Free The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty Page B

an oil painting on canvas, a labour of love one generous reviewer described as ‘exquisite works of art’.
    When her first book was launched, the local pre-school invited her to read her Gublet book to a group of cross-legged, squirming four-year-olds. She was nervous. Children made her feel huge and awkward and she was never sure exactly how to correctly pitch her conversation for their age group, worrying that she was speaking to them as if they were retarded or deaf. When friends suddenly (bizarrely!) put their heavy-breathing toddlers on the phone to talk to her, Grace would more often than not just sit there in tongue-tied silence. What in the world was she meant to say? ‘So, what have you been up to lately?’ ‘Hear you just learned to walk, hey? How’s that going, then?’
    She was convinced the pre-schoolers wouldn’t like her. After all, people generally didn’t. Friends were always cosily informing her how much they’d disliked her at their first meeting. ‘You just seemed so cold and standoffish.’ The children probably wouldn’t hide their dislike like grown-ups. They’d probably boo and hiss. Maybe they’d all suddenly attack her like rabid little rats. Who knew what they’d do? They were another species.
    She was sure that she sounded ridiculous as she read her own words to the pre-schoolers, but then she got her first laugh. It was the part where Gublet jumped up and down on his mum’s yucky pumpkin pie like a trampoline. The children whooped. One got up to demonstrate how he would jump in a similar situation. The teacher, sitting at the back of the room, gave her a thumbs-up, as if she knew Grace had been nervous, and the kids sat back down and looked up at her with open flower-like faces, eyes shining expectantly, ready for the next funny part. So this was what people saw in children.
    After she’d finished reading, when the teacher asked them if they had any questions, every hand shot in the air, straining high for her attention.
    ‘Is Gublet so naughty all the time because he wishes he didn’t have pointy ears?’
    ‘Would Gublet like to come to my party? Do you think he would jump up and down on my cake? My mum would be pretty cross with him!’
    ‘Gublet is funny when he’s naughty! I laughed so much! I laughed until forever !’
    ‘That time when Gublet’s mum sent him to the moon for being naughty and he rang up Melly and then they ran away to Mars, well, guess what, that happened to me too! But guess what, it wasn’t real! It was a dream !’
    Hearing a client say ‘The CEO was quite impressed with your design concepts’ could never compare with the intense pleasure Grace felt hearing a four-year-old say ‘I laughed until forever !’
    So that was the day she decided that what she really wanted to do with her life was work full-time on her Gublet books. When she got pregnant and her mother had offered them her house on Scribbly Gum, she and Callum had gone out to dinner and worked out a whole life plan.
    She would take maternity leave from the graphic-design studio, but hopefully she’d never have to go back. When the ‘baby’ (it was so amazing to think that there really would be an actual real baby, separate from herself) was asleep, she’d work serenely on the third Gublet book and get it finished by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Callum would take on extra music students outside of school hours. The builders would do what they said they were going to do and their dream home in the mountains would be finished in plenty of time for them to move in when Laura returned from overseas. Within two years they would save up enough money so that Callum could start up his Music School for Adults. They would work out a sensible investment plan. They would take multi-vitamins and drink carrot, celery and apple juice every day. (They would need to buy a juicer.) They would be healthy, happy and successful. They would have one more child. Maybe even two more! Why not? So far it