The Last Anniversary

She doesn’t want Margie to blame herself, but she won’t, surely she won’t, and everybody will say to her, ‘Oh Margie, she had the note from you right there in her pocket. It was perfectly clear! She must have been distracted and forgot. It was just a tragic accident.’ But will Callum say, ‘Yes, but she never forgets’? It’s true that Grace never eats a piece of food cooked by anyone else without double-checking, without saying, ‘I’m sorry, but could you please double-check with the chef.’ Sometimes even after everybody has confirmed she’s safe she will put a morsel to her nose between pinched fingers and sniff like a suspicious dog and feel a tingle of danger at the back of her throat, a vision of a quick stir with a spoon covered in quivering golden drops of deadly sesame oil, and she’ll drop it back onto her plate and say, ‘Mmmm, I don’t trust it,’ and Callum will have to be restrained from marching into the kitchen to grab the chef by the throat and demand explanations. ‘My wife’s life is depending on you,’ he sometimes says to waitresses, so melodramatic and sweet. And he gets so mad when Grace forgets to take her EpiPen out with her, and if they’re going out to dinner he makes her pull it out of her handbag and show it to him before they leave the house. But nobody will be surprised that she didn’t bring it to the Anniversary Night. And Callum will be upset at first, but it will just be the shock really, and he’ll know deep in his heart that he and the baby are going to be better off with Sophie.

Sophie will talk about music with him and go dancing with him and swing her hips and jiggle her shoulders and move like a woman, not a cardboard cut-out. Sophie will make friends with that huge social circle of Callum’s friends. She’ll go to those loud, happy, tipsy BBQs without feeling sick flutters in her stomach, and she won’t just find a chair and sit there with her arms and legs not quite right, just sitting there for the whole night, holding her drink too tightly, worrying that everybody thinks she’s a cold snobby bitch and secretly thinking the steak marinade has too much salt in it. Oh no, Sophie will be flitting from circle to circle, laughing and chatting and making everybody chuckle. She’ll know all their names and all their kids’ names. She’ll have long, chatty conversations on the phone with Callum’s lovely mum, and say, ‘Oh, hi, Doris!’ She’ll love Jake like a proper mother and do tuckshop duty and throw birthday parties and jump up and down on the soccer field. She’ll blush and giggle and Jake will grow a foot taller than her and put his arm around her and say to his mates, ‘This is my mum.’ His darling little mum. And nobody will think all that much about Grace except to say, ‘Oh, what a terrible tragedy.’

Jake is with Grandma Enigma right now, wearing his red woollen hat. He’s warm and clean and fed and there are eleven lasagnes in the freezer and dozens of bottles of expressed milk, and all the washing is up-to-date and Sophie is just over there, the pretty pink Good Fairy waiting to step in, and Grace did the best she could but it wasn’t enough, she never felt it, she never felt a thing, and it will be such a glorious relief, such a release, like when the pain-reliever begins its soft, fuzzy drift through your bloodstream, like cool grass on your bare feet after white-hot sand, like sleep closing down your brain after a long, exhausting day.

She looks around her and all she can see are children with Melly the Music Box Dancer and Gublet faces, her own smiling creations mocking her for thinking she could be happy, and it seems to her that the children are the only ones who can truly see her despicable core, and she can see their eyes shining at her through their painted faces and they’re all saying, Yep, do it, Grace, do it, it’s time.

‘Bye everybody! So long! Au revoir!’

Gublet McDublet waved to all his friends from the window of his spaceship but nobody even lifted their head.

Melly the Music Box Dancer hadn’t been to see him all night. They were all too busy playing.

Ron runs towards the wharf. He’s going to take his jet-ski over, which means his clothes are going to be drenched, and if the cabbie at Glass Bay complains about him dripping river-water all over his cab he’s either going to put him in a headlock and threaten to kill him or else he’s going to give him all the money in his wallet and say, ‘Look mate, just take me to the Hilton, my wife is there with some hairy-chested, gold-medallion-wearing guy named Ron, which is my name. I know, I can’t f**king believe it either.’

He’ll tell him he’ll pay him double the value of any speeding tickets. Triple.

Do you want to come and watch? Was he for real? Had Margie got caught up in some weird trendy cult where they all practise…fetishes? Even the word ‘fetish’ makes him shudder. Ron does not like fetishes. He has no fetishes. He likes normal, straightforward Australian sex with a woman, and the woman should be his wife, and the woman shouldn’t sleep with anyone else but him, and afterwards they should have a bit of a cuddle and fall asleep in their own bed. Simple. Bloody hell. Why did he take such simple good things in his life for granted?

As he gets to the water he sees a familiar figure in the moonlight walking towards him.

‘What are you doing here?’ he calls out in surprise, but he doesn’t stop running long enough to find out.

Sophie has decided everybody on the island has had quite enough fairy floss and packed up her machine. All the children seem to be on sugar highs. Their colourful painted faces make them look like miniature demons and the older ones are running around in feral packs, making strange roaring sounds. Shouldn’t they be in bed? Callum’s jazz band has packed up their instruments, and loudspeakers are pounding out Latin American music. The street performers have all stopped performing. Sophie can see two clowns kissing passionately. There seem to be quite a lot of people trying out dirty dancing for the first time in their lives.

Sophie takes off her wings and puts a denim jacket over her dress. She had intended to find something to eat, but uncharacteristically she’s lost her appetite. All she feels like is more mulled wine–she’s drinking it like water. The more she drinks, the better it tastes. There is a gentle buzzing sound in her head.

It is so funny that both the eligible men in her life have been eliminated within half an hour of each other. Oh, it’s just hilarious! The girls are going to fall about laughing. Her life should be a sitcom it’s so funny. She giggles but it sounds like a hiccup. Or a sob.