The Last Anniversary Read Free

able to laugh at her own hilarious wit while she eats baked beans on toast.
    She wonders if Thomas will be smug. Surely even a man as sweet-natured as him would have to feel a bit pleased at the way things have turned out. Well, let him be smug, thinks Sophie as she goes back to typing her lively memo to the Morale Committee. ( A fun idea from Fran! ) You tore his heart to shreds. Be generous. Let him be smug.

4
     
    Scribbly Gum Island, 1932
     
    W hen they said they were sending out a reporter, Connie had imagined someone much older: an intimidating type with jaded seen-it-all-before eyes and those awful dirty yellow-tipped fingers, who would say ‘good bickies, love’ and act impatient and patronising if she took too long answering his questions. She had decided her answers would be brisk, with no unnecessary detail, and that she would probably not offer him a second biscuit.
    But there was nothing jaded about Jimmy Thrum. Even his name sounded energetic. He could only have been a couple of years older than her, twenty-one at the most, skinny and long-limbed, with little-boy freckles on his nose and unusual-coloured eyes that grinned and glittered at her from beneath the shade of his battered brown hat.
    Yes, Jimmy Thrum thrummed with life.
    When she met him at the railway station he bounded up the stairs three at a time to greet her like a big lovable labrador. He chivalrously insisted on taking the oars when they rowed out to the island, even though she doubted that he’d even stepped foot in a boat before. She stopped herself from confiscating the wildly flailing oars or complaining about the sudden splashes of icy-cold river water–he was having far too good a time, gulping deep breaths of air as if it was the first day of a holiday, tipping back his head so the winter sun was on his face. He made her want to giggle helplessly like a child. She had to turn her head and pretend to be fascinated by the flight of a pelican.
    Now, Jimmy Thrum the reporter was sitting at the Doughty family’s kitchen table, gulping down his second cup of tea and munching into his third biscuit with a spray of crumbs, which he quickly tried to clean up by licking his finger and dabbing at them.
    From the way he was listening to her, it seemed that he wasn’t just interested in her story, he was positively enthralled by it. I hope he’s not making fun of me, thought Connie with sudden suspicion. Shouldn’t a newspaper man be a little less excited?
    If he was faking it, he was doing a very good job. A couple of times he’d even slapped his thigh.
    She took the opportunity to covertly study him while he bent his head to scribble in his notepad. He had a knobbly neck. Unexpectedly hairy forearms. There were curls springing up one by one from his slicked-down hair. He was writing in a mixture of what Connie assumed were shorthand symbols and words. She could read ‘ Scribbly Gum Island ’ and her own name, carefully spelled out: ‘ Constance (Connie) Doughty. Age: 19 ’.
    ‘This is a great story.’ He looked up at her. She still couldn’t work out the colour of his eyes.
    ‘That’s good,’ said Connie, and thought, Don’t make him think you’re flattered, for heaven’s sake.
    It wasn’t surprising that she was feeling a bit, well, to be honest… charmed. It was just a refreshing change to have someone with a bit of verve in the house, what with Dad the way he was, and Rose the way she was becoming. They both had such dazed, doleful expressions on their faces all the time that Connie sometimes seriously considered grabbing them by the scruffs of their necks and banging their heads together. Of course, Dad had very good reasons. As Mum used to sigh, France clearly hadn’t been a walk in the park. Whereas Rose: well, she just needed to bloody well snap out of it. Especially now there was a new baby in the house. A poor, defenceless baby who hadn’t chosen to come into the world at this inconvenient time.
    Jimmy finished