The Last Anniversary

‘Get the ferry back if it’s raining,’ she tells him.

‘It’ll be fun in the rain.’

‘I can assure you it won’t.’

‘OK, Island Girl.’ He kisses her goodbye. ‘I’ll be home early.’

‘It’s OK,’ says Grace. ‘I’ve got lots to do.’

The first thing she does is spend an hour and a half staring at a milk carton.

It isn’t her intention to spend an hour and a half staring at a milk carton. It is an accident. After Callum leaves, it is as though a leaden blanket of silence shrouds the house. The silence is like a sound: a hollow, shrieking sound.

‘Right,’ Grace thinks, loudly in her head, busily, pretending not to notice the silence. ‘Lots to do before the baby wakes. First thing: marble cake.’

Living on the island means performing certain duties for the family business, and this afternoon Grace is giving a tour of the Alice and Jack house. Aunt Connie always insisted that the tours be given by someone who could claim a personal connection to the Munro Baby Mystery. She and Aunt Rose were the sisters who first discovered the Munro Baby, Grandma Enigma was the baby herself, Aunt Margie and Grace’s mother Laura were the Munro Baby’s daughters, while Grace and her cousins Veronika and Thomas were the grandchildren.

It’s been years since Grace has given a tour and she hopes she’ll remember her lines. She’ll have Jake with her, she remembers with a start. A real live baby. Before Aunt Connie had died, she’d suggested to Grace that she pop Jake in Enigma’s crib to give the tour an authentic touch. ‘You can bet your bottom dollar some silly ninny will ask if it’s the same baby,’ Connie had snorted, and slapped her thigh with a withered hand.

One of the responsibilities of giving the tour is making the marble cake to be left cooling on the kitchen table. It’s meant to be made to Alice’s original recipe, but every member of the Scribbly Gum family bakes a slightly different version. Grandma Enigma puts in two tablespoons of honey, while Aunt Rose likes half a teaspoon of grated nutmeg. Thomas uses one egg, Veronika uses two, and Grace uses three. Nobody, not even Laura, would ever dare to use a packet mix.

Marble cake, thinks Grace. You need to start the marble cake, now. But she just keeps sitting there, staring at the carton of milk that Callum used for his breakfast cereal and, of course, left sitting on the table.

She thinks through exactly what she needs to do:

Stand up.

Pick up the milk.

Walk to the fridge.

Open the fridge.

Place the milk in the fridge.

Close the fridge door.

But to do all that she needs her brain to send electrical impulses to her legs, her arms and her hands, and it seems that her brain is refusing to cooperate. She knows about electrical impulses from a science teacher from her school days who once set up an elaborate display of dominoes on the classroom floor in the shape of a human body. The idea was to demonstrate how your brain transmitted electrical impulses through your nerve cells. That’s how you moved.

Instead of toppling like dominoes, Grace’s nerves are rigid, waiting for electrical impulses that aren’t forthcoming. Her brain is having a black-out. It is quite possible that she has a brain tumour.

She needs to pick up that milk carton. She has things to do. She is very busy. Mr Callahan. That was the science teacher’s name. In her memory it was always winter when Mr Callahan taught science. He wore brightly coloured jumpers and often had a phlegmy, hacking cough that repelled the girls in his class. ‘Mr Callahan, maybe you could take some sort of medicine because that’s so disgusting!’

It must have taken him so long to set up all those dominoes before the class.

Grace looks at the milk carton and grief sweeps over her. She thinks of Mr Callahan’s excited pink face. That poor, sweet man. Some girl had flicked one of the dominoes before he’d finished his explanation. He had probably thought, Now this will intrigue them. This will stop all that talking and giggling!

Grace puts her head in her hands and weeps inconsolably for Mr Callahan’s disappointment.

Finally, she stops crying and looks again at the milk carton.

Move, she tells herself. Stand up. Put the milk in the fridge. Make the marble cake. Do a load of washing. He’ll be awake soon.

She reads, ‘If this product is not to your satisfaction, we will cheerfully refund your money.’ She imagines a cheerful lady, in a floral apron, cheerfully refunding her money. ‘There you go, dear! Can’t have you not happy!’

But I’m so unhappy. I’m so very, very unhappy.

The cheerful lady says, ‘Oh, sweetheart!’ and pats her hand.

Oh for Christ’s sake, now she is crying over some imaginary cheerful lady. She cries and cries and cries. Every tear is fresh, fat and salty. They run down either side of her nose and into her mouth.

Finally she stops, wipes the back of her hand across her face and looks again at the milk carton.

Stand up, Grace!

She glances at her watch. And that’s when she discovers it’s nine thirty. She claps her hand over her mouth. It can’t be right. It has only been five minutes. Ten at the most. But according to her watch she has been sitting in this chair, staring at a milk carton, for an hour and fifteen minutes.

How can she complain about Callum not doing enough around the house, if she spends her days staring at milk cartons?

The telephone rings and Grace’s nerve cells finally topple like dominoes. She gets to her feet, puts the milk in the fridge and calmly answers the phone.

‘Grace! Is it a bad time? A good time? How is the baby? Asleep? Awake? This is Veronika, by the way. I hate people who just expect you to know who it is, don’t you? Have you heard? Have you heard what Aunt Connie has done?’

Grace’s cousin Veronika rarely requires answers to her questions. ‘She’s like a breathless, busy little ferret!’ said Callum, fascinated, the first time he met her, as if Veronika was some unusual creature he’d seen on a nature programme. It is true that Veronika has sharp, pointy teeth and darting brown eyes.

That’s why I was crying, thinks Grace. I’m grieving for Aunt Connie. I miss Aunt Connie. Of course I do.

‘I know that she left her house to Thomas’s ex-girlfriend, if that’s what you mean. Your mum told me.’

‘Did your jaw drop? Mine did! Of all people: Sophie! A complete stranger! If it wasn’t for me, Aunt Connie would never have even known of Sophie’s existence! And then she just ignores her own flesh and blood!’