The Last Anniversary (27 page)

‘The children don’t even care about the business,’ says Rose.

‘Grace is busy with the baby and her Gublet books, Thomas doesn’t even like coming to the island, and Veronika–’

‘Veronika is writing a book about Alice and Jack!’ says Enigma triumphantly. ‘She’s
very
interested. She wants to come and talk to me with a tape recorder. She even wanted to hypnotise me.’

‘Yes, and that’s going to be a problem, isn’t it. What are you going to say to her?’

‘Oh, I’ll waffle on!’

‘Yes, but we can’t let poor Veronika write a book of waffle, can we. That’s not fair. I think we should just tell them all the truth. Just sit them down one day and tell them all! I nearly told Sophie the other day.’

‘Rose!’

‘I can’t help it. All of a sudden I’m just tired of keeping it a secret. Let’s just tell them all. I don’t want them to hear it after I die.’

‘Not till they’re forty,’ says Enigma stubbornly. ‘That’s the rule.
I
had to wait till I was forty, and I’m what you could call the star of the story!’

‘Speaking of Veronika and her book,’ says Margie. ‘I forgot to tell you that she’s been placing ads asking for anyone with information relating to Alice and Jack to come forward. Well, apparently she’s been getting a few responses.’

‘Kooks!’ says Enigma. ‘Veronika is a naughty girl. She shouldn’t have done that. All the kooks will be coming out of the woodwork! Remember the time that psychic wrote us that weirdo letter telling us she’d dreamed that Alice’s body was “somewhere mossy”? Connie laughed so much that Jimmy had to get her a glass of water.’

‘Yes, well, one of the kooks says he’s going to come to the Anniversary Night and give Veronika this information in person.’

Enigma chortles. ‘Well, that should be good for a laugh.’

‘Mmmm,’ says Margie. ‘Apparently he insinuated on the phone that he was related to Alice and Jack in some way and that he might therefore be entitled to some sort of “compensation” for all the money we’ve made from the story. Veronika says he sounded a bit creepy.’

‘Well, just let him try, eh!’ says Enigma.

‘What if the only way to disprove this fellow is by actually telling the truth?’ asks Rose.

‘Oh, well, as long as he’s forty,’ says Margie dryly. ‘That’s the rule.’

‘The skinnier you get, the cheekier you get,’ says Enigma.

‘If this chap turns up, we’ll get Connie’s solicitor onto him. Ian! He’s a clever boy. He’ll soon set him straight.’

‘Ian doesn’t know the truth.’

‘He knows the law–and the law is on our side.’

‘I don’t know that the law actually
is
on our side,’ says Margie doubtfully.

‘Of course it is!’ says Enigma comfortably.

Margie scoops cake mixture into a tin. ‘I hope so, Mum.’

Rose cracks another egg and thinks of Connie at nineteen, her young, strong, determined face in the moonlight, saying,

‘Neither of us is going to jail, you ninny!’

She looks down into her bowl and sees that a piece of eggshell has fallen into the yolks. ‘Oh sugar.’

‘O
h my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.’

‘So I take it you found that–satisfying?’

‘Satisfying! Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my
God
!’

‘Gosh.’

‘I just had no idea! I’m furious with myself! All those years I wasted with big hairy apes! What a fool! Why didn’t I see?’

‘Well, I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but you know it’s not necessarily like this with
every
woman. It might be just this particular woman.’

‘Oh, I only want this particular woman.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh my God, really!’

‘T
he gardener will be better in bed.’

‘He’ll have filthy fingernails.’

‘Who cares about the sex? She wants to have babies! She’s got to get all practical and hard-headed and pick the right father for her children.’

‘I just never saw Sophie with a solicitor. I always thought she’d be with an arty type.’

‘The gardener sounds a bit backward if you ask me. What about that juvenile staring competition?’

‘I thought that was sexy!’

‘I thought it was weird. And he made those disgusting sandwiches for her.’

‘Yes, Sophie has to have a man who can cook! What are they going to eat for dinner? Novelty cakes?’

‘She’s got to have a man who can match her intellectually.’

‘Oh, and when did Sophie become such an intellectual giant? She watches reality TV!’

‘The point is, she can’t make any decisions until she sleeps with them.’

‘She can’t sleep with both of them!’

‘She’s been celibate for years. She needs to sleep with
someone
!’

‘What if she gets pregnant and she doesn’t know who the father is?’

‘DNA testing.’

‘Which one makes her laugh?’

‘Which one turns her on the most?’

‘Which one has the smallest head?’

‘
What
?’

‘That’s what my grandmother always said to me, “Marry a man with a small head.” She said, “You’ll thank me when you’re in labour.”’

Sophie’s high-school girlfriends rock back and forth, their faces creased like monkeys with uncontrollable, alcohol-fuelled mirth, as gale after gale of laughter sweeps the table. They’re out to dinner at a Korean restaurant where you sit cross-legged on the floor around a low table. Sophie’s love life is the favoured topic of conversation. There are detours: a five-year-old’s sudden tantrum about going back to kindergarten after the holidays (‘No, I’ve already done school, thank you, Mummy.’), a husband’s sudden tantrum over a scheduled-for-months vasectomy (‘He’s scared his personality might change, like the dog’s.’), a ferocious childcare centre manager, a senile mother-in-law, an outrageous parking ticket, an outrageous request for oral sex (‘We’d been arguing the entire night. I seriously think his main objective was to shove something in my mouth to shut me up.’). However, no matter how hard Sophie tries to divert them they continually come back to the Sweet Solicitor/ Gorgeous Gardener conundrum. Sophie is the only unmarried, childless one in this unusually fertile circle of friends, and she is therefore the sole representative of her particular lifestyle choice. (Choice? Is it a choice? They all
act
like it’s her choice.) She earns the most money, she’s slept with more men, travelled more and seen more movies. (Apparently you can’t go to the movies any more after you have children. Sophie keeps asking what about babysitters but her friends just exchange gently patronising ‘she’ll learn!’ looks.) Whenever she is with this particular group Sophie swings constantly back and forth between pride and shame. You’re a high-powered career woman. You’re a dried-up desperado who can’t find a man. You’ve succeeded. You’ve failed. You’re the odd one out. You’re the special one.

She doesn’t want to talk any more about Rick or Ian. Mention of their names makes her feel obscurely guilty.

‘I got my training for doing the tours of the Alice and Jack house the other day,’ she says, and is pleased when she sets off a new flurry of conversation.

‘Ooh, did you learn any inside information?’

Sophie chooses her words carefully, torn between the desire to show off with some juicy gossip and island loyalty. ‘Not really, although sometimes I think the old ladies know more than they’re telling me.’

‘My nana always insisted it was something to do with the two sisters who found the baby. She said she remembered when it happened and looking at the photos of them in the newspaper and thinking the older one had shifty-looking eyes.’

Sophie jumps to defend her fairy godmother. ‘That’s Aunt Connie, and she had lovely honest brown eyes. She’s the one who left me the house!’

‘She’s also the one who wrote you the letter talking about your Mystery Man, isn’t she! I’m positive she meant the gardener.’

And they’re off again. They don’t really need Sophie there at all. They go on and on. Sophie quietly gets the attention of the waiter and orders more wine. While she is doing this it is agreed that tossing a coin would be the most sensible idea. If it’s heads, it’s a win for intellect and Ian. If it’s tails, it’s a win for sex appeal and Rick. A gold two-dollar coin is tossed high above the table and spins down to land with a splash in somebody’s goat curry.

‘Which one were you hoping for before it landed?’ they all yell, excited by their clever psychological ploy. ‘Whoever you were hoping for is the one you LOVE.’

Sophie thinks, Gosh, mothers really are such cheap drunks. She says truthfully, ‘But I wasn’t hoping for either of them.’

They’re cross with her. ‘Come on. Of course you were. You can tell us. We’re your friends! What were you thinking about?’

She was actually thinking about how that pale blue jumper that everyone said really suited her would be the perfect thing to wear when she went around to Callum and Grace’s place the next night. Not that it matters what she wears, of course, but still, that blue jumper will be just right.

She says, ‘I was wondering about who was going to get voted off on the next episode of
Survivor
.’

They all groan. ‘She’s not even blushing,’ says someone disappointedly.

The two-dollar coin is carefully fished out from the bottom of the goat curry. It’s tails. Rick’s supporters give each other high fives, a glass of wine is knocked over and the waiter arrives to ask hopefully if maybe they’d like him to bring the bill soon?

Sophie is over for dinner and Grace has let Callum light the fire for the first time since moving into her mother’s place; the living room is all cosy, crackling shadows. Grace’s mother only ever lit the fire when they had guests, and the next morning she would be up early, marching around with a can of hissing air-freshener held at arm’s length, throwing open windows and pulling off cushion covers to be washed. But it’s only a house, and Laura is so far away, on a Greek island complaining about fatty moussaka and pretending to be a different sort of mother.

(Why does no one say what they must all be thinking? Why does no one ask the question: What sort of mother decides to take a twelve-month around-the-world holiday a few weeks before her only daughter gives birth to her only grandson? And what sort of daughter has a mother like that?)

Sophie is holding Jake and sitting very comfortably on Grace’s mother’s sofa, looking pretty and cheerful in a blue top. She is playing a game with the baby where she lifts him up under his armpits so his splayed legs dangle and then she buries her nose in his stomach, strands of her hair brushing against his nose. Each times she does this she makes a strange sound like: ‘goobidy goobidy DOO!’ Jake finds this side-splittingly funny. He convulses with anticipatory laughter as soon as she drops her head. Callum is on his knees next to them, poking away unnecessarily at the fire and laughing whenever Jake laughs.

Grace walks into the room with a heavy carafe of mulled wine and feels as though her whole body has come out in an intensely itchy rash. There is a dry clicking sound at the back of her throat. She wants to roll around on the carpet like a rabid dog. She wants to throw the carafe against the wall and see the hard glass shatter into thick fragments. She wants to scream something incoherent and stupid at them.

She says, ‘Would you like to give him his bath, Sophie?’

Sophie puts the baby back in her lap and looks up at Grace in the flickering firelight. ‘Oh, no, I’m not trained! I’d be frightened I’d drown him.’

Well, you’d better learn, stupid fucking bitch, with your fucking sweet dimples, or what are you going to do when I’m not around?
It’s like there’s a mad old drunk lolling around in her head who suddenly lurches up to scream obscenities. What happens if she ever breaks free and takes control of Grace’s tongue?

She smiles. ‘Callum will show you what to do. He’s better at bathing him than me.’

Perfect. The two of you together in a steamy bathroom with adorable splashing child away from me, away from me, away from me.

But then Callum stands up, all courteous crinkly eyed smiles, all handsome, new-age, home-improvement-show Daddy, and says, ‘Why don’t you two relax and have a drink while I give him his bath?’

BECAUSE I don’t want to sit and make conversation with Little Miss Sweet and Clean and Cheery, can’t you see that, can’t you see that, I NEED, I NEED, I NEED…

She says, ‘Sophie would probably like to see Jake have his bath,’ and this time her voice has an unmistakeable, socially inappropriate hard edge that causes Callum’s lips to draw together in that horrible hurt-little-boy way. Sophie stands up, pulling at the sleeves of her jumper so they cover her hands, like a teenage schoolgirl, and says, ‘I’ll come and hand you towels or something, Callum.’

Grace watches them go and thinks, I can’t take this much longer.

Sophie sits on the edge of the bathtub holding the baby while Callum tests the bathwater with his elbow. ‘So, how’s it going with your two suitors?’ he says. ‘Anyone in the lead?’

‘They’re neck and neck.’

It’s unsettling being in this small, brightly lit room with Callum. She can see a tiny shaving nick on his neck. He’s a very large man. She feels an irresistible urge to place the flat of her hand against his chest.

‘Have you got certain performance criteria? You can start undressing him, by the way.’

Sophie carefully lays the baby on his back on the change table and begins unbuttoning his suit. The fragrance of baby-bath liquid fills the room.

‘Oh yes, I’ve got them both jumping through hoops,’ she says. ‘I hold up scoreboards at the end of each date.’

‘I remember there was a girl in my school called Maria who kept an exercise book rating all the boys she kissed,’ says Callum. ‘Here–let Dad.’ Jake is starting to squirm crossly as Sophie pulls ineffectually at his singlet. Callum pulls the singlet up and over Jake’s head in one swift movement.

‘Were you in Maria’s scorebook?’

‘Oh, every guy in year ten was in Maria’s scorebook. We were all allowed one attempt. I thought I’d done pretty well but apparently not. I got four out of ten.’

‘Oh no!’

‘Yep. According to the comments, I went in too soon with the tongue. Maria specified a five-second lead-up. Also, I forgot to take my chewie out of my mouth. Apparently girls don’t like that.’

Sophie guffaws. ‘Oh, well, I’m sure you’ve improved dramatically.’ She looks up at him. He is holding Jake’s naked, mottled little body close to his chest. He has large hands; one hand nearly covers Jake’s back. The bathroom is filled with scent and steam and the surprisingly loud sound of running water.

‘Let’s hope so.’ Their eyes hold for just a fraction longer than is appropriate. Sophie drops her eyes and thinks, married, married, married.

Don’t go there, thinks Callum, stroking his son’s soft, vulnerable head.
Don’t go there, you fool!