The Last Anniversary

Sophie’s Dad’s name is Hans. Hans and Gretel. When they were teenagers they had mutual friends who found the idea of them becoming a couple so uproarious that they engineered a meeting. Hans and Gretel were determined not to like each other but accidentally fell hopelessly in love the moment they were simultaneously pointed out by chortling friends on opposite sides of the Prince Albert Park ice-skating rink. If it had been a movie, it would have switched to slow motion and a romantic soundtrack as Hans and Gretel glided over the ice into each other’s arms. In reality, neither of them had been skating before, so they bravely made their way across the rink with spaghetti legs and flailing arms, met in the middle, went to shake hands and crashed to their bottoms on the ice. ‘I hit my tailbone,’ said Gretel. ‘I was in excruciating pain but I was so blissfully happy it was like I was drunk. I knew, you see, and I knew he knew too. I quickly peeked a look at my watch so I’d always remember the exact moment that I met my husband. Twenty past two, eleventh of June, 1962.’

It doesn’t matter how many times Gretel tells Sophie this story, they both still sniff at the end. Not that it takes much to make mother or daughter sniff. They are, after all, addicted to anything romantic: romantic comedies, regency romances, romantic TV ads.

The Hans and Gretel romance ended with them living happily ever after–well, pretty much, anyway. The only mildly unhappy thing in their lives is that they couldn’t have any more children after Sophie. Both Hans and Gretel came from small families and they had planned to have ‘a few dozen kids’, but as her mother says cheerfully, it just wasn’t meant to be, and besides which they hit the jackpot first time.

It seems to Sophie that her parents are the sort of parents who should have had a whole brood of shouting, messy, sticky-fingered children. Her mum should have been one of those distracted mums serenely presiding over a crammed table, dishing out gigantic, nutritious casseroles, ruffling one kid’s hair, slapping another one’s knuckles. Her dad should have been one of those dads flipping sausages on the BBQ in between tossing kids in the air like juggling balls and saying funny things to visitors like, ‘Who are you? You one of mine?’ while his own children squirmed, ‘Aww, Dad!’ Sophie herself would have been the perfect older sister: kind and loving, firm but fair. She would have let her younger sisters use her make-up under supervision and dispensed judicious dating advice. She would have driven her dear little brothers to their soccer games and helped them with their homework. She probably would not have had a blushing problem if she had been an older sister.

But instead there is just Hans, Gretel and Sophie. They are like three guests at a party where no one else has turned up, doing their best to create the impression of a much larger, rowdier group, and doing so well that it turns out to be the party everyone is sorry they missed. People always comment on how extraordinarily close a family they are, how much fun they have, how they seem like three best friends. When Sophie was a child, her friends were thunderstruck when she invited their parents to join in with games, just like her own parents did. She thought all parents were just extra-large-sized kids. (How she blushed when this terrible faux pas was pointed out to her. ‘Mum isn’t even allowed inside the cubby house, Sophie. She can’t play with us. That’s sort of…weird.’)

This Thursday night the Honeywells are trying out a new restaurant at the quay, with ceiling-to-floor windows revealing the white sails of the Opera House like a gigantic, gold-lit sculpture. The three of them sit in grave silence, studying heavy, hard-bound menus, with sighs of indecision and lots of flipping back and forth of pages. They put their menus down, frown, pick them up again and continue flipping. Finally, hands clasped over closed menus, they each present their selections as if they are explaining complex mathematical solutions.

‘Confit of Tasmanian ocean trout with roe,’ says Gretel. ‘Followed by marinated scampi with pawpaw, cucumber and tonburi.’

Sophie and Hans shake their heads in admiration.

‘Salad of sea scallops,’ says Sophie. ‘Followed by–if you’re thinking the salmon, Dad, you’d be wrong–lobster ravioli with tomato and basil vinaigrette!’

‘Oh, no!’ Her father puts a hand to his forehead. ‘I had the ravioli!’

‘Back to the drawing board, darling,’ says Gretel.

There is a rule that nobody ever has the same dish. It is an unfair rule because Hans always chivalrously insists that Gretel and Sophie say their choices before him.

He heaves a dramatic sigh, pushes his glasses back up his nose and picks up his menu, squeezing his bottom lip with two fingers. In the meantime Sophie’s mother has tipped slightly back on her chair with a dazed expression on her face. It means that a conversation at the next table has caught her attention. She, like Sophie, is an avid eavesdropper.

Sophie looks to see who she is listening in to. It is clearly a family group. Grandparents, daughter and son-in-law, or son and daughter-in-law (Gretel will confirm in a few minutes), together with a silent, unseen baby in a pram. Sophie can sense by the way they are all sitting slightly self-consciously, with their heads cocked towards the pram, that the baby is a new addition to the family.

It is bad enough that Sophie’s parents have only one child, but now they are in their early sixties, when they can quite reasonably expect to be grandparents, their only daughter isn’t even in a relationship. Sophie’s mother has a group of friends who she has been playing tennis with for over twenty years and Gretel is the only one in that group who isn’t a grandma. Sophie can’t bear to think about her mother politely listening to all those women showing off about their grandchildren. The worst part of it is that her parents never put pressure on her. There are never any loaded questions like, ‘Met anyone interesting lately?’ Sophie would feel less guilty if Gretel was like her friend Claire’s pitiful mother, who nags and cajoles and begs, accusing Claire of deliberately not having children just to spite her.

‘The mozzarella and chilli salad followed by the slowly poached veal shank, if anyone is still interested.’ Hans closes his menu. ‘Your turn to choose the wine, Soph.’

Gretel leans forward and lowers her voice to a hoarse secret-agent whisper. ‘First night out with colicky new baby,’ she informs Sophie. ‘Mother-in-law about to make daughter-in-law cry.’

‘Fascinating.’ Hans doesn’t approve of his wife and daughter’s eavesdropping habits. ‘Do you think we could concentrate on our own family now?’