Chapter One Fiona #2
The moment that news of what Matt had done had started to spread, people had been hungry for the gory details.
At one point, the questions – so polite, but so pointed – had been coming so thick and fast I’d considered just holding an Ask Me Anything in one of the WhatsApp chats.
Her name is Laura. She’s eight years older than me.
They’ve technically been together longer, but I’m the one he’s legally married to (which was surprisingly difficult to work out, save your follow-up questions until the end).
They have two kids: Micah is twelve, and Nikki is five.
I don’t know much about her otherwise, but considering I had no idea that whenever Matt went to Melbourne for work he was actually going to see them, I’m confident she’s probably smarter than me.
What else do you want to know, you fucking ghouls?
If the only person that would have blown back on was me, I might have actually done it.
But parents’ gossip always spreads to the playground, and Lex and Rosie and Georgia were already the kids of The Man With The Secret Second Family.
Better they also be the kids of The Woman Who Is Keeping Her Chin Up (Although Seriously, How Could She Not Have Known?) than The Woman On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it,’ I said to Michelle. ‘So why bother trying?’
‘Oh, come here.’
I submitted to another hug. ‘You’re so brave,’ Michelle whispered.
What I wouldn’t give for her to say something – anything – else to me.
For the things she whispered to be the petty bullshit we used to gossip about while working in the library.
For her to ask me if I thought the new kindy teacher was hot.
To bitch about the ways they kept jacking up the prices of school uniforms. To talk about the fucking weather.
But this was the only conversation I was allowed to have now. When Matt had left, he’d ensured that my entire life revolved around him, more than it ever had when we were together.
‘Thanks, Michelle,’ I lied. ‘That means a lot.’
I was twenty-one when I met Matt. I’d been in the middle of my undergrad degree, and I had an essay on Paradise Lost I should have been writing, especially if I didn’t want to be the recipient of yet another stern lecture about my grades and all the things that were expected of me as a scion of Professor Christian Fisher.
But when my best friend Kaitlyn texted me, inviting me to go out with a group of our friends, I’d said fuck it, and gone.
We’d gone to the divey suburban Sydney pub we both worked in, because we got a staff discount. I’d been at the bar getting the next round when a handsome man in a well-cut suit had come up to me. That’s a lot of drinks you’re trying to carry, he’d said. Can I give you a hand?
I’d said yes. He’d helped me deliver the drinks to the table, then left. Hello, Daddy, Kaitlyn whispered.
Ew, shut up, I whispered back.
The glass of sparkling had arrived five minutes later. From that guy, my manager said, nodding over at the bar. He wants to know if you’ll drink it with him.
I’d paused, looking over at him. He’d raised his eyebrows at me, then his glass, and a shiver had gone through me, like someone had walked over my grave.
I’d taken the glass, hissed shut up again at Kaitlyn when she wolf-whistled at me, then walked over to him. Just so we’re clear, I’d said, sliding onto the barstool beside him, this doesn’t mean I owe you anything.
His smile had been wolfish, sending that shiver rushing through me again. Oh, I think it does, he replied. Your name, pretty girl.
I’d crossed my legs tight against the fluttery feeling building between them. Fiona.
He probably knew I was a done deal by the time he took my hand. Fiona, he’d repeated, pressing a kiss to my knuckles. I’m Matt.
I’d gone home with him, back to an apartment that made it clear this was a man, not a boy. He’d laid me down in his thousand-thread-count sheets, and as he kissed his way down my body, I was already thinking about how I’d tell the story of my first ever one-night stand to Kaitlyn the next day.
But it wasn’t a one-night stand. I’d tried to sneak out at 2 am, and Matt’s hand had fastened around my wrist like a manacle. You, he’d growled, are not going anywhere.
We’d got married about eighteen months later, despite the strenuous objections of my family.
I’d fallen pregnant with Lex soon afterwards, and Matt moved us to Hobart.
Big cities are no place to raise a family, he’d said, stroking a stray strand of hair behind my ear when I’d asked why we weren’t moving to Melbourne instead, where he already worked several days a week.
I always loved visiting Tasmania as a kid.
I’ll commute when I need to: it’s a quick flight to Melbourne, just a hop across the strait.
Tassie will be my oasis with my baby – he’d kissed me – and our baby.
Na?ve, twenty-three, knocked up and in love, I’d agreed, completely failing to see the red flags that were even then waving in my face.
Matt didn’t want me in Sydney because that was where my family was: my family, who were united in firm agreement that I was throwing my future away on him – my family of professional argument-havers, who just might convince me they were right if I spent too much time with them.
And Matt didn’t want me in Melbourne because that was where Laura was.
No, he wanted me on a whole different island to her: Laura, his childhood sweetheart, who he’d also been laying down in his expensive sheets; Laura, who was also pregnant with his child; Laura, who I never, ever, ever wanted to meet.
Laura, who was standing on the other side of the mediator’s office, Matt’s arm around her shoulder, very obviously pregnant again.
‘Fiona, stay calm, okay?’ my lawyer Kavita murmured in my ear. ‘It’s important you keep your composure.’
‘Matt’s lawyers will have advised him to bring her along so you’ll have an emotional response and come off looking crazy.’ Chess angled her body so I couldn’t see them anymore. ‘And we’re not going to give him that satisfaction.’
I nodded. My mouth was dry.
Chess took my hands in hers and squeezed tight. ‘Remember, he doesn’t know what we know,’ she whispered. ‘We’re about to take him to the fucking cleaners.’
I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath in through my nose. ‘Okay.’
‘It’s all going to be over soon,’ Kavita said comfortingly.
‘And he’s going to pay,’ Chess said, much more menacingly. ‘Big time.’
I exhaled slowly, opening my eyes again. This could be worse, I tried to make myself believe. This could all be so much worse.
At least I had Chess and Kavita. Chess, a high-powered corporate lawyer who had flown in that morning from Sydney, was Sadie’s sister.
They’d had some kind of falling out after Sadie and Jonah had got married that I didn’t really understand, but they’d mended fences a few months ago, and she’d been a massive help ever since.
She’d taken one look at the family lawyer representing me in the divorce, said a flat no, found me Kavita (She seems like a marshmallow on the surface, but she’s a shark, she’d assured me over a glass of wine at Tsundoku) and talked her into taking my case pro bono.
Then, when Chess found out I was married to that Matt Sinclair, who was apparently notorious in some of the circles she ran in, she’d taken on digging into his finances personally.
He’s a rich arsehole business bro, she’d told me bluntly when I protested that she was doing too much.
I deal with them all the time and I know all their tricks for hiding money. Let me use my powers for good for once.
I wished I could have enjoyed the way the colour drained from Matt’s face in the mediation meeting as Chess outlined everything he’d tried to conceal, ticking various offshore accounts and shell companies off on her fingers in response to his lawyers’ argument that he didn’t have the assets to pay me more than the bare minimum in child support.
I wished I could have enjoyed the muscle that started to twitch in his jaw as he realised that despite all his money, my legal team was better than his; the way his nose started to turn red as he figured out he wasn’t going to get away with leaving as cleanly as he thought.
But I still had the memory of all those years in my veins. Every time I’d let him touch me. Every time I’d let him kiss me. I love you, he’d told me time and time again, this pathetic, venal, red-nosed man – and blithely, without a doubt, I’d believed him.
‘Fiona, you need to be reasonable here.’ It was the first sentence Matt had said directly to my face in months, ever since that cold, grey morning last year when Satoshi had walked me home. ‘I’ve got four other children to support.’
‘Four?’ escaped me before I could bite it back.
Matt caressed Laura’s belly. ‘Twins.’
Cold sweat began to bead in my hairline.
I was barely half-aware of what was happening as Kavita and Chess hammered out a child support agreement with Matt’s lawyers.
I only really understood that we’d got what we’d wanted – the house, the car, and a generous monthly sum which would mean I could stop taking money from my parents and wouldn’t have to take every single copywriting gig I could find just to keep us afloat – when Chess squeezed my fingers under the table.
I could hear my own blood, rushing in my ears.
‘All right,’ the mediator said. ‘Let’s move on to custody and visitation.’
‘My client agrees that Ms Fisher should have primary custody of Alexan—’
‘Lex,’ Chess, Kavita and I all snapped at the same time.
‘Yes, of course, my apologies – of Lex, Rosemary and Georgia,’ Matt’s lawyer said. ‘We would, however, like to discuss visitation.’
‘No.’
Both Chess and Kavita’s hands landed on my knees under the table, but I ignored them. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Fiona,’ Matt said, his voice infuriatingly even, ‘they’re my children too.’
‘You don’t deserve them.’