The Last Anniversary

At least Jake isn’t crying. He’s looking around with interest, blinking slightly at the sunshine coming through the trees, a single droplet of saliva hanging off his bottom lip.

Grace stops with her hands on her hips to catch her breath and says out loud, ‘Every day is a gift, Jake. Of course sometimes it’s a really horrible gift that you don’t want.’

‘Ho!’ agrees Jake.

Grace wonders if she could ever confide to that corporate tax lawyer that she is devoid of proper motherly feelings for Jake, but as she looks at the soft flushed curve of his cheek she is struck with a feeling of loyalty. She won’t betray him. He is, after all, markedly more beautiful than the photo the corporate tax lawyer showed of her rather scrawny-looking baby. Also, Callum said he thought Jake might be musical, and Veronika’s girlfriend, Audrey, who seems to know a lot about babies, said she thought he was quite advanced for his age. Grace doesn’t want anyone feeling pity for Jake! People should feel jealous.

‘Look,’ she says to Jake. ‘You’re just stuck with me, OK? I know Sophie might have done a better job but I’m just going to do the best I can. I’m a better cook than her, anyway.’

Jake chuckles.

‘Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?’

She starts walking again. After a while her breathing gets into a rhythm and her body seems to loosen up and remember the concept of exercise. As she loops around the pathway that Uncle Jimmy and Grandpa built all those years ago, the river glitters and glares in the sunshine, so she has to stop and put her sunglasses on. The jacarandas are out and their pale frothy purple is so beautiful against the blue of the sky it hurts her chest, but perhaps that’s just her lack of fitness.

She remembers coming up here to paint with Aunt Rose.

With her great-grandmother.

Would it have made everything different if she’d known that Aunt Rose and Aunt Connie were related to her? Probably not. She still would have taken their love for granted, like children do.

Veronika and Thomas have both been going on like disappointed middle-aged parents about the deceit of their family. They are disgusted that everyone has kept the truth from them for all these years. ‘I was perfectly mature enough to handle it at eighteen!’ said Veronika, while Thomas was baffled by his family’s ‘unethical actions’. But Grace quite likes the fact that you can think something is one way all your life, and it turns out you’re wrong, it can be something else entirely. It makes her feel free. Nothing is rigid. Things change. You can change your mind. You can change your thinking.

Grace is just glad that Alice Munro never existed.

Finally, with her heart thudding from exertion, she reaches the top of Kingfisher Lookout and sinks down on her knees at the grassy picnic patch. At least it’s a weekday and there aren’t any visitors about to see her bright red face. She lays out a rug from her backpack and unhooks her sling to release poor Jake, who is sweaty from being pressed against her chest.

‘Are you as thirsty as me?’ she asks as she lays him on the ground. ‘I’ve got some nice boiled water for you. Mmmm. Delicious, germ-free boiled water.’

He looks up at her and reaches out a dimpled hand to grab on tight to her hair. As she leans forward a drop of her own sweat rolls off her forehead and lands on his face. He blinks with surprise.

‘Sorry,’ says Grace.

‘Ha,’ says Jake forgivingly and grins at her.

And that’s when it happens, and she can hardly believe it, because, oh my God, it is just like all those stupid mushy new mothers said it would be, a shot of joy straight to the heart, just like the adrenaline that saved her life–a burst of pure, mind-clearing euphoria, powerful, primal, lustful, blissful love for her son. She presses her lips to the soft springy skin of his cheek.

‘Actually, I love you more than anyone,’ she whispers in his ear.

‘More than your daddy, even, but that’s our secret.’

Jake grabs her hair tighter and gurgles contentedly, as if he never doubted it for a moment.

62

Sophie stands at the doorway of Aunt Connie’s house and watches a paint-splattered Eddie Ripple loping up the footpath. He stops at the jasmine-covered archway and turns back to give her a funny, quizzical shrug. He looks very handsome and tall. Just like Prince Charming.

As he walks off there is a shriek of manic laughter from the kookaburra, sitting with his normal self-satisfied expression on the side fence. He is alone, so perhaps things aren’t working out so well with his lady friend. He doesn’t seem too fussed.

Sophie looks thoughtfully at her little finger. There is at least one very faint line there, she’s sure of it.

‘Well, here’s how it happened. Your dad and I used to be best friends when we were little, and one day we ran into each other again because he came over to paint my house and write a poem, you know, how he does. Anyway, I didn’t have a boyfriend at the time–and, umm, well, neither did your dad–but we both wanted a baby very, very much. It was exactly twenty-three minutes after one on a Saturday when I thought of the idea but it took me two weeks to get the courage up to ask him. Your dad was in the middle of dipping a paintbrush into a tin of duck-egg-blue paint (and maybe he’d just come up with a perfect line for a poem, I don’t know) when I said it. At first he thought I was out of my mind. He twitched. I blushed. But then he said he’d go away and think about it, and I was pretty sure he was going to say yes.’

‘So there,’ she says to the kookaburra, and she goes inside to ring up Claire and invite her to come over and meet her old friend Eddie Ripple. She’s pretty sure Claire will approve.

After that she’s going to read a regency romance and eat a Turkish delight in the bath.

Sometimes a girl has to stop waiting around and come up with her own fairytale ending.

63

‘Hi, it’s me, Rick.’

‘Hello, Rick. You left me with a festering cold sore.’

‘I’m sorry. Can I make it up to you by taking you out on the boat again tomorrow?’

‘Mmmm. What happened with your ex-girlfriend?’

‘It didn’t work out. She went back to her ex-boyfriend.’

‘Oh, too bad.’

‘So what do you say?’

64

‘Hi, it’s me, Ian.’

‘Hello Ian. I thought you would have been throwing yourself over rapids in New Zealand by now.’