The Last Anniversary

She says, ‘So, but apart from the food you’re enjoying yourself?’

Her mother’s voice drops and becomes almost emotional. ‘Oh, Grace, you can’t imagine the state of the toilets. In some of them you have to squat right down on the ground. It was the most horrific experience of my life.’

Surely you’ve had worse experiences than squatting on a toilet, thinks Grace. How about your husband leaving you for his dental nurse? Or your father dying of cancer?

‘Good for your thighs,’ comments Grace. ‘Squatting.’

Laura brightens. ‘Yes, that’s a point.’

‘Have you bought a rug?’ asks Grace.

‘Oh, yes, I’ve done the tourist thing. Sleazy men ran around giving us all apple tea. So sugary-sweet! Terrible! I bargained as well as I could. No doubt they were laughing their heads off at the price I paid. I probably won’t be able to get it through customs back in Sydney. I wouldn’t blame them. I’m sure it’s not hygienic.’

‘Is it nice and hot?’ tries Grace. ‘It’s very cold here.’

‘Oh, the heat! The humidity! I’m so dehydrated. Terrible.’

‘Right,’ says Grace.

She doesn’t really understand why her mother is taking this world trip. She doesn’t seem to be enjoying it at all. It’s like she is forcing herself to undergo one of her more rigorous diet and exercise regimes.

She says, ‘Mum, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news…’

But Laura doesn’t seem to hear her. ‘How is Jake?’ she asks urgently.

For a moment, Grace can’t think who Jake is. Her mother said the baby’s name in such a grown-up way.

‘He’s fine.’ Grace feels a dead feeling in her stomach. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Breast-feeding OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t breast-feed you. I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I remember saying to Margie, I’m not a cow, I’m not a pig! Still, I wasn’t informed. We thought that formula milk was just as good. I should really have breast-fed you.’

Oh my word, thinks Grace. Is she drunk?

‘And any other news on Scribbly Gum?’ asks Laura.

‘Yes, there is. I’m sorry. I tried to call yesterday but I couldn’t get through on the number on the itinerary. Aunt Connie died. The funeral is tomorrow.’

There is a sudden hissing silence on the phone.

‘Mum? I’m sorry to break–’

Her mother’s voice overlaps her own. ‘Was it pneumonia? I told her a thousand times she’d catch pneumonia. She would never wear anything warm around her neck. I gave her a perfectly nice skivvy last Easter. She acted all hoity-toity about it. She said, “Would you wear this, Laura?” And I said, “Well, I might if I was approaching ninety, Connie!”’

‘It wasn’t pneumonia. She just died in her sleep. Aunt Margie found her. They all think she knew she was going to die. She had all her papers in a pile next to her bed.’

‘I suppose I’d better call. How are they taking it?’

‘Grandma Enigma has been crying a lot.’

‘I can imagine,’ says Laura disgustedly, sounding more like herself again. ‘Mum likes to cry. I’ve tried to tell Margie that.’

‘The other news is that apparently Aunt Connie has left her house to Thomas’s ex-girlfriend, Sophie. Aunt Rose told Thomas. There was a letter for her.’

‘That’s contemptible! That is just so Connie.’

‘Veronika wants to contest the will.’

‘Good for her. Someone should stand up to Connie. She’s been bossing this family around for far too long.’

‘Yes, well, she’s dead now, Mum. She’s not going to be bossing us around any longer.’

Laura says, ‘But Sophie’s the one who left poor Thomas at the altar!’

‘Not exactly at the altar.’

‘How very tactless of Connie.’

Seeing as her mother had once told Thomas to stop being such a ‘soppy sap’ when he was grieving over Sophie, Grace doesn’t think she is qualified to give a lecture on tact. She changes the subject. ‘Veronika thinks that Aunt Connie always knew the secret of what really happened to Alice and Jack. She thinks the secret will die with her.’

‘Oh, Alice and Jack,’ says Laura dismissively. ‘Do you know, I’m so bored with the whole Alice and Jack business. Travelling has really put things like that in perspective for me. All my life–Alice and Jack, Alice and Jack. I’ll tell you what happened to Alice and Jack!’

There is another hissing pause and then Laura says irritably, ‘How old are you?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re thirty-four, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Look, Alice and Jack is a business. A profitable business, which we’ve all done very well out of; I’ll give Connie that. And as she always said, if the mystery was solved it would be bad for business. There is probably some dull solution, but who really cares?’

‘Veronika cares. She’s always cared. And now she wants to write a book about it.’

‘No doubt she’ll find some new project before she gets past the first chapter.’

It’s true that over the last three years Veronika has started three different university degrees, a novel, six new jobs, a children’s book to rival Harry Potter, dozens of community college courses, a pet-washing business and a ‘clear your clutter’ consultancy. Veronika has always been flighty, but since her divorce she has become quite frenzied.

‘Probably.’

‘Oh shit! This ridiculous phone card is–’

The line goes dead.

Grace hangs up. That had been a very strange phone call. Her mother had sworn too. The ‘shit!’ had been just as out of character as the ‘oh my word’.

‘What did she say?’ calls out Callum from the living room.

There is plenty of material from the conversation that Callum would enjoy hearing. The tomatoes, the Turkish toilets, Aunt Connie’s skivvy, the implication that Laura knows more about the Alice and Jack mystery.

He comes into the hallway and looks down at her eagerly. Grace feels her head begin to cave in again with that horrendous headache. It is just too much effort to be funny and entertaining and loving. It is just too much effort to talk, really.