Grace can’t stop looking at it: Yearbook of Macquarie High, Class of 2000. Ninety-odd pages that depict another lifetime, one that feels so very strange it could belong to someone else. All the girls wearing similar hairstyles – layered at the front, highlighted – and the frumpy uniforms that they’d hated, with good reason. The boys with hunched shoulders and sneakers instead of the proper school shoes. The self-conscious quotes speckled throughout, not remotely as meaningful or humorous as they’d believed at the time. God, they all looked so gauche. And so terribly, terribly young.
‘We thought we were hot,’ she comments to Tom as he emerges from the en suite, dressed for bed in a pair of old soccer shorts and singlet. ‘But we were just babies, really.’
‘Are you still looking at that old thing?’ he asks, sliding into bed next to her.
‘I can’t seem to put it away,’ she laughs. ‘I’ve become fixated on it.’
He sidles over, rests his head hopefully against her chest. ‘I could give you something else to be fixated on ... if you like.’
Grace is considering his proposition when, with impeccable timing, the bedroom door creaks open.
‘Mummy, Daddy,’ whispers a voice.
Tom sighs and smiles at the same time. ‘Yes, Lauren?’
It’s nearly always Lauren who pays the after-hours visits. Their third child suffers anxiety about school, social occasions, nightfall, and a long list of other things.
‘I heard a noise in my room. I’m scared.’
‘Right.’ Tom dramatically throws back the covers. ‘Daddy’s coming and we’ll have a full-scale search. There’ll be no escaping the eagle eye of Tom Coleman.’
He bounds out of the room, giving a great impression that this – a hunt for would-be intruders – is exactly what he’d like to do at this precise moment.
Grace goes back to the yearbook, flicking once again to her own entry.
Why did she say that the Year 10 formal was her best memory? Why not the Year 12 one? Was it because it was all coming to an end, and she felt sad that they were about to go their separate ways? Or was it because Annabel, seven months’ pregnant, didn’t attend the Year 12 formal, and because her best friend hadn’t been there, it didn’t hold the same importance?
Probably, pathetically, the latter. For this reason, Grace is watchful of the friendships that her children form and, whenever she can, veers them away from relationships that compromise their own identity.
Don’t have one friend, she tells them regularly. Have lots and lots of them. Be your own person, not just a mimic of your friends.
Sometimes she is more forthright: When I was in high school, I had only one friend. If she was in a good mood, I was in a good mood. If she was in a bad mood, I was in a bad mood. I think I missed out on a lot of fun because of her.
Grace is brimming with things to tell her children, lessons she herself had to learn the hard way. She even has a notebook where she writes things down, practical advice and nuggets of wisdom to be imparted when the timing is right. Tom calls it the Mother Manual, although he’s been known to write a thing or two in there as well. They laugh about it – ‘That’s definitely one for the manual’ – but beneath it all they’re deadly serious. Tom was always one of those men who was going to make a great father. It’s Grace who’s the surprise. Being a mother is her calling in life, even though she never knew it until she held Tahlia – her eldest – in her arms. Grace plans to be proud about it at the upcoming reunion. No, I don’t have a paid job at the moment, because I have four fabulous kids – the best in the world – and I put all my time, energy and imagination into them.
Grace waitressed when she first left school. An overpriced understaffed beachfront cafe that was always frantically busy. After a year of being paid a pittance and having an aching back at the end of each day, she landed a job in a travel agency. It was there she met Tom. He came into the office early one morning, his blue eyes fixing on Grace first and then her client.
‘Does anyone here own registration UPL55T?’
‘I do,’ the client, a glamorous woman in her forties, admitted.
‘Can you please move your car? I don’t want to have to give you a ticket.’
Grace was instantly attracted to him. Those glittering blue eyes. The rugged tan of his face. The way his mouth twitched with a smile. But more than anything, his decency. How many rangers sought out car owners so they could avoid giving them a ticket? How did he even manage to keep his job?
Her client, immensely grateful that she’d avoided a 200-dollar fine, found him just as attractive.
‘What a gorgeous-looking man,’ she exclaimed when she came back from moving her car, presumably to a legal spot. ‘I hope you got his number.’
Grace had. And here they are, sixteen years and four children later. She is looking forward to showing him off at the reunion. It will be his first time meeting her extended cohort: nothing was organised for the five-year or ten-year anniversary, too many people were overseas or interstate or unable to commit for one reason or another. The dress code is formal: black tie for the men, gowns for the women. Tom has a tuxedo that gets dragged out for occasions like these; he always looks particularly handsome in black tie. It will be hard not to feel smug. Take a look at him. Not just at how drop-dead gorgeous he is. This is a good man, inside and out. Grace Coleman is the luckiest woman in the world.
The question is what should Grace herself wear? Options from her existing wardrobe are limited – most things are a size or two too small – and there simply isn’t the budget to buy something new. Plenty of time to work it out. As she tells her children, it’s not about how you look, it’s how you feel. And Grace feels great. She couldn’t be happier with her life.
Tom is standing in the doorway.
‘All good?’ she asks.
He rolls his eyes, the ones she fell in love with, indicating that the only baddies in Lauren’s room are those from her imagination.
‘Okay to turn out the light?’ he asks with a yawn.
‘Yeah.’ She closes the yearbook, pops it on the bedside table. No doubt she’ll pick it up again tomorrow.
Twenty years. Grace’s life is completely different and, presumably, so is everyone else’s. She is genuinely excited about reconnecting with the guys from school. Seeing what they look like now, how their lives have turned out. For her own part, she’s looking forward to proving to everyone that she has well and truly come out of Annabel Moore’s shadow. Yes, they are still friends. The truth is, she likes Annabel more now than she did in school. Maybe because their friendship is on more of an equal footing. Or maybe because Grace is her own person, driven by her own moods and thoughts and not those of Annabel.
Tom clicks off the bedside lamp. Maybe they could book a hotel room for the night of the reunion? Maybe, with some creative budgeting, there would be enough money?
Grace cuddles up to him. ‘What was that thing you wanted me to fixate on again?’
He takes her hand, slides it under the band of his soccer shorts. ‘It’s this.’
Then he rolls on top of her, his lips – warm with a faint taste of toothpaste – seeking hers.
*
The email comes the next morning.
From: admin1@yearbook.com.au
Subject: Updated Yearbook
Name: Grace Coleman (nee McCrae)
Highest achievement at school: Being Annabel Moore’s best friend.
What you do now: Mum to four children (three girls, one boy). Keen gardener.
Highlights of last twenty years: Getting married. Giving birth to your children.
Lowlights: The miscarriage between number 2 and 3.
Deepest fears: That something bad will happen to one of your children. Lauren in particular.
Grace recoils from her laptop. What is this? Something relating to the reunion? She reads it again, more slowly, and realises it’s set out in a format similar to the original yearbook. There’s even a photo that’s recent and quite familiar: Grace’s curly brown hair lifted by an invisible breeze, her eyes – the same colour as her hair – squinting at the camera. Did Katy send this? No, Katy wouldn’t know about either the miscarriage or her worries about Lauren, and would hardly be so insensitive. The miscarriage happened at eleven weeks, before her baby bump became noticeable. Not a lot of people knew she was pregnant, which made the grieving process both easier and more difficult.
Even so, Katy seems to be the obvious person to contact. The call goes straight to voicemail. Of course, it’s mid-morning and Katy would be in class. Katy’s a science teacher at a high school in the inner west. Grace knows the school: it attracts ‘creative’ types and has an ethos of encouraging the students’ individuality. Grace and Tom are seriously considering it for Tahlia.
Grace decides not to leave a voicemail and calls Annabel instead. Annabel picks up straight away. It’s rare she doesn’t; she’s one of those women whose phone is like one of her limbs.
‘Hey, Annabel. I got this weird email just now ... Like a fake yearbook entry.’
There’s a noticeable pause at the end of the line. Then: ‘Me too. A few days ago.’
Grace is perplexed. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’
Another pause. Then an embarrassed sigh. ‘There was something in there that nobody knows. Some trouble we’re having with Daniel.’
Grace wants to ask what the trouble is but senses that Annabel’s failure to elaborate is deliberate. She has always been a selective confidante.
‘Mine mentioned Lauren and my miscarriage. It was really quite upsetting.’
‘Look, I think it’s someone trying to be funny and missing the mark,’ Annabel states with her signature curtness.
Missing the mark by a goddam mile, Grace thinks. Then a guilty niggle. ‘Hey, you don’t think it’s Melissa, do you?’
Annabel snorts. ‘She wouldn’t lower herself. Luke Willis came into my head. I have no idea why.’
Luke Willis. The one who did his own thing, never cared what people thought and defied all the rules when it came to popularity.
Grace frowns. ‘Didn’t he and Katy used to be friends?’
‘Yeah.’ Annabel’s laugh is unkind. ‘I still don’t understand what he saw in her!’
Grace casts her mind back. She sees Luke singing and dancing in the Grease musical, totally at home centre stage. She sees him standing near the locker room, smirking after delivering a retort that had everyone falling around with laughter. She remembers the excitement that built in him as Year 12 drew to a close, the blatant impatience to leave school behind and strike out in the real world.
She has a moment of clarity. ‘Annabel, I’m pretty sure that Luke Willis hasn’t thought about you or me since the day he left high school.’
Grace keeps busy for the rest of the day. She vacuums the entire house, sews a button on to Tahlia’s school shirt and scrubs some mould from the bathroom wall. The shower is leaking; the entire bathroom needs to be gutted and replaced. The roof also needs replacing, as does the kitchen, but there’s no money, not even for minor renovations. Just another couple of years of scraping by. Just another couple of years of full-time parenting to ensure that all the children are on track, to ensure that they’re independent, resilient and responsible for their own behaviour. Then Grace will get a paid job. Something with short hours. Something she can fit around school. Maybe something involving children.
After lunch Grace puts on a sunhat and goes outside to do some gardening. The weeds are thriving but, on the positive side, so is her vegetable patch. While she’s down on her hands and knees, perspiration dripping into her eyes, she thinks again about Annabel and Daniel. She hopes that the trouble isn’t something serious or irredeemable. Teenage boys are such a difficult species.
Just don’t let it be drugs.
Grace hears horrific stories from Tom, shocking things seen while doing his rounds of the local parks and beaches. Kids as young as twelve drinking alcohol. Teenagers unconscious in pools of vomit. The unforgettable morning he found a drug addict’s body hanging from the monkey bars at one of the playgrounds.
The heat of the sun eventually drives Grace back inside, where she turns her attention to dinner. She deftly chops vegetables – some of which are home-grown – that she’ll stir-fry later on. According to the yearbook, food technology was her worst memory of high school. Really? She quite likes cooking now. Finds it therapeutic. At least on the days when there’s enough time to relax while she’s doing it.
What was so bad about food technology? Why did she hate it so much?
Suddenly, she’s back there, in the food tech room, wearing the compulsory blue apron, Melissa’s face flushed and scornful.
‘What do you mean I can’t be your partner? We’re always partners.’
‘Sorry.’ Grace shrugged helplessly. ‘Annabel—’
’What? Annabel isn’t even in this class, for God’s sake. Do you care who her partner is in chemistry?’
‘She ... I ... Sorry.’
‘You’re pathetic, Grace. She says, “Jump,” and you say, “How high?” Have some fucking backbone for a change.’
Melissa flounced off and found herself another partner. Grace got stuck with one of the boys, who was even more clueless than she was. She remembers glancing intermittently at Melissa, looking for signs of forgiveness, or even some level of understanding of the predicament she was in because of Annabel. Melissa’s eyes were firmly trained on her chopping knife, which she was using in a furious manner much beyond her level of skill. Grace had turned her attention to her own dish when she heard Melissa’s cry. She looked up to see blood dripping down her friend’s hand, blooming on the sleeve of her white shirt. There was blood on the blade of the abandoned knife, the plastic chopping board and even the food itself, celery and onion splattered with red. Grace stepped forward to help, but the teacher was already there, pressing a clean cloth to the wound, muttering about hospital and stitches.
Now Grace cringes at the memory of that day. Her role in causing Melissa to be so uncharacteristically upset and therefore careless. How she was prepared to ostracise her purely on Annabel’s say-so. Her lack of ‘fucking backbone’.
Thankfully, she is not the same person as she was back then.
Is anyone?
As is always the case, Grace never quite achieves everything on her to-do list. Almost 2.30 p.m.: time to pick up Billy from preschool. She’s on her way out the door when it comes to her. The photograph. She knows where it came from. In fact, she sees it a dozen times a day. It’s from a group shot of the family, but everyone else has been cropped out. The photo was taken in the back garden on a sunny day in the lead-up to last Christmas. Grace had multiple copies printed so it could be popped into Christmas cards.
Grace backtracks to the kitchen. There’s a gap on the fridge door where the photo should be. Where on earth has it gone to? Then a paralysing thought.
Has someone been in the house and taken it?
What you will be remembered for: Probably, unfortunately, my hair.
Best memories of high school: Decorating lockers on birthdays.
Worst memories of high school: PE class. Especially on the really hot days, when my face would end up the same colour as my hair.
What will you be doing ten years from now: President of the Wilderness Society.