Chapter Nine Fiona #2
So too were the girls, high on adrenaline, and by the time I managed to get them to bed and Lex had retired to their room with a book Sadie had bought for them on a whim at the airport, Jonah had cracked open a bottle of Bibliophile riesling.
‘We picked this up from our local down on the high street,’ he explained to Elias, handing him a glass.
‘The one with the absurdly generous somm, right?’ Elias tilted his glass to the side, looking at the body. ‘Bold move, little brother, pouring riesling to someone who’s been in Germany for two years. I’ve got high standards.’
‘It’s a beautiful wine.’
I barely realised I’d spoken until Elias, Jonah and Sadie all looked at me. ‘It’s top-notch,’ I said defensively. ‘The winemaker’s brilliant. He’s won, like, eight thousand awards. Besides, Tasmania’s got a great climate for riesling. It’s cool but there’s a lot of sunshine, so—’
‘Okay, okay, Wikipedia.’ Elias chuckled. ‘I promise, Fi, I don’t need a position paper to talk me into having a glass of wine.’
I knew he meant nothing by it, but it still stung. What might he – or any of them – say if I told them about the piece on Bibliophile I was halfway through editing for my new column? Oh, nice, it’s cute that you have a hobby. How did you find time to do it with the kids? Anyway…
‘Cheers, Fishers – and honorary Fishers,’ Elias added to Sadie, who made a face. ‘It’s lovely to be in the same country again.’
We all clinked our glasses together. Jonah and Sadie looked each other in the eye, smiling knowingly. I dug the nails of my free hand hard into my palm.
‘Oh, this is good wine,’ Elias said. ‘Sorry for the doubts.’
‘I told you.’ A little flash of pride cut through the tangle in my stomach. My brothers and I might have made leaps and bounds in our relationship over the past year, but it was still hard to get a Fisher to admit they were wrong.
‘I hope you’ve got some more, Fi,’ Jonah said, clapping Elias on the shoulder, ‘because I don’t think one bottle is going to do us.’
‘Sorry.’ The momentary flash vanished, and status quo was restored: Fiona Fisher, family disappointment. ‘I’m out.’
‘No drama.’ Jonah pulled out his phone. ‘I bet I know someone who’ll deliver.’
It took me a second to realise what he meant. ‘No! Tsundoku isn’t that kind of—’
‘But if there’s one person they’d make an exception for…’ He winked at me. ‘Hi – Charlotte? This is Jonah Fisher. I’m at Fiona’s place, and I was wondering…’
It turned into a three-way conversation as Elias started offering his opinion on which wines should go into the impromptu half-case Jonah was ordering. Sadie nudged me with her elbow. ‘Are you all right?’
I nodded tightly.
She looked at me for a long moment before hooking her arm through mine and pulling me towards the front door. ‘Come with me.’
‘Fi, where are you taking my wife?’ Jonah called, putting his hand over the mic on his phone.
‘Wedding stuff!’ Sadie replied. ‘Mind your own business, Fisher.’
She sat me down at the table on the front porch, closing the door behind us. ‘Okay, spill,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I said stiffly. ‘I just don’t like taking advantage of Tsundoku’s generosity, that’s all.’
‘You’re going to have to do better than that.’ She gestured to her face. ‘You’ve gone the same colour as when I caught you with Satoshi in the restaurant. White, with a hint of green. What is it?’
I hesitated.
‘I know I’ve been teasing you about him.’ Her tone was gentler now. ‘If I’ve been poking at a sore spot—’
‘No.’ My voice was hoarse. ‘It’s fine.’
‘You, however, are obviously not.’ She reached across the table to me. ‘What happened?’
I exhaled. The quickest way out of this conversation was probably going to be through.
Sadie listened impassively as I told her about our Thursday night arrangement, but her hands flew to her mouth when I recounted the story of Michelle catching us beside the bins. ‘Oh noooooo.’
‘It was mortifying,’ I said. ‘I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me – are you laughing?’
‘I’m sorry!’ Sadie wasn’t just laughing, she was practically crying. ‘I bet it was embarrassing – but come on, you have to admit that it’s also—’ she almost couldn’t get the words out, she was laughing so hard ‘—unbelievably funny.’
I stared.
She clapped a hand to her heart in mock horror.
‘Oh, my stars,’ she said, in an affected imitation, presumably of Michelle.
‘My delicate, innocent eyes! My mind simply cannot process the thought of someone actually getting some when my husband hasn’t cared about anything but cricket and craft beer for ten years! ’
It was, based on what I knew from the Fridays I used to spend volunteering with her, a pretty accurate read of the dynamic of Michelle’s marriage, but I bristled anyway. ‘You know people don’t stop having sex just because they have kids, right?’
‘Yes – yes – sorry.’ Sadie wiped tears of laughter out of her eyes. ‘That was mean. But come on. You must be, like, a cult hero now. “Woman gets over arsehole ex-husband by getting under hot younger guy who comes with bonus high-quality booze”? That’s iconic.’
I didn’t say anything.
Slowly, Sadie’s laughter faded away. ‘So… not funny, then.’
I shook my head. ‘It was a wake-up call. That I – I’m being – I shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Fiona, no.’
‘I have to be realistic, Sadie. It’s been wonderful, this past month, but it can’t last.’
I took a long sip of my wine, trying to swallow down the lump in my throat.
‘Satoshi’s got this big glittering future ahead of him.
He deserves a proper partner, someone who can really be there for him and support him and give him what he needs, not someone he has to put back together.
And he’s not just some stranger I can have a bit of fun with and then forget, either. He’s in the kids’ lives.’
I swallowed again, but the lump in my throat wasn’t going away.
‘I thought Thursdays could just be this secret little thing I did, just for me. But look what happened at the barbecue. If I let it keep going, the kids will find out. I’m lucky they haven’t already.
And if they do – then when it ends—’ I swallowed again, once, twice, three times ‘—they’ll lose someone else. ’
‘And so will you?’
‘This isn’t about me, Sadie.’ I tipped my head back, looking at the stars. ‘I can’t let it be about me.’
She regarded me for a long moment. ‘You really are a Fisher, aren’t you?’
I blinked. ‘What?’
‘You clearly know how to construct an argument. Look at you, twelve logical leaps ahead.’
‘Thank you?’ I was strangely flattered.
‘It makes total sense that you’d jump to the worst-case scenario, where everything turns to shit and you and the kids get hurt. It’s already happened to you once, after all. But—’ she leaned forward across the table ‘—you’re still wrong.’
‘Sadie—’
‘Your logic is sound, but your premise is flawed. Everything you said relies on you not being able to have him – but I really think you can, Fiona. I think you can have it all.’
She nodded to the kerb, where Satoshi’s car had just pulled up, the timing as perfect as if it had been scripted. ‘That man,’ she said, ‘is not going anywhere. Hi!’
‘Hi.’ Satoshi closed his car door.
I couldn’t help but watch as he took the half-case of wine out of the boot.
He was in the more dressed-down version of the work ensemble I’d become accustomed to on our Thursdays together: tailored trousers paired with a white T-shirt, a tantalising triangle of smooth skin revealed by the V-neck.
His glasses were forest green today, and his bleached hair was tousled less artfully than normal, like someone had run their fingers through it.
My heart started beating faster, a memory of being the someone to run their fingers through it rising unbidden to the surface of my mind. You can pull it harder, if you want, he’d whispered, as his lips traced a line down my throat, and—
‘Come in,’ Sadie said, opening the front door, making me realise that I’d just been standing there, staring. ‘The boys will be happy to see you.’
I trailed after them, awkwardly hovering as Satoshi shook hands with first Jonah and then Elias, feeling like a ghost in my own house, unable to speak.
‘Have a drink with us,’ Jonah said, tapping his credit card against the portable reader Satoshi had brought.
‘You can convince old mate here—’ he elbowed Elias ‘—that Tasmanian wine is just as good as what he gets in Europe.’
Satoshi’s gaze slid sideways to me. ‘You don’t need me to pitch you on Bibliophile when you’ve got Fiona. She can probably give you better tasting notes than I can.’
I wanted to shriek. How was he always so fucking wonderful?
‘We insist.’ Jonah gestured to Satoshi’s outfit. ‘Anyway, it’s your night off, right?’
‘Fiona,’ Sadie interjected, ‘how about you and Satoshi go and put the wine in the kitchen and find him a wineglass?’
I should have been grateful to her for forcing me into proximity with him, making me have the conversation I knew I had to have, but in that moment, I wanted to kill her.
‘Sure,’ I said instead. ‘Um – this way.’
There was a silvery glow streaming into the kitchen from outside, so I didn’t turn on the light.
Better not to let myself really see him, or I’d never be able to stick to my resolve.
‘Just put those on the table,’ I said, going up on tiptoes to get him down a glass.
‘Do you want to pick what we open next? We’ve been drinking riesling, so—’
‘Fiona,’ he said softly.
I couldn’t bring myself to turn to face him. ‘I’m sorry.’
There was a long, drawn-out pause.
‘What for?’ he asked.
‘All of it,’ I replied. ‘Michelle. Running away. Asking you to come to the barbecue in the first place. For being such a terrible study buddy – fuck, you should be studying right now, shouldn’t you? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, every time I ask you come running and I shouldn’t ask, it’s not fair, and—’
‘Mummy?’
If there was one word that could cut right through one of my spirals, it was that. ‘Georgie-girl? What’s wrong?’