The Last Anniversary

She thinks maybe Aunt Connie had it exactly right after all.

‘Have you got to be somewhere?’ asks Ed, as he turns around and finds Sophie looking at her watch.

‘No,’ says Sophie. ‘Just checking the time.’

59

Grace is walking to the top of Kingfisher Lookout. She has the baby in a sling across her front and a backpack full of supplies, from a change of nappy to a sketchpad, just in case Gublet makes an appearance.

It’s only an hour to the top of the lookout but it’s been like packing for a month-long trekking expedition and Grace had begun to wonder if it was such a good idea. After all, it would be no problem finding somebody to watch Jake for a couple of hours, especially now that people are treating Grace like she’s made of glass. Veronika and Audrey have even offered to take him for a whole night, so that Callum and Grace can go and stay in a hotel and have a romantic dinner together. ‘I think it’s crucial for your relationship,’ Veronika had lectured. ‘You need to see yourself as Grace and Callum again, not just in your roles as parents. You have to work to keep the romance alive, you know; it’s not like in the early days when everything is just perfect and you can’t imagine arguing with the other person, or even being annoyed by them!’

‘You mean not like it is for you and Audrey,’ Grace had teased, and Veronika had grinned her new sheepish grin and said, ‘Well…yes, but anyway, love is a decision, that’s what Aunt Connie told me before she died. Actually, I don’t really know what her point was, do you?’

Grace hasn’t done much exercise since the baby was born. It’s a warm spring day and within a few minutes she can feel sweat trickling down her back. Her heart is thumping, her legs feel heavy and sluggish, the baby is a lumpen weight against her chest, while the backpack thuds uncomfortably against her shoulder blades, and she thinks miserably, ‘Oh God, I should just forget it!’ and then, ‘Oh, no, no, stop it!’ because she can feel the swirling blackness ready to suck her down and under and she’s been just managing to hold it at bay for the last few days, mainly through the rediscovery of mind-numbingly good sex.

She keeps on walking and thinks about that ridiculous woman yesterday saying piously, ‘Well, you know what, when I feel down, I just say to myself, Megan, every day is a gift.’ If it hadn’t been for the girl sitting to Grace’s left, who’d caught her eye and pointed discreetly at her mouth, mimicking retching, Grace might have walked out of the Glass Bay Postnatal Depression Support Group at that very moment. She had only agreed to go to it to please her mother and Callum. Laura was all for getting Grace straight onto Prozac, while Callum just wanted her to see a good doctor about it. Grace was steadfast: no drugs, no doctors. No drug could make her love her baby like a proper mother. No doctor could magically cure her. Besides which, she was feeling much better–and she didn’t have postnatal depression–she’d always been a grumpy, bitchy type of person. That was just her. The very thought of sitting in front of a doctor, with all that doctorly focus on her and her inappropriate feelings, made her feel unbearably trapped, like a pinned butterfly.

But when Callum came home with a yellow flyer pulled from the noticeboard of the Glass Bay fish and chip shop, she’d agreed to try out the support group–just once. That was the deal. At least the attention wouldn’t be on her alone.

Within ten minutes she had decided she absolutely wasn’t going to a second meeting, especially after pious Megan was followed by a pale wispy wraith of a woman who’d just had twins, and now had four children under the age of five, and a husband in the army who was likely to be shot at any moment in the Middle East. She talked apologetically about how some days she didn’t have time to brush her teeth and she felt really down and guilty about not coping. Grace shifted uneasily in her chair, thinking, Well, of course you can’t cope, you poor girl–for God’s sake, who in the world could! The government should give her a full-time nanny or something. How could Grace possibly make a comment after that?

But then another woman had said, ‘Well, this is going to sound really bad after what you’ve been going through, because I’ve only got one baby, who sleeps through the night, and a very supportive husband. I’m a corporate tax lawyer and I’ve actually always been quite vain about my time-management skills. I mean, I could achieve–but anyway, that’s why I don’t understand how this has happened.’ She had taken a deep breath and looked around at the group with a half-fearful, half-laughing expression. ‘Yesterday I sat at my kitchen table and stared at a packet of cream cheese for a whole hour.’

‘Oh!’ Grace leaned forward. She hadn’t intended to contribute a single word, except to compliment the host before she left on her chicken vol-au-vents (actually quite stodgy, far too much cheese) but the words were just tumbling out of her mouth. ‘That happened to me, but it was a carton of milk.’

‘Really?’ said the woman and clutched at her arm, as if Grace could save her. ‘Did it really? Because I thought I was going quite loony.’

And then pious Megan interrupted with some inane piece of advice and Grace sat back and felt teary. She didn’t know why it meant so much that a corporate tax lawyer had sat and stared at a packet of cream cheese for over an hour, and touched Grace’s arm, but it did, and when they talked about their next meeting Grace had found herself offering to bring along mini-quiches, so she guessed she was going again.

Their ‘group coordinator’ had talked about the importance of fresh air and sunshine and exercise. So, seeing as Grace was ignoring all her other advice about antidepressants, counselling and confiding in trusted family members, she had decided that the very least she could do was go for a walk.

She tightens the straps of her backpack, takes a deep breath and forces her body to move.

60

‘Do you think if we had a baby together it would blush and twitch?’

‘That’s a very strange sort of question.’

‘Well, do you think it would?’

‘Probably. We’d have to leave it out in the snow to die.’

‘Oh. That’s a bit sad.’

61

As the path up to Kingfisher Lookout starts to steepen, Grace feels her calf muscles tighten and her breathing get ragged. For God’s sake, she and Veronika and Thomas used to run up here without stopping. Veronika always won, of course.