The Last Anniversary

Sophie is obviously hoping for somewhere to sit at the back. She is desperately craning her neck while people stare comfortably back at her. Callum has seen that there is space at the end of the front pew next to Veronika and Grace. He makes an affable gesture for Sophie to go ahead of him but she is all in a fluster. Callum places a hand on her shoulder, gently propelling her forward, and Sophie has no choice but to walk down the aisle.

The priest stops talking and waits with elaborate priestly patience while everyone in the front row turns their legs sideways to let Callum and Sophie shuffle past.

‘Incredible!’ hisses Veronika, bitterly shaking her head. She rocks the baby furiously and slides down towards the end of the pew.

Callum sits down next to Grace. ‘Sorry I’m so late,’ he whispers and puts his hand over hers. Sophie sits down on the other side of him and looks straight ahead, while Veronika makes an exaggerated show of squeezing even further away from her.

The priest raises his hands again and at that point the baby begins to cry.

Automatically, Callum turns and reaches across Sophie to take the baby from Veronika. Tenderly, expertly, he holds Jake over one shoulder, pats his bottom and sways slightly in his seat. The baby stops crying immediately.

Grace watches Sophie watching Callum and the baby. Sophie’s eyes, which seem to be the same honey colour as her hair, are lingering on them both with the yearning, enchanted expression of a child standing in front of a magical Christmas display in a shopping centre.

23

Scribbly Gum Island, 1999

It was thirteen weeks since her husband’s funeral. Connie Thrum stood at her stove browning lamb shanks and rubbing her neck with her free hand.

Jimmy used to stand behind her when she was cooking and rub her neck while he offered enthusiastic, exceedingly dumb suggestions. ‘How about a bit of parsley, Con?’ It bugged her. She didn’t need her neck rubbed when she was cooking and she didn’t like people watching her. She liked to present them with the completed meal, nicely arranged on a good-quality plate and see their eyes light up. ‘Scat!’ she’d say to Jimmy. ‘Stop lurking! Can’t you find something better to do?’

Now, when she was cooking, she missed him rubbing her neck so much it gave her stomach cramps.

Until he died she hadn’t realised just how often Jimmy had touched her: a kiss on the forehead in the morning when he brought in her morning tea, sudden bear-hugs if they met in the hallway. When they watched the six o’clock news together they’d sit thigh-to-thigh on the sofa and he’d absent-mindedly stroke her arm while he concentrated on the news, frowning heavily and muttering beneath his breath at the politicians’ lies. He’d run his fingers up and down her spine while they read together in bed. And patting her bottom–well, the man couldn’t leave it alone! ‘What’s so fascinating about it?’ she’d asked him once. ‘It was the first thing I noticed about you,’ he told her. ‘Your pretty bum.’ Really! He must have patted and pinched it a dozen times a day. She could never train him out of the habit. Sometimes he’d sneakily try to do it in public, which she found disgraceful and he found hilarious.

The problem was that after all those years her body seemed to have adapted to being touched. Now the touching had stopped, just like that, with no warning, and it was a shock, like a blast of cold air. Jimmy hadn’t even been sick. They were going to do the fruit shopping one ordinary Thursday morning and she walked into the kitchen and there he was, lying on the floor, sending her heart flying into her throat. ‘What are you doing?’ she shrieked out foolishly, into the silence. The last thing he’d said to her, only seconds before, was, ‘I can’t find my bloody wallet, Con.’

Now her untouched body felt like a plant drooping without water. Her skin was drying up and shrivelling before her eyes, becoming astonishingly ugly, as if the touch of Jimmy’s fingers had been keeping it alive. Lately she had been secretly stroking her neck when she cooked, patting her arm when she watched the news, wrapping her arms around herself when she went to sleep. Once, ridiculously, she even patted her own bottom.

Still, it was better than crying so hard you felt like you couldn’t breathe.

She took the shanks out of the pan and began layering the base of her good oven pot with chopped-up onion, mint leaves and garlic. Lamb shanks with Guinness. Jimmy’s favourite. She kept making his favourite dishes, as if that would make him feel closer, as if that would make up for the fact that the last words he’d heard from her were, ‘For heaven’s sake, you’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on.’

She’d noticed over the years of their marriage that they were always going through patches–good ones, bad ones, so-so ones. For example, there was that really enjoyable time in the early Eighties when they discovered apricot massage oil from Avon. Goodness me. That had certainly spiced things up in the bedroom (and once in the bathroom and quite a few times in the living room!). But then of course there were the bad times, like after the war, when she’d told him the truth about Alice and Jack. He was furious. He got such a wounded look on his face, she never forgot it. And when he refused to see the doctor about why she wasn’t getting pregnant. She’d hated him for a while over that. Really hated him. But then she just got tired of hating him and started loving him again. It was easier.

And then, interspersed between the really good times and the really bad times, were the so-so times, where they didn’t take all that much notice of each other, just ambled along, like a brother and sister really, maybe a bit snitchy at times. They were in the middle of a snitchy patch when he died.

Perhaps the poor man hadn’t been feeling well.

Good Lord. She held on to the counter for balance. Sometimes the pain of missing him was so bad it almost knocked her off her feet. She poured stock and Guinness into the pot and bent, one hand on her back, to put it in the oven. It was the first time she’d hosted a dinner party since Jimmy died. There would be ten people: Enigma, Rose, Margie, Ron, Thomas, Veronika, Laura, Callum, Grace and–ah, their guest–oh for heaven’s sake, what was the fellow’s name? She knew it perfectly well. She was good at remembering names. Jimmy was hopeless. When they went to parties, someone would catch sight of Jimmy and their face would break into a grin–because everyone loved him–and Connie would lean over, barely moving her lips, like a ventriloquist: ‘Paul Bryson, tennis, local council’, and Jimmy wouldn’t even blink, he’d cry, ‘Paul, mate! How’s that killer serve of yours?!’