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‘Have you ever eaten sushi?’

‘No, dear, but I lived on kippers as a girl and they’re practically the same thing.’

Now that my mother has delivered her flat as a pancake story she says goodnight. She will return this story to its cubicle so if someone at church should mention new brake pads or Japanese cars or for that matter going skiing or doing drugs or crossing the road or storms that bring down power lines or playing backyard cricket or eating sushi or buying weed killer, she’ll be ready.

The real tragedy is hidden from us. Every year we pass anniversaries. We often mark them; birthdays, the day we started a job, the day we met our significant other. Our parents’ wedding anniversary, name days of nieces and nephews. Lucky dates or the day we arrived in a city. The anniversary of the day the family dog died. This year will be the 27th anniversary of the day our dog died.

And every year we all pass a day, an anniversary, but we don’t know the date. This is the day that might be remembered for a little while at least, and if you are very special someone might cry on this day every year or buy roses or stay in bed or go to a bar and drink their way through the top shelf starting from the left-hand side. Or if you are so environmentally unaware as to have a tombstone, this is the date on the right-hand side. I often wonder which date will be mine.

The anniversary of my father’s death is April the twenty-first. My father died in 1989 when I was seventeen, so he is spared the cubicles and their contents. He died as he lived, disappointed. His disappointment was like some kind of gas around him that left you with a bitter metallic taste in his company.

The disappointment grew about his late thirties, a realisation he would never sail around the world or be best on ground for the Essendon Football Club or have a son to carry his name or start his own business in his spare room, and then, lo and behold, feature on the front cover of
Time
. I suppose there are those people who are happy being average, living average lives, and others who despise it, rebel against it, do anything to feel different, special. My father despised it but somehow lacked the courage or the will or the reason to struggle and found himself slipping under the warm water, lulled by the movements of the waves.

He was never angry or even grumpy. He just drifted off until you could be in a room with him and still be completely alone. This freaked out the other kids in our street. Their fathers were all ruddy, explosive men, full of beer; jolly or furious, but always present. You could see through my father when the light was right and I often found myself reaching to touch his arm, to convince myself he was real. He would startle, smile in his sheepish way and tousle my hair. When he died it was how he lived. He became paler and thinner until he was invisible, and his breathing became finer and more graceful, as if he was getting better at it instead of getting worse.

It’s 8.20 p.m. Jill’s turn. My sister is my polar opposite: as dark as I am fair, hair curling on her shoulders as opposite to my long straight blonde. Soft, womanly curves with a va-va-voom cleavage against my angular bones. 5 centimetres shorter. No pokey brick six-pack flat for one, but an elegant Californian bungalow two streets from the beach at Hampton, a home she fills with fresh flowers and fragrant candles and the smell of roast dinners, as if her life is clipped from a decorating magazine. I always knew I wanted to teach. Jill seemed to sleep through high school, vague and barely passing, then wandered out into the world, blinking. She took a casual job at the bank, where she met Harry: older, scrambling up the corporate ladder, keen to start a family. It wasn’t until she gave birth that the fog cleared for Jill. Harry junior was a squawking, colicky child but Jill made being a mother look like Olympic ice skating. The next two, Hilary and Beth, only confirmed it. Perhaps Jill is the one who should have been called Grace. She simmers French casseroles in a cast-iron pot and freezes the leftovers, composts food scraps for her herb garden and sews matching table runners and napkins. She also volunteers at the school canteen and keeps a photo of some African kiddie she sponsors on the fridge door. Phoning me each Sunday night is another of her good works.

‘Hi Gracie. Has Mum phoned?’

‘Yep. ’ ‘She’s not feeling too well today, Gracie. You could call her occasionally, you know. We won’t have her forever.’

‘Uh huh.’

The clock is swinging around to 21 minutes past. Coming, coming…Now.

‘Been doing anything?’

‘Nope.’

‘We’ve been busy. Harry’s going to China in a few weeks. He’s been invited to speak at an international banking conference.’

Really. My brother-in-law is Jill’s height, 167 centimetres, and roughly her shape, complete with man-boobs. Mr high-powered executive, too important to spend half an hour a day walking with his kids. Harry has grey wiry hair on his head that looks like it belongs in his groin, and flabby pink manicured hands. He always wears a suit. The idea that anyone would choose to listen to Harry speak boggles the mind. A conference for Chinese insomniacs, perhaps. Or perhaps it’s an IDIOT conference: International Dickheads In Overpriced Ties.

‘China, heh? Are you going?’

‘Thinking of it. It’s only a week and the kids can stay at their friends’. I’m sure they’ll be all right. It’ll probably be good for them.’

‘Could you bring me back an abacus?’

‘Of course. Hilly wants to talk to you,’ she says. I can hear the phone being handed over.

Hilly is my niece, Jill’s middle child. I don’t call her Hilly, short for Hilary, which is an egomaniacal combination of Jill and Harry. I call her Larry. Unlike Harry junior and Beth, both of whom are chubby, dark haired and vaguely artistic like their mother, Larry resembles me at her age; all ungainly arms and legs like a new-born fawn. She’s also scruffy, abhors fashion magazines and is as sharp as a tack.

‘Hey.’ Her voice is small and thin. She’s being monitored by her mother.

‘Hey Larry,’ I say. ‘How’s life?’

‘What do you call a tree with no leaves?’

‘I don’t know. What do you call a tree with no leaves?’

‘A tree with no leaves.’

I can hear Jill saying, ‘Hilly, are you telling Grace that silly tree joke?’ I can hear a clunking noise as the phone is walked somewhere else, probably back to her room.

‘What do you call a tree with leaves?’

I don’t mind the silly tree joke. But I hope it’s not a long silly tree joke.

‘I don’t know Larry. What do you call a tree with leaves?’

‘Russell.’ She chuckles in a way that is most unladylike and sounds more like me than Jill.

‘Ha. That’s gold, Larry. You’ll have to give up on this vet idea and become a comedienne.’

‘I’m not going to be a vet any more. Dad says animals get sick and die and stuff. He says I should be a teacher but that’s way too boring. I’m going to be an Egyptologist.’

‘Really? What will your mummy think?’

‘Un-funny Grace. Did you know the Great Pyramid of Giza is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World still left?’

‘Yep. And it’s made from 2.4 million blocks of stone.’

Silence. ‘That’s cool.’

‘How’s the family?’ I ask.

Some kind of clicking noise at the other end. She’s playing with her iPod or Xbox or something else I don’t understand. ‘Harry wants to drop out of the football team. Dad’s gone ballistic and makes him train every day. Bethany won’t leave me alone. It’s so annoying. She’s sleeping with a peg on her nose ’cause she thinks it’s too big.’

‘That’s gross.’

‘Duh. She wants a satin pillow slip like Mum’s, ’cause you get less wrinkles if you sleep on satin.’

‘When I wake up my face looks like the Sphinx.’

Snuffling noise. This amuses her. ‘I haven’t cut your hair in ages.

I did a good job last time, didn’t I?’

‘10 centimetres, right on the nose.’ Larry is one of the few people I trust. What if some distracted hairdresser removed 9.5?

‘It must be really long now. When are you coming over?’

I’d like to say: soon, honey, but I feel like I’m a planet, a serious planet like Jupiter or Saturn. It’s not easy to get me out of my orbit these days.

‘Mum’s having some kind of lunch thing next week. It’ll probably be really boring and stuff but she said you could come if you want.’

I imagine Larry pulling at Jill’s sleeve. ‘Mum, Mum can Grace come…please?’ until Jill says, ‘All right, but you should call her Auntie Grace.’ This would have cost Larry something, for me.

‘I’d like to Larry, but then I’d need to have my brain botoxed like your mother’s friends.’

She’s sniggering. Possibly I shouldn’t say things like that.

‘Hold on.’ She’s gone for a minute, or holding her hand over the phone. ‘Mum wants to talk to you.’

‘See you, DeFazio.’

‘See you, Feeney.’ She watches too much television. Cable.

Another minute and Jill is back on the phone. She’s walking somewhere discreet.

‘I’m having a lunch next Tuesday with some friends.’

‘Tuesday, did you say? Let’s see. What a shame. I’m donating a kidney on Tuesday.’

‘Gracie. They’re really nice girls. I could pick you up.’

‘Jill…’ ‘Okay. I wanted to talk about something else. I’m worried about Hilly.’

‘Uh huh.’ Jill is the kind of person who worries about being hit by space junk. I cross my legs and let my foot dangle. All of a sudden I notice a wart on my foot. How could I have a wart on my foot? I don’t have contact with any humans. Can they come in the mail?

‘The headmistress called last week. She’s concerned about her swearing.’

My tongue makes sympathetic clicking noises. ‘Gee you don’t expect that at a posh girl’s school. Swearing headmistresses.’

They’re viral, I’m pretty sure.

She sighs. Perhaps she’s counting to ten. ‘Hilly is swearing. We certainly don’t talk like that at home. Harry would die if he heard her. I understand adolescents go through a rebellious stage but she’s only ten. We’ve never had that trouble with Harry junior.’

On account of him being a total prig. I know there’s a way to get rid of them…Put the head of a pin in a gas flame and burn them out?

‘Please don’t take this the wrong way…but…is it you?’

‘Is what me?’ Or is that for ticks?

A deeper sigh. ‘Are you teaching Hilly swear words?’

‘Fuck no.’ I remember—you tie a banana skin to it.

‘Grace, please!’ Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘You have absolutely no idea what it’s like to have children.’

I pause for a moment. ‘You’re quite right,’ I say. ‘I don’t.’

5

Monday lunch was a disaster. I was due for an egg and salad sandwich, but I got stuck counting the sprouts. Alfalfa sprouts are the worst, even worse than grated carrot. I have gold tweezers with flat, angled points designed for eyebrows but it’s hard on the back and the eyes, and easy to make mistakes. I’m normally very good at this. Not this time. When I finally got to 100 it was 2.30 p.m., way past my lunch hour so I couldn’t eat. The sandwich had to go in the bin, and then I clipped the empty plate on the edge of the fridge and it shattered everywhere. 87 pieces.

Monday was 36 degrees, Tuesday 25. I tried to do some housework despite it not being a Sunday night. I counted out 10 pieces of clothing (underpants and bras and socks and hankies don’t count and are unlimited) to make a load but I couldn’t get the powder exactly level with the top of the little cup. This has never been a problem before.

There’s one of my usual tasks that I don’t do. I don’t clean out my handbag. At the bottom of my handbag is a folded napkin. If I emptied my handbag I would have to hold the napkin in my hand, and then I might unfold it. And then I might see the phone numbers written on it. And I might never forget them.

Wednesday I think I had some kind of migraine or something, so other than the café, I stayed in bed all day. It was 14 degrees. See what I mean? It’s impossible.

I have changed my routine slightly. Now I always stop 5 paces from the door of the café and peer in the window, before continuing inside. It’s out of my control, either way. But I’d like to be prepared.

Now it’s Thursday and back to 22. At 7.00 p.m. I ring Larry. Normally I don’t do this; if we speak during the week it’s because she rings me. (This is okay because children can’t be expected to stick to the timetable. As soon as she hits 18 things will have to change.) But I need to speak with her. So, from now on, at 7.00 p.m. on the night before any and all first dates, I ring Larry.

‘So what’s happening?’

‘Nothing.’ She’s sullen and terse. She’s never sullen and terse.

‘Come on.’

‘I hate Stephanie.’

The joys of girlhood. I remember Jill vowing eternal sisterhood and never-ending loathing to the same girl on the same day.

‘I thought Stephanie was your best friend.’

‘She’s not. I hate her. Now my best friend’s Courtney.’

‘What’s Courtney like?’

‘She great. She’s got black hair. When we leave school we’re going to uni together and we’re going to share a flat and do anything we want. Stay up all night if we want. Have Tim Tams for breakfast if we want.’

‘Sounds like fun. Tim Tams contain three of the five food groups: chocolate, sugar and chocolate.’

‘Do you think we will? Share a flat I mean?’

‘Why not?’

‘Mum says I’ll have a hundred more best friends before I’m eighteen.’

Helpful. ‘Your mother doesn’t understand. Sometimes you meet someone and your life changes for ever. Remember when Nikola met Westinghouse.’

‘Yeah, yeah Grace. Jeez, I know this one by heart.’

Larry loves my Nikola stories. I can picture her nestling on her bed in her tribute-to-florals bedroom designed by Jill.

I sit on the couch and tuck my feet under me. ‘All right Miss Brainiac. What happened?’

‘When Nikola arrived in New York, he hardly had any money and he had no job. Like a backpacker. All he had was a note from his boss back in France.’

‘Who was the note addressed to?’ I say.

‘Thomas Edison. The telephone guy.’

‘And what did the note say?’

‘Something about Nikola being the greatest?’