Лиана Мориарти - Nine Perfect Strangers

“Is this what you meant when you said don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with?” Frances asked Jan when it was her turn for a massage.

Poor Jan was horrified. “I meant don’t do burpees or jumping lunges!” she said as her practiced fingers performed their magic on Frances’s shoulders. “Burpees are terrible for anyone with back issues and you’ve got to have really stable knees before you do a jumping lunge.” She shook her head. “If I’d suspected anything like this I would have informed the police immediately.” She looked adoringly at Gus. “I would have informed Gus.”

“Does he whistle?” asked Frances, following her gaze.

Apparently he didn’t whistle or whittle, but was still just about perfect.

Once Gus and Jan had left, the nine of them went into the kitchen to prepare something for their dinner. They were euphoric with freedom as they flung open cupboards, and there was a moment of awed silence as they all stood in front of the massive stainless steel refrigerator and saw the abundance of food it contained: steak, chicken, fish, vegetables, eggs.

“Today is my twenty-first birthday,” announced Zoe.

They all turned to look at her.

“It’s also Zach’s birthday.” She took a deep shaky breath. “It’s our birthday today.”

Her parents moved to stand on either side of her.

“I think we might need a little glass of wine with our dinner,” said Frances.

“We need music,” said Ben.

“We need a cake,” said Carmel. She rolled up her sleeves. “I’m a master baker of birthday cakes.”

“I can make pizza,” said Tony. “If there’s flour, I can make pizza dough.”

“ Can you?” said Frances.

“I can,” he said, and he smiled.

Zoe retrieved the bottle of wine she’d smuggled in from her bedroom, and Frances searched the house until she found a gold mine of presumably uncollected contraband brought in by previous guests, including six bottles of wine, some of which looked quite good, from a small room behind the reception desk. Ben found their mobile phones, and they reconnected with the world, and discovered not all that much had happened in the last week: a sporting scandal that only Tony and Napoleon found scandalous, the breakup of a Kardashian marriage that only Jessica and Zoe found relevant, and a natural disaster where the only fatalities involved those who flagrantly ignored warnings, so, you know. Ben used his phone to play music and took on the responsibility of DJ, accepting requests across generations and genres.

Everyone got drunk on wine and food. Jessica grilled perfect medium-rare steaks. Tony twirled pizza dough. Frances acted as sous chef to whoever needed her. Carmel made an incredible cake and became flushed and beautiful at all the praise that was heaped upon her. A surprising number of people danced and a surprising number of people cried.

Lars could not dance. At all. It was delightful to watch.

“Are you doing it on purpose ?” asked Frances.

“Why do people always ask that?” said Lars.

Tony could dance. Very well. He told them that back in the day he and some other players had done ballet classes as part of their training. “Helped build up my hamstrings,” he explained as Frances and Carmel clutched each other and giggled helplessly at the thought of Tony in a tutu. He responded by executing a perfect pirouette.

Frances had never been in a relationship with a man who could pirouette or make pizza dough. That was just something interesting to note and not a reason to let Tony kiss her. She knew he wanted to kiss her. The feeling of being at a party with a man who wanted to kiss her, but had not yet done so, was exactly as good as the first time she experienced it, at the age of fifteen, at Natalie’s sixteenth birthday party. It heightened everything. Just like a hallucinogenic drug.

They toasted Zoe and Zach.

“I didn’t want twins,” said Heather, holding up her glass of red wine. “When the doctor told me it was twins, I’m not going to lie, I said a four-letter word.”

“Well, that’s a great start, Mum,” said Zoe.

“I’m a midwife,” said Heather, ignoring her. “I knew the risks of a twin pregnancy. But it turned out the pregnancy didn’t give me any trouble at all. I had a natural birth. Of course, they gave me a lot of trouble once they were out in the world!”

She looked at Napoleon. He took her hand.

“Those first few months were hard, but then, I don’t know, I think we got them into a routine when they were about six months old, and I remember, after I finally got a good night’s sleep, I woke up and looked at them and thought, Well, you two are pretty special.

“They always took it in turn to do things first. Zach was born first but Zoe walked first. Zach ran first.” Her words faded a little. She went to take a sip of wine and then remembered she hadn’t finished her toast. “Zoe got her driver’s license first, which, as you can imagine, made Zach crazy.”

She stopped again. “The fights! You would not believe the fights they had! They’d be wanting to kill each other and I’d put them in separate rooms, but within five minutes they’d be back together again, playing and giggling.”

Frances realized that Heather was giving the exact speech she would have given if Zach hadn’t died: an ordinary proud-mum speech in a backyard, with the younger generations rolling their eyes and the older generation brushing away tears.

She held up her glass. “To Zoe and Zach: the smartest, funniest, most beautiful kids in the world. Your dad and I love you.”

Everyone held up their glasses and said after her, “To Zoe and Zach.”

Napoleon and Zoe didn’t do a toast.

Instead, Napoleon lit the candles on Carmel’s cake, and they all sang “Happy Birthday” and Zoe blew out the candles and no one said, “Make a wish,” because every single person in that room was wishing the same thing. Frances could see him so clearly, the boy who should have been there, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Zoe, jostling with her to blow out the candles, their lives ahead of them.

After plates were handed around with the (excellent) cake, Zoe demanded that Ben play a song that Frances didn’t recognize, and Ben played it, and he and Jessica and Zoe danced together.

There were promises to keep in touch. People friended and followed each other. Jessica set up a WhatsApp group on their phones and joined them all.

Carmel was the first one to succumb to exhaustion and say, “Goodnight.” Everyone was leaving for home the next morning. Those who were from interstate had changed their flights and transfers to the next day. Carmel was from Adelaide, and the Marconi family and Tony were from Melbourne. Tony was the only interstate guest who had hired a rental car, and he was going to drive Ben and Jessica to pick up their car from where it had been abandoned by Delilah. Lars and Frances, the only guests from Sydney, had declared their intentions to sleep late and have a lazy breakfast before heading off.

Frances somehow already knew that everything was going to feel different in the morning.

They would all feel the tug of their old lives. She’d been on group package holidays and cruises before. She knew the process. The farther away they got from Tranquillum House, the more they would think, “Wait, what was that all about? I have nothing in common with those people!” It would all begin to feel like a dream. “Did I really do a Hawaiian dance by the pool?” “Did I really attempt to do a charade of the Kama Sutra just so my team would win?” “Did I really take illegal drugs and get locked up with strangers?”

At last there was just Frances and Tony, alone at the long table, drinking a final glass of wine.