An Academic Affair

Chapter Thirteen Sadie

Chapter Thirteen Sadie

Jonah was picking fights with me on purpose.

He thought he was being very subtle.

‘I can’t believe you’re drinking caffeinated tea before bed,’ he said, folding back the covers on his side.

‘You’ll never get any sleep, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we have a shit-ton of work to do tomorrow.

’

‘Not all of us are weaklings who can only tolerate that horrible ginger shit you drink after ten am,’ I shot back, and the fight commenced, like we both didn’t already know perfectly well how many litres of tea I was capable of drinking, and we both didn’t already know exactly what the other one was going to say next.

He’d been doing it all day, finding the pettiest points to quibble over, but it was the things he didn’t push on that gave his game away.

‘Night, Shaw,’ was all he said to me, when I built a wall of pillows between us in bed.

‘Night, Fisher,’ I replied, turning the light off and lying down on the other side of the barricade that separated me from the most cardigan-y version of Jonah that had ever cardigan’d.

Tweed Jonah was not afraid to sink his teeth into my weaknesses.

He relished it, in fact.

He’d done it the night before, completely demolishing my argument that I had ruined things with Chess forever.

Today, though, he’d been picking fights as a way of showing me that everything was normal.

That the rings we were wearing didn’t have to change anything, and, oh, the fact that I’d snuggled up to him in the middle of the night and pressed myself so close against him it must have felt like I was trying to crawl inside his skin?

I’ve already forgotten about it, Shaw, and it’s ridiculous that you’d find something so minor and meaningless embarrassing.

He could try as much as he wanted, but I was smarter than that.

Cardigan Jonah in Tweed Jonah’s blazer was still Cardigan Jonah.

I turned over in bed, exhaling.

Can you both like being taken care of and resent it at the same time?

was a question I should note down to discuss with my therapist.

Although I knew exactly what she would say.

Of course you can, Sadie.

Why do you think you said what you said to Chess?

I checked my phone again, but I already knew there would be nothing there.

First day was INTENSE, I texted her.

I know you need some space, but would love to talk about it when you’re ready.

I love you so much xx

On the other side of the barricade, Jonah started snoring – not loudly, but gently, a comforting low rumble.

I put my phone down and let it lull me to sleep.

Mock Tweed Jonah was back at it again the next day, showing me some more completely unsuitable rentals over breakfast, being deliberately obtuse about which building on campus we needed to go to for the school meeting, and never once mentioning the fact that I had woken up sprawled across the pillow barricade with one of my hands on his arse.

I let him do it, taking the bait he was strewing behind him like breadcrumbs.

It was a good distraction; from our terrifying workload, from the fact Chess hadn’t responded, and from the fact that I couldn’t help but notice he had a great arse – something which was absolutely, positively none of my business.

It was starting to wear on me though, after, unable to face the cupboard, we spent two hours sitting in a campus café doing some more work on the pedagogical plan for the four (four!

) units we were going to be co-lecturing.

Some of the points he made about our approach to the Romanticism unit were valid (he was right, for example, that hanging a week on the scandalous exploits of nineteenth-century actor Edmund Kean would be a good idea, even if he was best known for performing Shakespeare), but others were low-key nonsense.

‘We absolutely do not need more Wordsworth,’ I snapped at him, as we packed up to head over to the school meeting.

‘We’ve got the preface to Lyrical Ballads , as well as “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned”.

That’s plenty.

’

‘One, no it isn’t, how are you going to teach Wordsworth without teaching “Tintern Abbey”?

’ Jonah held the café door open for me.

‘Two, why did you insist on putting in his two most annoying poems?’

‘He’s an annoying man!

And because they perfectly express that whole books-are-shit-learn-from-trees-you-stupid-bitch thing that’s at the heart of all his work.

’

‘It is not—’

‘Don’t, Fisher.

It’s been fifteen years.

I’m not prepared to relitigate “To Joanna” with you.

’

It should have been a sign for him to back down, but he didn’t.

‘I can’t believe you’re resisting the opportunity to put our origin story on the syllabus.

’

‘To Joanna’ had been the subject of our very first fight, back when we were both first-year undergrads.

Jonah had argued that it was a deeply romantic poem about a man trying his best to immortalise his mortal beloved by carving her name into a rock, a more lasting tribute than anything that could be captured in print.

I’d argued it was the mansplain-y musings of a very pretentious man who couldn’t deal with the fact a woman had laughed at him when he took her on a walk and basically had an orgasm at the sight of some trees.

Neither of us had given ground.

Further years of study had made me slightly more sympathetic to Jonah’s reading of the poem (NB: slightly ), but at the time, he really had been being a bit of a Wordsworth himself – something which had obliterated the initial thought I’d had, the very first time I’d ever laid eyes on him.

He’s cute.

I quickened my pace.

Suddenly, I was thinking about his arse again, and all the hairs on my arms were standing on end, and I wanted to make it to the meeting before the blush that was starting to creep up my body made it somewhere visible.

I escaped to the bathroom as soon as we found our way to the conference room where the School of Humanities pre-semester meeting was being held, splashing water on my face and glaring at myself in the mirror.

‘Get it together, Shaw,’ I whispered at my reflection.

One of the toilets flushed.

I adjusted a couple of my bobby pins and smiled politely and – I hoped – professionally at the petite dark-haired woman who emerged from the stall.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling back in the mirror as she washed her hands.

Then she blinked.

‘Sadie Shaw?’

Shit.

Was I supposed to recognise her?

‘Yes. Hi. Um—’

‘You don’t know me, don’t worry.

I recognise you from the photo they sent around when they announced you were the new hire.

I’ve read some of your articles.

’

She dried her hands on a paper towel and then held one out to me.

‘Julia Scott-O’Connell.

I’m in History.

’

‘Sadie – Lit Studies – but you obviously know that.’ I shook her hand.

‘I’m flattered you’ve read me.

I didn’t know my work would appeal to a historian.

’

‘I do a lot of work on histories of love, histories of sex, things like that, so I’m very interested in your work on romance.

’ Julia paused to touch up her lipstick in the mirror, a dark burgundy colour.

‘I was delighted when they announced your hiring. I’m one of the co-leads on the interdisciplinary love studies research network we have here.

You should join.

’

‘I would love to,’ I said, slightly surprised.

‘Thank you.’

Julia smiled at me again.

She was one of those people with an innate warmth to her smile, the kind of sparkle in her eye that translated into charisma.

‘You’re welcome.

Shall we get out there?

If you sit with me, I’ll give you the lay of the land.

’

And just like that, I – the reigning queen of liquid love, of bonds tied loosely – had seemingly made a friend.

The school meeting was taking place in a conference room, chairs arrayed in rows in front of a lectern.

‘You know Sofia, right?’ Julia nodded to where Professor Vargas stood, chatting to two men in suits.

‘The Head of School?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, as we slid into seats about two thirds of the way back.

‘She hired me. Then dropped a terrifying amount of teaching on me.’

‘That’s not surprising.

’ Julia put her handbag on the floor, took out a box of mints, and offered me one.

‘There’s been a lot of creative workload accounting going on for the last couple of years.

The suits she’s talking to are middle managers in the faculty exec team.

They don’t give a shit about either scholarship or student experience.

All they care about is slashing the budget to bare bones in any way they can.

’

‘Sounds familiar.’ This was exactly the same thing that would have forced me completely out of academia if I hadn’t got this job.

‘Sofia’s a good egg.

People underestimate her, but she’s got an iron will and she’s held her ground on a lot of fronts.

The fact that we’ve managed to get some new permanent hires’ – Julia nudged me with her elbow – ‘is proof of that. But there’s only so much she can do when things are coming from above her head.

If they start talking about “Renewniversity”?’ – she put scare quotes around it with her fingers – ‘or Phase Three in this meeting, the shit’s about to hit the fan.

’

‘What’s Phase Three?

’

‘The suits have this three-phase plan – the Renewniversity plan – to reduce faculty spending, but given Phases One and Two were both rounds of redundancies, I don’t think it’s a very complicated plan.

’

Oof.

I made a mental note to tell Jonah later that we needed to transfer our union memberships over to the Lyons branch ASAP.

Automatically, my eyes sought him out.

He was standing talking to a woman in a short-sleeve shirt and a bow-tie whom I recognised from the hiring committee.

He caught me looking and gave me a somewhat sheepish – and perhaps apologetic?

– wave.

Julia followed my gaze.

‘Friend of yours?’

‘You could say that,’ I said.

‘He’s my husband.

’

It was the first time I’d said those words since our wedding.

My husband.

A line from one of the books in my treasured Anne box-set flickered into my mind.

I couldn’t remember the exact wording, but it was right after Anne and Gilbert finally got married.

Gilbert introduced Anne to someone as ‘my wife’ for the very first time, and nearly burst with the pride of saying it.

That wasn’t exactly the emotional response I was having, but…

Well, it wasn’t embarrassing, being able to point to Jonah Fisher across a room and say ‘See that man? I’m married to him’.

Jonah turned back to his conversation, and – oh no, the line of his blazer was very flattering, and since when did he have such a good arse?

!

Thankfully, Julia distracted me before I could fall too far down the rabbit hole.

‘You managed a partner hire? Here? In this climate? Did you have to promise to sacrifice your firstborn child on the sacred altar of the faculty budget?’

I laughed, absolutely refusing to interrogate the notion that ‘firstborn child’ was something people were going to assume Jonah and I wanted to have.

‘Judging by the amount of teaching they’re wringing out of us, they should have hired, like, twelve people.

’

‘It’s still impressive,’ Julia said.

‘Well done on navigating the two-body problem. That’s unbelievably difficult to do.

Literally the first thing that happened to me when I got my job here was a divorce.

’

Before I could ask her more, Vargas stepped up to the lectern.

‘All right, everyone!’ she said, tone cheerful despite the two middle managers standing menacingly behind her.

‘Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?

’

Julia interpreted for me as the three-hour meeting got underway, leaning over and whispering explanations of who the various speakers were.

The Associate Head of School for Research was apparently a good person to know (‘they keep telling us there’s no internal funding for research, but she’s good at finding it’).

The Associate Head for Student Experience meant well but was largely ineffective (‘maybe people would listen to her more if they were actually in the classroom’).

The dean of the Faculty of Arts, who popped in for twenty minutes to lambast everyone for the poor results of a recent staff satisfaction survey, was a snake (‘get ready for some hilarious emails about how great he is at supporting our people and our wellbeing , I like to play a drinking game with them’).

Jonah, who was sitting a couple of rows ahead of me with some other men in tweed, took out his phone during this particular speech.

I know we have a ton of shit to do , he texted me, but let’s move transferring our union memberships to the top of the to-do list.

One thing I had always appreciated about Jonah, even during all the years we were feuding, was that despite his astronomical levels of privilege, he’d always been a staunch union man.

Great minds, etc , I sent back.

Didn’t know you rated my mind that highly, Shaw.

I sent him back an eyeroll emoji.

The last agenda item of the meeting was an update from all the heads of department – two of whom Jonah had apparently unwittingly sat between.

I would have to make fun of him later for being drawn to other tweed bros like they were a swarm of salmon.

‘That’s Tom Carmichael, my department head,’ Julia whispered as one of them stood up.

‘He’s a piece of shit.

Whatever you do, do not be alone in a room with him.

’

Well, shit.

I would have to have a different kind of conversation with Jonah.

The last person to stand up was the tweed bro on Jonah’s other side.

‘Well, it’s wonderful to be making my first speech to you all as the new head of the Literary Studies department,’ he said, clapping his hands and then rubbing them together.

‘It definitely won’t be my last.

’

‘Lachlan Petrovski,’ Julia said in an undertone.

‘Only been here six months, but already knifed your old head of department. Different breed of piece of shit to Carmichael – more power-hungry misogynist than active predator – but definitely also a piece of shit.’

I ran my tongue over my teeth in disquiet.

Of all the people in the room, Jonah had gravitated immediately to the powerful arsehole who was friends with his dad.

‘Let’s finish this meeting on a cheerful note, shall we?

’ Petrovski said.

‘I’m happy to announce that we’ve got not one, but two new hires starting in Lit Studies this week.

Jonah, Sadie, will you come up here please?

’

My knees ached from sitting so long as I got up.

Jonah gave me an awkward half-smile as we walked to the front of the room.

I didn’t reciprocate.

‘Most of you will already know about Sadie Shaw joining us, from the email that went round a few weeks ago,’ Petrovski said.

‘I’m delighted to tell you all, though, that with some elbow grease and begging to the budgetary gods, we’ve also managed to hire her husband.

’

He clapped Jonah hard on the shoulder.

‘I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have Dr Jonah Fisher joining our department.

He’s a Shakespearean scholar of the highest calibre – and those of us who have been around the traps for a while will be very well acquainted with his father, Professor Christian Fisher, a titan of literary studies scholarship in this country.

’

Oh, absolutely fuck this.

I looked for Julia in the audience – surely she would have a hot take on what complete bullshit this was – but she was gazing at Jonah, eyes wide, lips parted, looking slightly stunned.

And that did not make me feel a combination of possessive and jealous amid all my disquiet, and did not remind me of the whole ‘we could be the Sartre and de Beauvoir of Literary Studies’ thing I’d said to Jonah when I’d pitched him on the concept of getting married at all.

Jonah and I didn’t have a chance to talk after the meeting.

When it concluded, no one seemed to have any appetite to get back to work, lingering instead over the tea and coffee and soggy sandwiches.

A host of people came and introduced themselves to us, a sea of names and faces I definitely would not remember, pulling us in different directions.

I didn’t get to talk to Julia either.

‘I have to head off,’ she told me as soon the meeting ended, ‘but I’ll send you an email about the love studies research network, okay?

’

She was gone before I could tell her she should send one to Jonah too – given his work centred on relationships, he’d probably be interested – but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

It was nearly five by the time Jonah and I extricated ourselves from a long conversation with Petrovski – a conversation which I’d really only been part of on a technicality, given he addressed everything he said to Jonah.

‘Our first rental inspection is at five fifteen,’ Jonah said, when we were by ourselves at last.

‘Do you want to head off?’

I nodded.

He shouldered his satchel.

I picked up my handbag.

As we started walking, I began an irritated mental countdown.

He would pick the next stupid fight in five, four, three, two…

But he didn’t say anything.

Jonah Fisher was not, in my experience, a brooder.

It was one of the few ways he deviated from the dark academia aesthetic to which he was otherwise so wedded.

He could be quiet , yes – I couldn’t count the number of times I’d seen him settled in a corner of the couch in the share house, reading, oblivious to everything going on around him – but he didn’t really brood.

Maybe I didn’t know him that well, though, because the man inspecting these properties with me clearly had some kind of higher degree in brooding.

He uttered approximately four syllables during our first two inspections.

Two of them were ‘no’, flatly stated.

I didn’t like the places either so I didn’t argue, but when we got to our third and final inspection of the evening, I tried turning his own tactic against him.

‘We could make this place work,’ I told him, standing in the middle of the horrible kitchen of a horribly expensive tumbledown house.

‘You wanted green space for your garden. There isn’t any.

’

‘I could figure something out. Maybe there’s a community garden nearby.

’

He sighed.

‘If you want it, fine. Let’s put in an application.

’ Having already decided I would rather live in our prison cell office on campus, I promptly had to backpedal.

‘Okay, out with it,’ I snapped, when my second attempt to start an argument – suggesting we take an Uber to Fiona’s place in Bellerive, which was only a few minutes’ walk away – resulted in Jonah simply taking out his phone.

‘What’s up your arse, Fisher?

’

He just looked at me.

‘You’ve spent the last day and a half picking the pettiest fights you can think of and now you’re like a fucking limp noodle.

’ Why had I phrased it as what’s up your arse ?

His arse was the last thing I needed to be thinking about.

‘Out with it. Why are you sulking?’

His expression changed, morphing into a classic Tweed Jonah You fool, Sadie Shaw, I can’t believe you can’t see the massive flaw in the argument you just presented face.

‘Why do you think?! You were at the meeting.’

‘The one where they were like, “Oh yes, we hired this woman, but let’s talk about the really important thing: WE HIRED THIS MAN!”? I was indeed there, watching you sit elbow to elbow with every power player in the room.’

‘They sat down next to me! Because of my fucking dad!’

He ran his hand through his hair, tugging hard at the ends.

‘For my entire life, the only way anyone has ever perceived me is as an accessory to some fucking better scholar. Christian Fisher’s son.

Elias Fisher’s brother.

Sadie Shaw’s husband.

’

I rolled my eyes.

‘And I can’t escape it!

’ He tugged at his hair again.

‘No matter what I do, I can’t get away from it!

I’m never just Jonah Fisher, scholar.

I’m permanently stuck in other people’s orbits.

’

‘Grow up.’

‘What?!’

‘You heard me. Grow up. This is the most ridiculous poor-little-rich-boy shit you’ve ever said to me.

’ I put on a mocking voice.

‘Oh no, my daddy’s friends are going to give me advantages , whatever will I do?

’

‘You don’t know what it feels like, Sadie!

’

‘You’re right, I don’t!

Because no one has ever treated me like that a day in my life!

Today included!

’

‘Did you miss the bit where they were like “Here’s Sadie Shaw and here’s the man we only hired because he married her”?’

‘Did you miss the bit where Petrovski was so fucking excited to talk about how you were joining the department he nearly exploded?’

‘Because of my dad!’

‘Oh, golly, gee, Jonah, that must be so difficult for you, having all these advantages simply handed to you. However do you cope?’

‘How do you cope, knowing that you’ve actually earned all of your accomplishments?

Do you have any idea what it’s like having to constantly question your own abilities?

’

‘You are not going to make me feel bad because you have privilege!’

‘I know I have privilege coming out my fucking ears! Do you think that makes it any easier to have a career based entirely on riding people’s coat-tails?

’

‘How did you manage to fit in a Masters degree in feeling sorry for yourself around all your other research? Please, give me some time management tips.’

‘If I wanted a Masters, I probably wouldn’t have to lift a finger to get it!

They’d just give it to me!

’

‘Oh no, what a tragedy!’

‘Hey!’ Fiona barked.

‘Time out!’

Our argument had, without either of us noticing, carried us to her house.

She was standing in her front yard, hose in one hand, watering her garden as the twins played on the lawn.

‘Don’t make me turn this on you,’ she said, flicking the water towards our feet.

Jonah’s shoulders drooped.

‘Sorry, Fi. We were just…’

‘Fighting?’ Fiona arched an eyebrow.

Jonah sighed.

I folded my arms.

It was terrible ruse-selling, but Fiona just shook her head fondly.

‘Hey, girls?’

Rosie and Georgia looked up.

‘What?’ one of them asked.

‘How do you feel about being secret agents?’

Their eyes lit up.

Fiona crouched down to their level.

‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help Uncle Jonah relax. He’s had a big week, and he’s tired.

’

‘Like Daddy after a long day in the office?’

‘Exactly like that.’ Fiona didn’t skip a beat.

‘So he needs a couple of secret agents to take him inside, and sit him down on the couch, and put the TV remote in his hand, and to play where he can see them – very quietly ,’ she dropped her voice to a whisper, ‘because it’s a secret mission.

And it has to be undertaken without the supervision of mission command, because mission command is going to take Auntie Sadie out for a wine.

’

What?

!

No!

The exhaustion of the last week crashed down on me like a pile of bricks.

The last thing I wanted to do was go out for a drink with Jonah’s very nice sister and lie to her about how he was the light of my fucking life and wasn’t she lucky to have him back in hers.

I had just enough energy to grab him by the hair, put his head through a wall, and kick him up the irritatingly good arse.

That was it.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Fiona held out her hand to the girls.

‘Agents, do you accept?’

Rosie and Georgia conferred.

‘We accept!’

‘Excellent.’ Fiona shook their hands.

‘Mission command is putting her trust in you, agents. Don’t let me down.

’

‘We’re the best agents.

Come on, Uncle Jonah!

’

The twins each grabbed one of Jonah’s hands and towed him into the house.

The glance he threw me over his shoulder was terrified.

It was probably because the expression on my face was somewhere between ‘if you leave me, I’ll kill you’ and a simpler ‘I’ll kill you’, but Fiona clearly interpreted it as fear of her daughters, because she only laughed.

‘Lex!’

‘What?’ came from inside the house.

‘Come here, please!’

Lex appeared on the doorstep a few moments later.

‘What?’

‘Let’s open negotiations,’ Fiona said.

‘If I was to bring home, say, two books for you, would you be willing to spend the next hour or so reading in the living room and making sure the girls don’t make Uncle Jonah want to run screaming into the night?

’

Lex thought for a moment.

‘Three books,’ they said, ‘and you have a deal.’

‘Done.’

Fiona and Lex shook on it, then she turned her attention on me.

‘Come on, shiny new sister-in-law,’ she said, beaming.

‘Let’s go have a wine and a chat.

’

I gritted my teeth and forced myself to smile back.

‘That sounds lovely.’

At least one thing went my way.

Fiona was a talker.

The bar she took me to was on the high street in Bellerive, about a ten-minute walk down the hill from her house (‘Walking down the hill is a lot more fun than walking up the hill, let me tell you!’), and she kept up a steady stream of chatter the whole way, pointing out local landmarks and places Jonah and I might like to get coffee or lunch or go on date nights.

‘There are a ton of cute places over here, but this one is the absolute best,’ she said, pulling open the door to the bar.

‘Most people think you have to go over to the western side of the river for nice bars, but this place has immaculate vibes.’

They wouldn’t be immaculate for long, if Jonah and I were to attempt something as ludicrous as a date night – screaming arguments tended to ruin the atmosphere – but I nodded politely.

From the outside, the wine bar didn’t look like much: just a simple tinted glass window in the little strip of restaurants, with the name – Tsundoku – engraved on it in flowing script.

Inside, though, it was a different story.

The space was narrow but deep, bar on one side, a long single row of dark wood tables marching towards the back on the other.

A tealight flickered on each of them, giving the place a dimly lit, cosy ambience.

The chairs were a collection of mismatched leathers and velvets in browns and reds and greens and ambers, and the walls were lined with chaotically overstuffed bookshelves, the kind where you could entirely believe a rare, possibly cursed manuscript from hundreds of years ago might have languished, buried, until some plucky reader pulled it out.

It was a dark academia wet dream.

Jonah would love it.

‘What do you think?’ Fiona asked.

‘It looks like your parents’ house.

’

‘Oh God, don’t say that!

I love this place too much for them to taint it.

’

Well, this was an auspicious start.

I drove the pad of my thumb into my engagement ring and tried to pull myself together.

This might be the most poorly timed casual drink in the history of the world, but Fiona wasn’t to know that.

After all the shit she’d been through, the least I could do was not to ruin her favourite bar.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

But she wasn’t listening.

‘Satoshi!’

The man behind the bar turned around.

Instantaneously, a broad grin spread over his face.

‘No!’ He pulled his glasses down his nose so he could exaggeratedly peer at her over the top of the thick lime-green frames.

‘It can’t be!

Surely the long-lost Fiona Fisher has not simply walked into my bar?

’

Fiona beamed as he came around to hug her.

‘I’m sorry it’s been so long,’ she said, laughing as he lifted her off her feet.

‘It’s just been impossible to get away, with the kids and everything.

’

‘Not to worry. You’re here now.

’ He put her down and turned his attention to me.

‘With a new friend!’

‘Sadie, this is Satoshi, one half—’

‘The better, more handsome half.’

‘—of the Tsukamoto wine brothers, the geniuses behind this place. Satoshi, this is Sadie, my baby brother Jonah’s wife.

They’ve just moved here for work.

’

Satoshi was tall and lanky, somewhere in his mid to late twenties, black hair bleached ashy blonde.

He was wearing a tailored dove-grey waistcoat over a crisp white shirt, which would have been a conservative look if it wasn’t dotted with brightly coloured pins: little glasses of wine, little stacks of books, a map of Tasmania, the Japanese flag, the progress pride flag, another one I was fairly sure was the pansexual flag.

‘Delighted to meet you, Sadie.’ He shook my hand.

‘Genuinely. Fiona needs some reliable babysitters. My bar is in danger of collapsing without her patronage.’

‘Satoshi!’ Fiona exclaimed, laughing.

‘Welcome to Tsundoku,’ Satoshi said, talking to me but wrinkling his nose affectionately at her.

‘Let’s get you a drink.

Inside or outside?

’

‘Inside, I think,’ Fiona said.

‘I’ll take you out to the back deck another time, Sadie – it looks over the water, it’s beautiful – but I love it in here with the books best.

’

Satoshi led us to a table under a chalkboard, the specials written up in the same flowing hand as the engraving on the window.

‘Are we drinking by the bottle or the glass?’

‘Tempting as a bottle sounds, just a glass,’ Fiona said.

‘I left Jonah alone with the kids, and if I expose him to the girls too long, he will take his beautiful new wife and move back to the mainland before you can blink.’

It was only the leaden weight of exhaustion in my bones that stopped me from saying fuck it, let’s get a bottle, then.

The thought of Jonah being so overwhelmed by babysitting that he packed up and got out of my fucking face had taken on a new appeal.

I’d forgotten it lately, what with all the cardigan-y kindness he’d been showing me, but there was a reason he’d been the face of the establishment to me for so long.

No matter how snuggly his knitwear was, strip it off him and there was a tweed bro, having a little cry about how hard it was to have a rich well-connected daddy.

That was who I’d blown up my relationship with Chess for.

That – how had she put it?

That entitled prick from a whole line of entitled pricks.

‘We might take home a bottle to have with dinner, though,’ Fiona told Satoshi, oblivious to the fact that on the other side of the table, I was imagining dunking her brother’s head in the toilet.

‘Oh, and I need a few books too, if you don’t mind.

I had to bribe Lex to run interference if the girls get too…

themselves.

’

‘I can provide all those things,’ Satoshi said.

‘I’ll be back.

I’m going to pour you something special.

’

He disappeared.

Fiona turned her smile on me.

I tensed, bracing myself for some horrifying question like so tell me exactly when you fell in love with my brother.

But, ‘I hope you don’t mind me commandeering you into coming out for a drink,’ was all she said.

‘I love my kids to bits, but God, I need a break.’

There simply wasn’t anything I could say to that.

There was no even vaguely truthful response that wouldn’t make me sound like an absolute monster.

‘Of course I don’t mind,’ I said.

‘I needed a break too. As I’m sure you could tell.

’

Fiona chuckled.

‘If there’s one superpower I’ve developed as both a Fisher and a mother, it’s knowing when two people who love each other very much need a time out.

’

At least she was still buying the ruse.

Satoshi reappeared, setting two glasses down in front of us.

‘Isamu finished his special project,’ he said to Fiona.

‘How do you feel about being the first Tsundoku customers to taste the fruits of his labour?’

‘Oh my goodness, honoured!’

‘Has Fiona told you much about what we do here, Sadie?’

I shook my head, preparing to ask many follow-up questions.

Being dragged around by Chess had given me a passable wine vocab, and every second we spent talking about this bar was another second I didn’t have to spend lying to Fiona.

‘Tsundoku is one arm of a business run by my brother Isamu and I.’ Satoshi poured red wine into our glasses with a deft and practiced hand.

‘We’re a wine bar, serving wines from many vineyards – as well as selling second-hand books – but we also have our own vineyard, so we like to showcase our wines here, which Isamu makes.

’

‘He’s an incredible winemaker,’ Fiona said.

‘Seriously.’

‘Shhh,’ Satoshi said.

‘Don’t let him hear you.

You know how committed he is to never smiling.

Anyway, this is his most recent baby, a wine he’s been nurturing for a while which I’ve finally bullied him into letting me pour.

Meet Bibliophile’s brand new kyoho akai, one of the first wines in Australia made from a Japanese grape.

’

Fiona held up her glass, beaming at me again.

‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

I clinked my glass against hers.

We both drank.

It tasted like…

wine.

Nice wine, but wine.

I must have heard Chess have a thousand intense wine-bar discussions about bouquets and tannins and ‘the nose’, but despite my acquisition of the language, I could really only distinguish between three types of wine: wine I liked, wine which was good enough to drink, and paint thinner.

‘Wow,’ Fiona breathed.

She had practically stuck her whole face into the glass, alternately sniffing and sipping.

‘It’s amazing.

Notes of cherry, notes of chocolate…

it reminds me of black forest cake.

’

‘Oh, I like that,’ Satoshi said.

‘I’m going to pinch that for the tasting notes.

’

‘Not too sweet, though. It feels like it could really tip over, in the wrong hands, but it’s perfectly balanced.

’

Fiona and Satoshi started talking – something about skins and residual sugars – but I tuned them out.

Something was niggling at the corner of my brain; an irritating, persistent itch.

Then it clicked.

‘Bibliophile?’

‘That’s the name of our wine label,’ Satoshi said.

‘Tsundoku is the bar. Bibliophile is the wine.’

He showed me the bottle.

Bibliophile was written on the label in the same elegant script as the window engraving and the chalk-board, underneath a picture of a messy stack of books.

‘Are you familiar with it?’ he asked.

‘A little.’ I traced my thumb over the stack of books, that same stack Chess had said reminded her of me.

‘My sister is a big fan. She’s in your wine club.

’

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

What were the fucking chances?

I was not a superstitious person.

Devoting my life to studying stories had hammered home to me how much people used them to make sense of their lives.

There was some innate tendency in humans that made us read our lives like they were books, scripted by some higher power.

A tall, dark, handsome stranger will enter your life, we might hear, and off we’d go, reading too much into an innocent conversation with the man behind us in the coffee line.

I knew, intellectually, that it was just a bottle of wine.

No higher power had guided me here.

It was just a coincidence.

I knew this.

And yet all I could perceive it as was a symbol.

A reminder of the sister who loved me so, so dearly – and whose love I had flung back in her face like it was garbage.

‘Sadie?’ Fiona asked.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes.’ I could not fall apart here, I could not .

If there was one thing I owed this woman it was not to dump more emotional labour on her.

‘I’m fine.

I just…

my sister is my only family, and I miss her, you know?

’

‘Oh, of course you do!’ Fiona put her hand on her heart.

‘She’ll have to come visit.

You can bring her here!

’

‘Name the date and I’ll lay on the full Tsundoku experience,’ Satoshi said.

‘I could even make Isamu come and run one of our meet-the-winemaker nights, if she likes his wines that much. Or you could go out to the vineyard for a weekend. We have a restaurant and a cellar door there and our mother manages a little B&B.’

‘Maybe,’ I said faintly.

He rapped his knuckles gently against the table.

‘I’ll leave you ladies to it.

Enjoy.

’

‘Thank you, Satoshi,’ Fiona said.

‘It’s so lovely to be back.

’

He smiled fondly at her.

‘It’s so lovely to have you back.

’

Then he was gone and I was alone with Fiona, who was beaming at me again from the other side of the table.

‘This place is so nice,’ I said, because if she asked me about Chess I was going to cry, and if she asked me about Jonah I might turn into the Hulk.

‘How did you discover it?’

‘Oh, it’s not a very interesting story.

’ She flapped a hand dismissively.

‘Hobart’s small.

The eastern shore is even smaller.

It would have been harder not to discover it.

I can’t even remember the first time I came here, to be honest.

Matt and I come here for date nights all the time – well, came here, anyway, before…

you know.

’

Nice work, Shaw.

Remind the abandoned woman of her shithead husband.

10/10, perfect, no notes.

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be, don’t be.

’ Fiona made the dismissive hand-flapping gesture again.

‘Matt didn’t ruin it for me, that’s the important thing.

He might have taken just about everything else, but Tsundoku is still mine.

’

Well, that was bleak as hell.

‘Cheers to that,’ I said, holding up my glass.

She laughed.

‘Cheers.’

We clinked glasses and drank again, then Fiona’s face turned serious.

‘Can I tell you the real reason I brought you here?’

Oh God.

I jammed my thumb into my engagement ring again and squared my shoulders.

This was a test.

I was good at tests.

I had never failed a test in my entire life.

If I could handle repeated academic cross-examinations from Professor Christian Fisher without giving a single inch, then surely – surely – I could handle one conversation with his significantly less terrifying daughter without having some kind of nuclear meltdown.

‘Of course.’

‘Well, there’s a few reasons,’ Fiona said.

‘I really was dying to get out of the house. But I also wanted to apologise.’

I blinked.

‘What for?’

‘For turning up at the airport the other night.’ Her sheepish expression was eerily similar to Jonah’s.

‘I realised as soon as I saw you that I’d made a horrible miscalculation.

Of course you’d be exhausted after all that travelling!

But I have this nasty habit of getting way, way ahead of myself, and I was just so delighted that you and Jonah were here, and I couldn’t wait to see you, and the kids were excited too, and…

I’m sorry.

I’ll learn to read the room better in future, I promise.

’

‘Fiona, please don’t worry about it,’ I said, deeply relieved to be getting out of this conversation so lightly.

‘Really. I never want to stand between you and Jonah. Ever. No matter how tired I am. It really should have been him you brought out tonight. I know you have a lot of brother–sister time to catch up on.’

‘No, no, it had to be you. Because there’s one more thing I need to say to you, and it’s a big one.

’

Fuck.

It would probably be bad if I poured the rest of the contents of my wine glass down my throat, right?

‘I was so excited, when you and Jonah told me you were getting married and moving here,’ she said.

‘But I was apprehensive too, because marriage is a huge step, and you took it so fast.’

‘It really wasn’t that big a deal.

’ This, at least, I had a pre-developed script for.

‘Would we have done it if not for the partner hire thing? Not this quickly, no. But given the circumstances, it just made sense.’

‘I know, but it’s still a huge deal.

Trust me, as someone in the middle of a messy divorce, getting married is an enormous deal.

’

I jammed my thumb even harder into my engagement ring and gritted my teeth.

I didn’t particularly want to be reminded of that right now.

‘You didn’t have to marry Jonah, but you did,’ Fiona said.

‘I know it was mostly so you could stay together, but I’m not an idiot.

I know some of it was so that you could bring him with you to Hobart.

Where I live.

’

She reached across the table and put her hand on mine.

‘You took this massive, binding step, to help out a woman you didn’t even know.

And that’s why I wanted to get you on your own, so I could tell you, from the bottom of my heart: thank you.

Thank you for loving my brother enough to do this.

’

The English language currently has about 170,000 words in common use.

It is an embarrassment of words, more than most of us will ever use in our lives.

‘Oh,’ was the only one I could find.

‘Oh – Fiona. Oh, I…’

‘Not just for my sake. His too, obviously. Do you know I remember the very first time he ever talked about you?’

Fiona leant back in her chair, swirling her wine in one hand.

‘It was about a year before I married Matt. Elias had moved out already, but I was still living at home. I would have been twenty-one. Jonah was eighteen, and he’d just started uni.

He sat down at the dinner table one night and started talking about some debate he’d had with this girl in his seminar about…

some poet, I think.

’

Fucking Wordsworth.

‘My dad went full – well, you’ve met him.

He started quizzing him: “How did you read the poem? How did she? Did you take into account this line? How did she respond to this point? Why didn’t you counter with this argument, you stupid boy? You could have demolished her whole case if you’d only raised this point!” Classic Christian Fisher nonsense.

I’m sure you’re familiar.

’

I nodded, teasing my bottom lip between my teeth.

‘But I’ll never forget how Jonah responded.

’

She topped up our water glasses.

‘He looked Dad dead in the eye, and said, “Winning wasn’t the point. Her reading was so interesting, I just wanted to hear what she would say next.”?’

I blinked.

‘Which is about as close you can come to treason in the Fisher family,’ Fiona said casually, as if the ground hadn’t just turned to water beneath our chairs.

‘I’m sure you’ve heard all about how we were raised.

Winning arguments was practically our religion.

I was radicalised at age ten when Dad took Jonah’s teddy bear away and told him he could have it back once he made a persuasive enough case for it.

’

I couldn’t help but picture it: tiny, serious Jonah trying to find a way to rationalise his need for a basic childhood comfort, only to be faced with the unsympathetic brick wall of Professor Christian Fisher.

Involuntarily, one of my hands curled into a fist.

‘He’s, um –’ I drank some of my water, trying to clear my suddenly dry throat, ‘– he’s never told me that.

About the teddy bear.

’

‘I’m not surprised.

He might be a fully-grown man now, but he’s still a boy .

He has his pride.

’

…

and I’d completely refused to listen when he’d tried to tell me how hard it was to have people only ever perceive him through the lens of his father.

Ever since our wedding, Jonah had been trying to look after me.

Some of his tactics had been profoundly irritating, but he’d been doing his best – and then the second he’d needed a bit of looking after in return, all he’d gotten were my teeth.

I was as bad as his fucking dad.

‘Then,’ Fiona went on, oblivious to the crisis I was having, ‘I will never forget this either, because it was adorable – he put his chin in his hand and said, “If this is what university is going to be like, I think I’ve fallen in love with it.”?’

Oh.

Goodness.

I didn’t know what to do with this information.

If my mind was a glass full of water, then this week, people had continually been dropping rocks into it, driving the level up and up and up.

The fight with Chess was a rock.

Getting married was a rock.

Moving was a rock.

Starting work was a rock.

All the lectures that had been dumped on us – fifty-two rocks, right there.

Fiona had just thrown in another handful, and now my mind was overflowing.

How many crises could one person have simultaneously?

‘Jonah and I haven’t been close for a long time,’ Fiona said, sipping her wine, eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiled at me, ‘but I’ve always paid attention when he mentioned your name, because I had a sneaking suspicion he might marry you one day.

’

Well, at least we didn’t have to worry about selling her on our story.

Fiona had already gone and written it for us.

I could have left it there.

I should have left it there.

It would have been so easy.

I should have picked up my glass, knocked back my wine, and said something like, well, speaking of Jonah, I suppose we should get back to him, I know how desperate he is to spend time with you and then that would be that.

But somehow, without me ever actually deciding to say it, the words, ‘Jonah’s also kind of the reason I fell in love with university,’ were coming out of my mouth.

‘Whaaaaaat?’ Fiona leant back in her chair, grinning.

‘Now this I have to hear.’

I rubbed a hand over my brow.

Tsundoku was perfectly temperature-controlled, but I both had goosebumps and felt like I was sweating.

I’d never told this story to anyone.

Not even Chess, who’d already formed a very strong negative opinion about Jonah by the time this had happened, due in large part to The Incident at our first graduation ceremony.

‘I didn’t follow the same academic path as Jonah,’ I said.

‘I took some time out between Honours and PhD. I grew up poor and I wanted a financial safety net before I fully committed to being broke again, so I took an office job and I told myself I was going to stay there for five years before I went back to uni.’

I started twisting my rings around my finger.

‘But I was bored out of my brain. The office was near campus and I used to go there sometimes on my lunch breaks. Visit my old haunts. Remind myself what I was working towards, why I was suffering through all this boredom. Sometimes I’d go to the library and just walk through the stacks and smell that old book smell.

’

‘Oh my God, you and Jonah are perfect for each other.’

I was pretty sure old book smell had a universal appeal, but I wasn’t about to gainsay her.

‘One day, I was running late to get back to work, and I took this shortcut through the Lit Studies building. I was really legging it – I normally wouldn’t risk cutting through that building, because I didn’t want to run into your dad – but then suddenly, I came to a screeching halt, because I heard Jonah’s voice.

’

Fiona put her hand on her heart.

‘He was teaching a seminar.’ God, I hoped the low lighting in here meant she couldn’t see how red I was turning.

‘He was standing in front of a whiteboard, and he was leading this discussion about North and South , and he was wearing – the same tweed blazer he’s wearing today, actually.

He’s had it for years.

I hope he’s been getting it dry-cleaned.

’

Fiona laughed.

‘He was wearing that blazer,’ I said.

‘His hair and his beard were all scruffy, and his glasses were falling down his nose, and he looked like the most stereotypical academic in the world – and I had this profound moment of clarity. All I wanted was to be in that classroom. All I wanted was to be in his shoes. All I wanted was what he had. I wanted to be him.’

It had been such a small thing, but it had felt eucatastrophic, that moment: like a deus ex machina in my own life, stars which had been crossed suddenly aligning, a wild Jonah appearing like a WRONG WAY, GO BACK sign on the highway to put me on the right path.

‘And I didn’t want to wait anymore, not for another second,’ I said.

‘So I texted my boss that I’d gone home sick, and I went and knocked on my Honours supervisor’s office door to discuss enrolling in a PhD.

’

Then I’d gone home and told Chess what I’d decided, omitting all the parts about Jonah, and she’d hugged me so hard I thought my ribs were going to break.

All I want , she’d whispered in my ear, is for you to get what you want, sweetie.

‘Anyway, now he’s stuck with me,’ I finished, forcing out what I hoped was an airy laugh.

‘If I hadn’t seen him teaching that seminar, I would have been years behind him, academically speaking.

He’d have got the Lyons job outright instead of having to marry me for it.

’

‘Somehow,’ Fiona said, ‘I don’t think he minds.

’

She was profoundly wrong about that, but I wasn’t about to tell her so.

Thankfully, Satoshi chose that moment to come by with a stack of queer middle-grade books for Lex.

As he and Fiona chatted about what wine would go best with what she was planning for dinner, I escaped under the pretext of looking at the bookshelves, so I could take a few deep breaths and calm down.

I simultaneously thought about that story all the time and hadn’t thought about it in years.

Every time Jonah put on that tweed blazer, I was reminded of it – of that feeling of wanting so desperately to have what he had – but I hadn’t considered it in its broader context in a very long time.

Certainly not since I’d married the owner of the blazer.

I’d meant everything I’d screamed at him earlier.

Seeing academic powerbrokers gravitate to him, the way they always gravitated to him, drove me up the fucking wall.

But wasn’t this exactly what I’d tried to tell Chess, and been infuriated that she couldn’t manage to hear?

That Jonah was a human, under the tweed?

Maybe even a good one?

I thought again of his dad taking his teddy bear away and telling him he could have it back once he made a persuasive enough argument.

Nice as it must be to have the world falling over itself to do you favours, having them do it because of your connection to a man like that – a connection you did not ask for and could not change – must be galling.

I hadn’t been wrong, but I still owed him an apology.

I’d already picked out a couple of romance novels to send to Chess, but I ran my fingers along the spines of the books, looking for something that might pique Jonah’s interest.

It took me a while, but eventually, I settled on a dusty old cloth-bound volume entitled Specimens of the Elizabethan Drama.

Jonah almost certainly owned all the plays it contained – some of the titles sounded very familiar, and there was nowhere else I would have learnt them but from him – but whoever had owned the book previously had filled it with marginalia.

Jonah annotated his books like a BookTok girlie, so maybe he’d get a kick out of it.

I took my selection of books up to Satoshi, who was back behind the bar.

‘Can I also buy a bottle of your reserve pinot noir?’ I asked.

‘It’s my sister’s favourite.

I want to send her a care package.

’

‘Ah, the Noriko! Your sister is clearly a woman of excellent taste.’ Satoshi reached under the counter and pulled out a bottle.

I took out my wallet, inwardly wincing.

I’d pay any sum in the world if it meant Chess would speak to me again, but this was still going to take a serious chunk out of my as-yet-unaffected-by-my-new-job bank account.

But he just waved me away.

‘On the house.’

‘No!’ I only just resisted the urge to immediately put my wallet back into my bag.

‘This is expensive wine. You can’t just give it to me for free.

’

‘The next time you come, I’m happy to charge you full price and aggressively wave the tip jar in your direction, but tonight, your money’s no good here.

’

Satoshi jerked his head towards where Fiona was sitting, flipping through one of the books he’d given her for Lex.

‘She’s a good person.

There aren’t a lot of good people in the world, but she is one.

All she does is look after other people.

’

His tone was off-handed, casual – and yet the guilt it sent crashing into me was heavy as a truck.

Fiona was a good person.

Moreover, she was a good person that the world had fed into a woodchipper – and my first reaction when she’d invited me out for a drink was irritation.

Jonah was a good person too.

It might not always show, and he might not always get the tactics right, but only someone intrinsically good – intrinsically kind – would treat me the way he’d been treating me.

They had been raised by the worst man in the world and they were still good people.

They might not have been close, but when Fiona was in trouble, Jonah’s first instinct had been to run to her, to protect her, to look after her.

And I, a person raised by a fierce protector, someone who would do – who had done – literally anything for me?

There must be something deeply, profoundly, fundamentally broken in me, to scream, ‘You’re always trying to look after me!

’ at Chess as if that were a bad thing.

To be annoyed at a nice woman who just wanted to take me out for a drink.

To be completely unable to hear Jonah when he tried to tell me how being viewed through the lens of his father made him feel.

The Fisher siblings were good people, but I wasn’t.

No wonder everyone always untied themselves from me in the end.

‘The least I can do,’ Satoshi said, still looking over at Fiona, eyes tender behind his green-framed glasses, unaware that I was having yet another crisis, ‘is give a bottle of nice wine to someone who’s going to look after her for a change.

’

‘That’s so kind of you,’ I said, words bubbling out of my throat, because if I didn’t talk I was going to either cry or run.

‘Although I’m not sure how well Jonah and I are looking after her at the moment.

We went and looked at a few potential places to rent before we went round to her house this evening, and we got into a screaming argument.

She practically had to turn the hose on us.

’

‘You need somewhere to live?’ Satoshi’s gaze refocused on me.

‘Because I might be able to help you with that.’