The Last Anniversary
As the years went by I started to think that maybe we could come clean about the whole thing. I wanted Enigma to know that I was her mother, but she was really more Connie’s daughter than mine, especially in those first few months after she was born when I went a touch barmy. I barely touched her. Connie brought her up really. I was just like a big sister. I remember I felt hurt when Enigma asked Connie if she could call her ‘Mum’. But what could I do? Connie was her mum. If it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep her. And when Connie and Jimmy couldn’t have their own children and she so badly wanted them, I could hardly say I wanted Enigma just for me.
Besides which, by then the Munro Baby Mystery had become a successful business. When Dad died in 1940 we had made more money than we’d ever dreamed of. Whenever Connie thought interest in the Munro Mystery was starting to wane, she’d come up with something new to get people talking again. After the war, she wrote all those letters from Alice to Jack and pretended to find them in the cake tin under the bed. Confidentially, Sophie, those letters were really all about Connie’s feelings about her marriage to Jimmy; they were going through a bit of a bad patch. So Jimmy sat down and wrote that beautiful love letter from Jack to Alice. Connie cried when she read it. You’ve read it, haven’t you? He could be romantic when he wanted to be, that Jimmy! Then of course, in the 1970s, when our numbers were very low, Connie read The Female Eunuch and decided that Alice was being ‘emotionally castrated’ and she sat down and wrote Alice’s diary in two days and got Margie to ‘discover’ it under the floorboards. I remember Jimmy saying, ‘Nobody is going to fall for this rubbish! How many more historical documents can be hidden in one small house?’ Well, that diary caused a sensation because it implied that Alice probably bumped off Jack, and the feminists just loved that. After that we all agreed there couldn’t really be any more discoveries.
There were so many times when I felt such a strong desire to tell everyone the truth, but Connie was like a stubborn old–is that the phone again, Sophie? No, answer it. I’m finished. That’s the end of my story.
54
‘Oh, you’re there. I’ve been trying to call all morning.’
‘Sorry. I slept in. I had a bit too much to drink last night.’
‘Me too. The mulled wine was…’
‘Yes. It sure was.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well.’
‘So.’
‘How is Grace?’
‘She’s fine, physically, but one of the doctors talked to me this morning and she seems to think that Grace has postnatal depression.’
‘Oh, dear. Oh, well…shit. I should have thought of that. I had a friend who had it. I seem to have been missing the obvious lately. Oh, God, you don’t think she purposely…?’
‘Yeah. Maybe. She says it was an accident but I don’t know. She’s so careful about what she eats. I should have seen it. Actually, I thought maybe she was depressed a while back, but everybody kept telling me she was fine. They kept going on about those thank you cards she made and how no depressed woman could have managed that. It wasn’t as if she was crying all day. Or not in front of me, anyway. But I did know something was different. I should have…anyway, she’s going to get help now. That’s not why I’m calling. I wanted to say to you, about last night…’
‘Oh no! Don’t say anything! You don’t need to say anything. We’ll just pretend it never happened. It was just the wine. Don’t even think about it! It’s not important. Especially not now.’
‘It is important. I wanted to say I’m so sorry for pushing you away like that and I wanted to say that…’
‘It’s OK! Please don’t say anything more.’
‘I don’t want you to think it didn’t mean anything. I don’t want you thinking it was just the wine. Even though the wine–but it wasn’t just the wine. Oh, f**k.’
‘You don’t need to say this.’
‘The thing is, I really love Grace.’
‘Of course you do. Please stop it.’
‘I would never be unfaithful to her.’
‘You don’t need to say this!’
‘But I just want you to know that if I’d met you before I met Grace, you know, that whole ‘other lifetime’ thing. This sounds like such clichéd crap but I’m serious. I just want you to know that you mean something to me, that if things had been different, then things…would have been different. Oh Jesus, I sound like a lunatic.’
‘Please stop it.’
‘OK, but do you see what I’m saying?’
‘Yes, I do. Thank you.’
‘OK.’
‘OK.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘There’s nothing to be sorry for.’
‘OK.’
‘OK.’
‘Are you laughing or crying?’
‘A bit of both.’
‘Oh.’
‘Let’s never talk about it again, all right, Callum? Not one word. Or even a meaningful look. Especially no meaningful looks. All right? You promise?’
‘All right. No meaningful looks. I promise.’
‘Send my love to Grace.’
‘I will.’
55
Grace sits in her hospital room with her mother, looking at the lunch which has just been delivered by a sour-faced woman shoving a trolley. Callum has gone home to relieve Veronika and Audrey of Jake, and the doctors have said that he can come back and pick up Grace later this afternoon.
Grace feels shaky and surreal. Her throat is still sore, as if somebody had tried to strangle her, and her leg is aching and bruised from where her mother jammed in the EpiPen. She is not allowing her mind to form any complete thoughts about what happened last night; she’s just revelling in the relief of oxygen flowing unimpeded into her lungs. In. Out. In. Out.
Laura lifts an aluminium lid from a plate and her nostrils contract with disgust. ‘There is no excuse for food of this quality. It’s just laziness. Look at that sandwich. Appalling. The bread is stale. Are you hungry? We’ll get you something when we get home. When I spoke to Veronika she mentioned the freezer was very well stocked. She counted eleven lasagnes.’
‘Callum’s favourite,’ says Grace.