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.’