grace unhooks the red cord from the doorway of the kitchen and gestures for Sophie to go ahead of her.
'Now, for a proper Aunt Connie-authorised tour, you should really come in early and light the fuel stove, and then just before the tour starts you put the kettle on.' She gestures at the large copper kettle sitting on top of the squat fuel stove. 'That way, as you're leading the group down the hallway the kettle can actually be whistling while you're saying, "As sisters Connie and Rose walked down the hallway they could hear the sound of the kettle boiling and smell a freshly baked cake. Nothing seemed amiss." But, to be honest, I think Margie is the only one who still bothers with actually boiling the kettle these days. The one thing you do have to remember is to cook the marble cake. The brochure says it's made to the original recipe but I'm afraid that's slightly misleading. Well, completely misleading. We all have our own versions. I'll give you my recipe.'
'Oh, I'm sure I could find a good packet mix for marble cake,' says Sophie.
Grace laughs politely as if she's making a joke, and Sophie thinks, Oh dear. She tiptoes reverently across the brown lino floor of the kitchen. 'It gives me goose-bumps with just us being in here.'
'Probably because it's freezing.' Grace bounces up and down on the balls of her feet, her hands tucked into her armpits. 'So, when you're describing the kitchen you leave the chair and the bloodstains until last. Explain how Alice had to cope without running water or electricity or food processors or microwaves. No fridge. They didn't even have an icebox. There's something called a Drip Safe out on the veranda. If you've got any women over seventy in your group, expect lots of interruptions. They'll want to tell you about how their lives during the Depression were even harder than Alice's. It's a mistake to look in the slightest bit interested. They'll never shut up. Aunt Connie used to say, "You must tell me about that after the tour." By the way, make sure you don't touch anything while you're walking around the kitchen. People take the "nothing has been touched" line very seriously.'
'Nothing has been touched, has it?' asks Sophie, who is one of those people.
'Margie does the dusting and she's very careful. But Enigma is picking up things all the time, and once Veronika was doing the tour and she tripped over the upturned chair and knocked the crossword and pen flying. So, I'd say the crime scene has been pretty well contaminated.'
Sophie looks closely at the crossword sitting on the scrubbed kitchen table. The page from the newspaper is folded into a square and a Bic pen is sitting on the paper. Whoever was doing the crossword was halfway through writing out the word 'brilliant' in 3 across.
'I wonder if it was Alice or Jack doing the crossword.'
'Jack, I would think, while poor Alice was slaving away baking the cake.'
'It looks like a woman's handwriting to me.'
'Does it?' Grace makes a non-committal sound and continues on with her instructions. 'So, once you've painted a picture of domestic bliss, you point out the chair and the blood stains. Somebody will ask how you can be sure they're blood stains. Just give them a frosty look and say, "We can't be sure. We can't be sure about anything in this house except that it's a mystery."'
Sophie crouches down to examine the trail of brownish stains leading from the back door to the chair. 'It doesn't look like enough blood for somebody to die.'
'I'm quite sure Aunt Connie didn't kill anybody,' says Grace. 'Veronika just can't forgive her for leaving her house to you. Shall we do the bedroom next?'
The bedroom is tiny, almost filled by a double bed with a pale pink eiderdown. Next to the bed is a wash stand with a basin and jug, and, of course, the crib.
'Make sure you point out the indentation in the pillow where the baby's head was,' says Grace. 'They love that.'
Sophie peers in the crib. 'Actually, I can't see it.'
Grace puts her hand in the crib and smooths out a hollow in the shape of a baby's head. 'There you go.'
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Sophie shakes her head and laughs. 'You're starting to spoil the magic.'
'Aunt Margie washes the linen every month.'
'Oh.' Sophie pauses. 'I wonder how your Grandma Enigma feels when she sees this crib,' she says to Grace. 'Her parents obviously cared for her and she never knew them, or even knew what happened to them.'
'Oh, sometimes she pretends to get all sentimental about it, but really she loves being the Alice and Jack baby. Wait till you see her swanning around at the Anniversary next month.'
'Maybe, deep, deep down in her subconscious she's still yearning for her real mother,' says Sophie. 'They say babies can recognise their mother's voice by the time they're born.'
'Babies don't care who looks after them, as long as they're fed. And clean.'
'You don't think Jake would miss you if you disappeared?'
'He wouldn't miss me in the slightest.'
'Oh, of course he would!'
'He wouldn't. He'd grow up and he wouldn't remember a thing about me.'
'Well, maybe not consciously.'
'So do you think adopted children are all subconsciously yearning for their real mothers?'
Grace looks far too involved in this conversation. It's so strange the way one minute she's distant and the next she's practically interrogating Sophie. Oh, God, was Grace adopted? Has Sophie insulted her by implying she is psychologically damaged?
'No, I didn't mean that. I don't know what I meant. I don't really know anything about babies.'
Grace tucks in a corner of the mattress in the crib and doesn't look at Sophie. 'Would you like to have one?'
Gosh. Here comes the job interview again.
'Yes. Very much. But I can't seem to find a man to have one with and my biological clock is ticking very nervously. I'm thirty-nine. I might have to accept I'm probably going to miss the baby boat.'
Blab, blab. Reveal your deepest fears, why don't you? And meanwhile Grace won't even tell you how she feels about the WEATHER.
'But you must have lots of men interested in you.'
'Well, thank you, but no, not really.' Your husband's hand brushed against mine the other night. Does that count? 'I seem to have been going through a very long dating dry-spell. Although of course, I told you, I've been asked on dates by two separate men in the last few weeks.'
The Last Anniversary Page 20