She reaches up one hand and pulls aside the lace curtain on her window. The sudden flood of sunshine makes her blink. The Anniversary is more often than not a beautiful day, which Rose always feels is a little fraudulent, an inaccurate representation of the actual day itself, which had been a Gothic sort of day, all grey, brooding skies, a howling icy wind whipping the gum trees back and forth, the river murky and choppy. Rose can still see Connie standing at her bedroom door, wearing red mittens and a scarf their mother had knitted, wrapped around her neck to just under her mouth. Rose could tell she had woken up with one of her earaches by the way she was holding her head tilted to one side. She was all snappy. ‘This is your last chance to change your mind, Rose. After today, we can’t go back. Ever.’ But Rose hadn’t been able to speak or move, she was trapped at the bottom of a very deep, very dark mineshaft and she didn’t know how to claw her way out. She thought she was going to be there forever. She hadn’t said a word. She’d had nothing to say. Connie’s face had clenched with irritation and she’d said, ‘Right. Well, we’re doing it then.’ And they’d done it.

And in the blink of an eye seventy-three years had passed.

And now, tonight, some man, some ‘kook’ who saw Veronika’s silly advertisement will be on the island, saying that he’s related to Alice and Jack Munro! It makes Rose want to laugh and it simultaneously makes her want to cry. It gives her a trembly feeling of fear and at the same time it gives her a pleasantly uplifting feeling of rage.

It really is time to get up.

The audience holds its breath in anticipation as that brave battler, Rose Doughty, overcomes horrendous pain yet again to arise from her bed.

Enigma does not dream. Veronika has told her that everybody dreams, they just don’t remember it. This is nonsense. Veronika is always talking such nonsense. If Enigma dreamed, she’d remember it. She has an excellent memory. It’s not fair that she doesn’t dream. Her husband Nathaniel used to have long, complicated dreams which he always wanted to tell her about over breakfast. It was very boring pretending to listen to him. She used to sigh a lot to try and give him the hint, but he didn’t take any notice, just kept droning on.

Well, here she is all alone on the Anniversary morning with nobody to bring her so much as a cup of tea in bed. She is a lonely old widow, sitting here in her bed, which is so sad, like something in a Grace Kelly movie. She sniffs experimentally.

Actually, the truth is she doesn’t miss Nathaniel all that much. It’s nice having all the extra space in bed and keeping the electric blanket turned up so high that she can wear her summer nightie. She’d never actually meant to marry him. There were plenty of other livelier fellows who would have suited her better than Nathaniel, with his hangdog face, always loping around behind her. Always just there. She’d accidentally said yes to his proposal. It was because all her friends were always going on about what a nice boy he was–so sweet, so clever–so she thought she’d look silly if she said no. It was just like when she went shopping with Connie and Rose and they told her that red polo-neck top looked so good on her, she’d be mad not to buy it. So she bought it, against her better judgement, and sure enough, did she ever wear it? Not once! It just sat there hanging in the cupboard. Nathaniel was just like that red polo-neck top. A mistake. But you couldn’t keep your receipt and exchange your husband, could you? No, you were stuck with him. Well, you were back then. Today they just divorced each other at the drop of a hat. Look at Veronika. Married for all of five minutes. Enigma had given her a very expensive iron as a wedding present. Did she get it back? No siree.

She pushes back the covers and slips her feet into fluffy pink slippers, which Laura once said looked like something Barbara Cartland would wear. This should have been a compliment but Laura made it sound like an insult, which was confusing. Enigma doesn’t really understand Laura a lot of the time. She supposes she is clever. Mothers aren’t meant to have favourites but how can they not, when one child is so much nicer to you than the other one? Enigma has taken care not to treat Margie like her favourite daughter, but she is of course, and she should be grateful for that and she should certainly not be abandoning her mother on such an important day as the Anniversary. It’s hurtful.

The house is warm and toasty as she walks to the kitchen because she kept the heating on all night. Nathaniel would have had a fit. But as she was always trying to tell him, he was married to a celebrity. Enigma was a celebrity, just like Barbara Cartland, and she was also quite rich, just like Barbara Cartland, so why should she have to shiver on cold winter mornings?

She’s going to have a smoked-salmon omelette for breakfast, made with King Island cream, her treat to celebrate the Anniversary. Seeing as nobody else cares about her, she’ll just have to look after herself. When she was a child she always got a special gift and breakfast on the Anniversary. It was like her birthday but even better because she was the Star of the Day. Rose made her a special new dress to wear, and the night before she wore rags in her hair to curl it. She looked just like a little princess and the ladies who visited the island all wanted to hug and kiss her even more than usual. ‘You poor, poor darling!’ they’d cry, sweeping her into scented arms. And Enigma would cry with them, thinking, ‘I am a poor darling!’ and that would make them cry even harder, thinking she was crying for her vanished mummy and daddy. This was sort of true, but not in the way they thought. Enigma’s greatest fear had been that her real parents would come back to claim her and take her away from Rose and Connie and Jimmy. Every Anniversary morning she woke up terrified that this might be the day Alice and Jack would turn up, saying, ‘Right. We’ll have her back now, thanks very much!’ And they wouldn’t know her favourite foods, or how she needed to have her hair brushed as light as a feather, or her back washed upways, not crossways, or how to tuck the blanket under her neck, or anything important about her!

When Connie and Rose had told her the truth about Alice and Jack on her fortieth birthday, that had been the part that made her really very cross. All those years thinking that Alice and Jack might turn up and steal her away when there was as much chance of that happening as Santa Claus turning up on the island! It was virtually child abuse!

‘But you never told us you were worried about that!’ Rose had looked quite upset, as well she should have.