An Academic Affair

Chapter Sixteen Jonah

Chapter Sixteen Jonah

One chilly Thursday morning, a week or so after Easter, I took a coffee down to Sadie in the community garden and found her standing, arms crossed, frowning at her veggie patch.

She spent an hour or so in the garden each morning before we sat down to get stuck into the next of our fifty-two lectures, 45 and I brought her down a coffee every day.

Normally, she barely looked up.

I’d get a ‘Thanks, Fisher, appreciate it,’ maybe two seconds of her attention as she worked out the best place to balance her enormous mug, and then she’d go right back to what she was doing while I made a hasty escape, lest I think too hard about the image of her on her knees.

Not this time, though.

‘Something wrong?’ I asked her, handing her the mug.

‘Not wrong, exactly.’ Her breath was coming in little white puffs.

‘I just don’t have enough room for everything I want to do, that’s all.

The plot’s too small.

’

Sadie wrapped both hands around the mug, taking a sip.

‘I’ve got so many ideas for this section’ – she indicated the last bare strip of dirt in the patch – ‘and they’re all tripping over each other.

I’ve got decision paralysis, and I need to get over it before the ground gets too frosty.

’

She shook her head, trying to get a stray piece of hair out of her eyes but clearly not wanting to let go of her coffee in the frosty morning air.

I wrestled with myself for a few seconds before I said, ‘Can I…?’

‘Can you what? Oh, sure.’

Trying to be as businesslike as possible, I stroked the loose section of hair behind her ear.

‘What if we went plant shopping together after work? I don’t know shit about plants, but I do know shit about vegetables, so maybe I can help you narrow it down.

I could see if Fi will let us borrow her car.

’

Sadie thought about it, then nodded.

‘Okay.’

‘Great. Breakfast in about fifteen minutes, by the way. I’m making those corn fritters you like, so don’t dawdle or they’ll get cold.

’

She took another sip of her coffee.

‘Fine, fine.’

‘And speaking of cold—’

I took off my cardigan and draped it around her shoulders.

She had goosebumps all over her arms.

‘No freezing to death out here, Shaw,’ I told her sternly.

‘There are no good clichés about mysterious widowers solving murders on trains like there are about mysterious widows. I need you alive.’

I half-expected her to protest, but she didn’t.

‘Thanks,’ was all she said.

Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were pink with cold.

‘I’ll do my best not to get dirt on it.

’

I made a dismissive hand gesture.

‘It’ll wash.

Fifteen minutes.

’

‘Fifteen minutes.’

I hoped, as I headed back up to our apartment, that I actually had all the ingredients for those corn fritters she loved.

I’d intended to serve a quick breakfast of bircher muesli, which I’d prepared the night before, but it’d keep until tomorrow.

Fi agreed to let us borrow her car, so Sadie and I headed straight to her place after our last lecture of the day.

‘Thank God Petrovski didn’t pick today to make one of his surprise appearances,’ she said, as we sat beside each other on the bus back from campus.

‘Can you imagine what colour he would have turned if he caught me teaching Red, White and Royal Blue to impressionable first years?’

‘Caught us ,’ I said, nudging her with my elbow.

‘I was there too. And I’m going to guess a sort of bilious chartreuse.

’

‘No, that sounds like him about to be sick. It’d be something in the reds, the purples – some real head-about-to-explode colours.

And you know exactly which one of us would get the blame.

’

I sighed.

You didn’t need to be paying close attention to see just how much contempt Petrovski had for Sadie.

She wasn’t the only object of his ire – we’d both been in enough department meetings now to be able to very confidently make a list of who he liked and who he didn’t – but the difference in the way he treated us was so stark it would be comical if it wasn’t so awful.

‘Let’s just hope he doesn’t start sticking his head into seminars as well as lectures,’ Sadie added.

‘At least we have enough job security to defend ourselves. Veronica and Lin don’t.

’

The bus rattled around the sharp corner down the hill towards Bellerive a little too fast.

For a second, all of Sadie’s body weight pressed into me before she caught herself.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s fine.

’ The feeling of her pressed against me would, I knew, fuel my fantasies for many nights to come.

‘Look, I worry about Veronica and Lin too. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…

do you think I should try talking to my dad?

See if he can get Petrovski to back off?

’

She shook her head decisively.

‘We both know that wouldn’t do any good.

’

I sighed again.

I wished I could argue, but she was right.

‘Julia told me to start documenting everything Petrovski does, but I already was,’ she went on.

‘It’s the very first thing that Chess would have told me to do.

’

Like it always did when she mentioned her sister, a wave of misery swept across her face.

And like they always did whenever this happened, three emotions hit me in a precise, rhythmic order: first, a flash of anger; second, a surge of protectiveness; third, a deep, creeping, gnawing guilt.

‘That’s smart,’ I said, keeping my tone businesslike.

‘And you know I’ll back you up.

’

‘Thanks, but I’m not sure how much it’d help.

You’re married to me.

They’d probably just assume I – I don’t know, withheld sex until you agreed to do what I wanted.

’

Did she have to mention sex?

Could she not have a little respect for the fact that sometimes I wanted her so badly it caused me actual physical pain?

I’d thought that now we had our own apartment with separate bedrooms it would make Project Control easier, but if anything, it was only getting harder.

46

‘Speaking of marriage,’ I said, carefully angling my body away from hers as we stood to get off the bus, ‘I had an idea for what to call our article. What do you think of “Bickering Like An Old Married Couple: Productive Disagreement as Pedagogy”?’

Fi was looking harried when we got to her place, and we offered to take the kids plant shopping with us to give her a break, but she declined.

‘Lex is reading, and the girls are at a friend’s place this evening,’ she explained, pressing her car keys into my hand.

‘Getting their shit together to get them to said friend’s place was a bit of a production – I thought I’d hid it well enough, but they got into their stash of Easter chocolate…

’ She ran a hand through her hair.

‘Anyway, this afternoon was a lot, but now it’s just me and Lex and a quiet house for a few hours.

’

Sadie chewed her bottom lip as we got into the car.

‘Do you think we should offer to take the kids one night next week?’

My hand slipped as I went to turn the key in the ignition.

‘Like, for the whole night?’

‘I know we babysit a decent amount but…’ Her voice trailed off for a few moments.

‘You married me because you want to help Fiona, right?’

‘Not just to help Fiona,’ slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.

‘Yes, yes, gainful employment, whatever,’ Sadie said, breezing right past it.

‘But she clearly needs help. More help. So let’s help.

What if we took the kids one night a week?

Gave Fiona a night to herself?

’

I let out a long breath, hoping she would assume it was because I was thinking.

‘Lex could sleep on the couch, but we’d have to put the girls in my room.

’

‘Or my room.’ She shrugged.

‘They’d probably like the fairy lights.

’

Oh God.

‘But… you’d be fine with it?

’ I asked carefully.

‘Sharing a bed with me again?’

‘I should be asking you that question. I’m not the one who spent that first fortnight waking up to being groped.

’

Not helping not helping not helping .

I started the car and pulled out of the driveway, more to give myself something to focus on than anything else.

I didn’t need to look in the rearview mirror to know I had turned scarlet.

‘About which I’m sorry, by the way.

’ She leant her head against the passenger side window.

‘But I’m sure I could, like, tie my hands to the bed-frame or something.

’

Thank fucking God I was already blushing.

The image of Sadie, in my bed, hands tied to the frame, felt like someone giving my brain repeated electric shocks.

‘I suppose it would help explain why we keep a Bunbury Suite,’ I choked out.

Foolishly, I glanced briefly across at her.

She was still teasing her lip between her teeth, and it was a real mercy all my blood was currently in my face.

‘I just think it would be a good thing to do,’ she said.

‘ The good thing to do.’

My mind was in the gutter and here was my wife, looking at the stars.

‘Fiona deserves some time to herself,’ she went on, as we pulled onto the Tasman Bridge.

‘And…’

‘And what?’ I prompted, when the silence stretched out a little too long.

‘Nothing, really.’ Sadie scrubbed a hand over her face.

‘I’ve just been thinking, lately.

About my mother.

About how maybe, if she’d had some other adults in her life that had been willing to look after me, then Chess wouldn’t have had to.

’

There they were again, predictable as the sunrise.

The flash of anger.

The surge of protectiveness.

The wave of guilt.

She let out a long breath.

‘It must have been exhausting for her,’ she said.

‘ I must have been exhausting for her. She was a child, but she had to become an adult so quickly because someone had to look after me, and… there’s just no way I can balance the scales between us.

Ever.

’

I couldn’t say even a hundredth of the things I wanted to.

There was no way Sadie would react well to me telling her exactly how cruel and unfair I thought Chess was being to her, even if it was the truth.

‘Rosie and Georgia are the most exhausting people on the planet,’ I said instead, ‘and I’d still lay my life down for them without hesitation.

’

She sighed again.

‘I don’t know how you became so convinced you were a terrible sibling, Jonah.

You’re great at it.

’

‘I’ve been studying.

’ I took my hand off the steering wheel for a moment and tapped a finger between two of her knuckles.

‘It helps, when you’re married to a master.

’

The compliment did not hit as intended.

Sadie’s shoulders slumped.

I gritted my teeth against all the things I wanted to say.

It was completely hypocritical of me – a few months of decent brotherhood did not make up for my track record – but I just fundamentally did not get it.

If Fiona could let go so easily and so readily and so generously of how awful I’d been to her, how could Chess not do the same for Sadie?

How could she just leave Sadie like this, when she must know perfectly well how Sadie felt about being left?

There was a common trope in early modern theatre called the bed trick.

Someone would think they were going to bed with one person, but, unbeknownst to them, they would end up in bed with someone else.

Early modern theatre was full of unbelievable nonsense, but the bed trick had always struck me as the pinnacle of it.

Even if it was completely pitch-black, how could you not know that the person you were sleeping with was not the person you’d intended to?

These months married to Sadie had only reinforced my conviction.

I wasn’t even going to bed with her anymore, but when she got in one of these moods, I didn’t need to touch her or even lie down next to her to know that a bed trick had been played on me.

I loved her in all seasons – the heights of joy, the depths of misery, better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness, health, all of it – but it was crushing to see her like this, so far away from the woman she usually was, the woman I had meant to marry.

Because Sadie Shaw was not subdued.

Sadie Shaw was not this greyed-out shadow.

Sadie Shaw was a torrent of thought and intellect and confidence, a bonfire of a woman, gleefully torching whoever – me, usually – was in her path.

When she got like this, though, it felt like my bonfire of a bride had had water poured on her, only wisps of smoke escaping from a few smouldering coals.

And it made me absolutely fucking furious.

Furious at Chess, for pouring that water on her.

Furious at Sadie, even, for continuing to blame herself for her own smothering.

But mostly furious at myself, for my inability to make her feel even a little bit better – and deeply, deeply guilty.

Sadie could insist that the rift between her and Chess was her own fault as much as she wanted, but that argument was as thin and specious as one Rory Worland might make.

There was no way she would be this miserable if she hadn’t married me.

And now here she was, insisting on looking after my sister when her relationship with her own was in tatters, and all I could do was fantasise about burying my face in her hair and my fingers in the lush curves of her skin and removing my heart from my chest and laying it at her feet.

She was still quiet by the time we arrived, and I had to resist the urge to take her hand or loop my arm over her shoulders as we walked into the giant garden and hardware store.

Wedged between anger and guilt was protectiveness, and sometimes I could get away with using the ruse of our marriage to offer her physical comfort.

She’d usually accept it, if it could plausibly be read as look at us, everyone, observe how we’re definitely a completely real couple , even though what I was actually saying was you mean everything to me and I don’t want you to fall apart.

I had to settle for pushing the trolley instead, and doing some performatively masculine, ‘Wife, step aside, what did you marry me for if not to lift heavy things for you?’ bits when she tried to pick up a gigantic bag of fertiliser, in an extremely cheap effort to make her laugh.

47

‘So, run me through all these garden ideas of yours,’ I said, as we made our way to the outdoor section.

‘Give me your dot points. Let’s narrow it down.

’

She exhaled.

I’d written enough lectures with her now to recognise that she was trying to re-focus her attention on the task at hand.

‘It really boils down to a dilemma between planting and sowing. Do I want to plant alliums or do I want to sow a crop of root vegetables?’

‘Tell me more. What kinds of alliums? What kinds of root vegetables?’

‘Alliums, I was thinking especially about leeks. I love leeks. Root vegetables – heirloom carrots, parsnip, maybe beetroot.’

‘And you can’t do both?

’

‘Not enough space.’

‘All right.’ I steered our trolley around to the relevant aisle and started to load it up with leek plants.

‘Seedlings are best, right? Or should we be looking for more established plants?’

‘We didn’t even make a decision!

’ she protested, trailing after me.

‘Yes, we did.’ I put another leek plant on the trolley.

‘You said I love leeks. I didn’t hear you say I love parsnips or I love beetroot .

’

‘I do like both those things!’

‘But do you love them?’

We had a semi-combative stare-off for a few seconds before she broke.

‘Not like I love leeks,’ she grumbled.

‘Not that plant, Jonah, it looks a bit iffy. This one instead.’

‘You should have told me you loved them,’ I said, swapping out the plants.

‘I’d have cooked with them more often.

’

‘You already do all the cooking. I don’t want to start treating you like a restaurant, where I can just wave my hand and order whatever I want.

’

‘Shaw, please order whatever you want. I really do love cooking. You’ve given me a gift here.

This’ll be a fun little project for me, experimenting with exciting new leek dishes.

’

She regarded me for a few moments.

‘Where did it come from?’ she asked.

‘The cooking thing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but having been to your parents’ house, it doesn’t seem like let’s teach our son to cook would be a big priority.

’

I snorted.

‘You’re not wrong.

’ At Sadie’s gesture, I swapped out a couple more of the leek seedlings.

‘I moved out of home after graduation. Our first graduation, I mean. The one with all the…’

‘Shouting,’ she filled in.

‘I remember.’

I thought I’d committed a fatal error by reminding her of Chess again, but she still seemed engaged.

‘I moved into a place with this girl I was seeing at the time – I’m not sure if you ever met her, but she—’

‘Oh yes, the woman whose heart you broke ?’ Sadie clutched dramatically at her chest.

‘ I can’t possibly let you have this share house, Shaw, for I am simply too much of a heartbreaker to find another!

’

‘Are you finished?’

She smirked.

‘Probably not, but continue.’

‘Anyway, when I moved in with her, I was useless,’ I said.

‘Couldn’t cook, couldn’t clean, couldn’t do anything.

I realised quickly that I needed those skills if I was ever going to function as an adult, so I studied.

’

She blinked.

‘You studied?’

‘That, I did know how to do. You wanted some garden stakes too, right?’ She nodded, so I started pushing the trolley down towards the garden care section.

‘I figured out pretty quickly that Ps make degrees when it comes to cleaning. It just had to be passable. But the better I got at cooking, the happier it made my girlfriend, and…’

‘Fisher,’ Sadie said, ‘did you seriously learn to cook so your girlfriend would fuck you?’

‘No!’ I flushed bright red.

‘Get your mind out of the gutter, Shaw. I learnt to cook so she would love me.’

‘And it worked.’

I stopped, looking sideways at her.

She’d phrased it as a statement, not a question, and I could hear the blood rushing in my ears as everything around us went into soft focus.

‘You broke her heart,’ she clarified.

‘When you – I’m assuming it was you who ended it.

’

‘Oh. Yes. It was me.’

I turned to face her, resting my elbows lightly against the handle of the trolley.

‘I realised, after a while, that with every extravagant dish I cooked her, she thought I was saying I love you . But what I was actually doing was cooking her extravagant dishes as a way of getting out of saying it. Because I didn’t.

’

The answer was right there for her, if she wanted to put the puzzle pieces together.

I didn’t love her – could never love her – because I’ve been in love with you since the day we met, Shaw.

Sadie looked thoughtful.

For a moment, I was terrified she’d figured it out.

‘That’s really quite emotionally intelligent,’ she said.

‘For – how old were you? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?’

‘About that.’

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘For making fun of you for breaking her heart. That was dickish.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, somehow both relieved and disappointed at the same time.

‘That water went under the bridge a long time ago. And I did figure out my one true love because of that relationship. Me and cooking have been going strong ever… Watch out!’

I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into me.

My back went crashing into a stack of plant trellises and Sadie came crashing into my chest, just in time to avoid getting completely flattened by a man barrelling along at top speed, the landscaping supplies piled high on his trolley blocking his line of sight.

He carried on, either not noticing or not caring that he’d nearly just mown someone down.

The trellises behind me quaked ominously, and it was only the rough edges of one of them jabbing into my back that kept me tethered to reality.

Every line of Sadie’s body was pressed against mine.

‘Shit,’ she whispered.

She hadn’t moved.

The words were hot against my skin, her gentle breath tickling the short hairs of my beard.

‘You all right?’ My voice came roughly out of my throat, like someone had taken sandpaper to it.

She nodded, hairline brushing against my nose.

‘Fine. Thank you.’

Her fingers curled into my collar, pulling it taut across the back of my neck.

She looked up at me.

And it was our wedding day again.

Sadie Shaw was clinging to me, and there was something desperate in her eyes, and the only answer I had was to kiss her.

My head dipped lower…

…

just as she exhaled, forehead coming to rest against my shoulder.

‘I think you saved my life,’ she said into my clavicle.

I pressed my lips against the top of her head, pretending with everything I had that that was all I had intended to do.

‘I like a good garden stake as much as the next person, but they’re not worth dying for, Shaw.

Get your shit together.

’

The words were as much for me as they were for her.

‘Come on,’ I said, taking her by the shoulders and pushing her gently away from me.

‘Let’s get out of here.

’

The business of checking out and packing all of the stuff safely into the back of Fi’s car was blessedly thought-consuming, and then we got distracted by a sudden flash of inspiration for one of our upcoming lectures, so when Sadie brought it up again, as we unloaded all our purchases back home in our garage, it took me by surprise.

‘You know, I think I got into gardening for the same reason you got into cooking, Fisher,’ she said, her tone casual as she wedged the last of the leek seedlings into the little trolley she used to haul plants down to the community garden, ready for the morning.

‘You were also a fully grown adult who realised they had no practical life skills?’ I closed the boot and looked at her quizzically.

‘Didn’t you tell me when we were at Tsundoku a couple of weeks ago that you started gardening when you were, like, six?

’

‘I was seven. And I thought if I could contribute to the household and help out, my father would stop screaming at my mum and Chess and me that we were all a waste of space.’

I stopped dead.

She sniffed, swallowing once, twice.

‘I thought I could make him love us.’

‘Oh God,’ I said, as tears started to bead in the corner of her eyes.

‘Shit, Sadie.’

‘Sorry.’ She brushed them away roughly.

‘I didn’t mean to trauma dump on you.

My abandonment issues are for my therapist to worry about, not you.

I’m fine, really.

I just…

’

She didn’t need to finish the sentence, and there was no way I was going to make her.

‘I need to take the car back to Fi,’ I said, ‘but it can wait. We can go upstairs. I can make you a cup of tea. I could even… I didn’t want to tell you until I got it perfect, but I’ve been finessing a mug cake recipe.

I’ve got some ideas for some pretty adventurous flavour combinations.

You could taste-test them for me.

’

‘Oh, Jonah, that’s really nice of you.

’

My heart skipped a beat.

But then she shook her head.

‘Take the car back to Fiona, though. I think I, um… I think I should just be alone for a minute.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m sure.

’

Then, to my great surprise, she put her arms around my neck.

‘Thank you, though,’ she said.

‘I appreciate it.’

She kissed my cheek, and maybe that was why I let what I said next come out of my mouth.

‘Any time, darling,’ I whispered into her hair.

I kicked myself for it every second of the short drive back to Fi’s.

Mug cake.

Fucking mug cake .

Why the fuck had I offered to make her mug cake?

The thing that she’d specifically told me, on the night of the sixth ceasefire, was something that Chess used to make for her?

And I’d tried to kiss her.

I’d called her darling, even though there wasn’t anyone else there to hear it except her.

What the fuck was I thinking?

I smacked the steering wheel.

Yes, we’d been getting along.

Yes, we’d been getting a bit more tactile of late.

Yes, we were now even in a place where her hugging me the way she’d just hugged me was…

normal.

But whenever Sadie reached out to me – whether to put her hand on my arm, or her arms around my neck, or even to sprawl over me in her sleep, as she surely would again if we started babysitting the kids one night a week – I had to remember that it wasn’t because she was genuinely emotionally attached to me.

It wasn’t because I was Jonah Fisher, person she enjoyed spending time with.

It was because she was lonely, and I was there.

The basic governing principle of narrative was causation.

It wasn’t X happened then Y happened – it was Y happened because X happened.

Sadie had not started reaching out to me because, out of nowhere, she was starting to feel about me the way I’d always felt about her.

She was doing it because she and Chess were at odds, and I was the only possible substitute.

I could enjoy it, sure.

But I couldn’t read into it.

And I absolutely – absolutely – couldn’t take advantage of it.

I sighed, pulling the car to a stop in Fiona’s driveway.

I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what the right thing to do was, but that didn’t mean I wanted to do it.

I’d resisted it over the past few months – if there was one thing I knew about Sadie, it was that she could speak for herself – but it was obvious nothing was going to change unless I did something to change it.

It only took about three seconds to find Chess’s email address, sitting beneath a stern, unsmiling picture of her on her law firm’s website.

Dear Francesca, I wrote.

I’m sure you’re not interested in hearing from me and I don’t blame you at all.

Neither I nor my family have ever given you any reason to like me – and you were absolutely correct when you told me I had ridden Sadie’s coat-tails into a job I do not deserve.

What I do blame you for, though, is making her miserable.

Despite what you may think, I care very deeply about your sister.

You might find this difficult to believe, given our history and the numerous ways I’ve benefitted from our marriage, but I would not have married her otherwise.

Sadie is extremely important to me – and the fact that you’re refusing to speak to her is killing her.

I know you had a fight the night before our wedding.

I know you probably both said some things, but frankly, I don’t care.

Are you really going to let me – someone I know you have no respect for – come between you?

Your silence is breaking your sister’s heart.

If you care about Sadie at all, you’ll stop hurting her like this.

Just call her.

Please.

Regards,

Jonah

‘You were sitting out there a long time,’ Fi said, when I finally went in to give the car keys back.

‘Everything okay?’

‘Fine, fine. Just’ – I waved my phone vaguely – ‘emails. So, Sadie and I had an idea.’

It took a while to sell her on the concept of the kids coming to stay for the night (‘Are you sure? All three of them? Are you sure ? Do you maybe want to start with Lex and work your way up?’), but eventually Fiona agreed we could take them the following Thursday, after our teaching for the week was finished.

‘And to say thank you,’ she said, digging around in her fridge and then handing me a bottle of Bibliophile fumé blanc, ‘take this home to your lovely wife.’

‘You don’t need to do that, Fi.

’

She waved me off.

‘Plenty more where that came from. Lex and I stopped by Tsundoku the other day so they could pick up some more books. Satoshi sent me home with a case.’

I accepted the wine-cooler bag she handed me.

‘They really love you there, hey.’

‘Well, I’ve spent a ton of money there over the years.

’ She took a sip from her cup of tea.

‘But both the Tsukamotos are such lovely men. You know Satoshi was the first person I told, when Matt came clean about his other family? After he broke the news to me I had a sort of out-of-body experience. I must have walked straight out of the house, because the next thing I knew I was at Tsundoku and Satoshi was taking me out the back and sitting me down in his office and pouring me a glass of wine and listening to me spill my guts.’

My fingers tightened around the bag.

‘I’m so sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell me, Fi.

’

‘Oh, Jonah.’

Fiona hugged me.

Hesitantly, careful not to hit her with the wine, I hugged her back.

‘That was as much my fault as it was yours,’ she said.

‘More, really.’

‘Come on, Fi. You know that’s not true.

’

Fiona drew back and raised her eyebrows at me.

I sighed.

‘Sorry. That instinct to argue… it’s baked in pretty deep.

’

‘Tell me about it.’ She made a sound that was halfway to a chuckle.

‘I liked to think I’d freed myself from all of Dad’s toxic programming, but…

when Matt left, there it was.

Pride, so much wounded pride – and this incredible bone-deep embarrassment about how wrong I’d been.

’

‘I know it probably doesn’t mean much,’ I said, ‘but I hate that we were right. I hate what I said to you, that night you told us you were getting married. You always looked out for me, and when you needed someone to be on your side, I was such a nasty little shit to you. I’m so sorry.

’

‘You’re here now, Jonah,’ Fiona said softly.

‘And that means the world to me.’

‘I missed you, all those years,’ I said.

‘And… I know I’ve never been good at saying this, but I love you.

’

She smiled.

‘I love you too, baby bro.’

Then she shoved me playfully in the shoulder – thankfully, because if we kept walking down this very sincere path, one of us was going to cry and it was probably going to be me.

‘Though maybe don’t throw those words around too soon.

See if you still love me after spending the night with my kids.

’

My phone buzzed in my pocket as I started the short walk home, leaves crunching under my feet.

I know this is your territory, but I tried to make dinner , Sadie had texted.

Let’s just say it didn’t work?

So…

I hope you like toast.

You’re in luck, I sent back.

I love toast.

Thank God.

I was worried you were going to divorce me for disrespecting your kitchen.

I replied with the laughing emoji.

I was about to put my phone away when I saw I had another notification – email, this time.

From: Francesca Shaw.

I stopped right where I was.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to say how much I loved toast.

There was a serious chance I might throw up.

But it was just an auto-reply – I am currently on leave – and a long list of who to contact in various circumstances.

I let out a long breath, letting it whistle through my teeth.

Was the reason that Chess wasn’t replying to Sadie that she simply wasn’t getting her messages?

No.

Surely not.

She might not be checking her work email, but it was ridiculous to assume she wouldn’t have got all those texts and missed calls from when we first moved here.

And surely, if she wasn’t getting all the books Sadie was sending her, at least some of them would have been returned to sender.

As I started walking again, I thought about whether to tell Sadie about the email I’d sent, but decided against it.

Chess’s lack of response would tell her nothing she wasn’t already dwelling on at enormous length.

Plus, she’d likely be livid that I’d reached out without telling her and I was at the end of my strength.

I couldn’t bring myself to upset her.

Sadie smiled at me when I walked back in, laugh lines deepening in the corners of her eyes.

‘Sorry again about dinner.’

‘Nothing wrong with toast. Perfect vehicle for marmalade – and I bought a delicious Bruny Island one at Salamanca Market last weekend. Pear, lemon and cardamom. It tastes like sunshine.’ I held up the bag in my hand.

‘Wine?’

‘Please.’

No, I definitely wasn’t going to tell her.

She’d find out eventually, when Chess finally got over herself and spoke to her again.

Sadie could be angry with me for overstepping then, when her sister was finally restored to her position as the most trusted person in her life.

In the meantime, though, she had me, and I would treasure whatever scraps she deigned to give me.

45 We’d written well over thirty of them now.

Fifteen years after we’d got our worst grade ever because we were terrible collaborators, Sadie Shaw and I had well and truly learned to work together.

46 Yes, yes.

47 This was…

semi-successful, I’d say?

Mostly because I also struggled under the weight of the fertiliser.

Isamu Tsukamoto I was not.