Chapter Five Fiona #3
‘Seeing the girls today – getting to hug them, after all this time – made me realise just how much I’ve missed them.
’ Oh fuck off, was he about to start crying?
‘And what Laura said in the meeting was right. I do want them to meet Micah and Nikki. The babies too. Think of how excited they’ll be to be big sisters. ’
That ranked somewhere between ‘the threat of nuclear war’ and ‘asking my parents for money’ on the list of things I wanted to think about.
‘And I want to be able to introduce them to Laura,’ he added, ‘as their stepmother.’
The word stepmother sent me into space. I felt like a dragon, like I might vomit up fire at any moment.
‘You don’t have to say anything right now.’ He was using the skittish horse voice again. ‘But you need to start thinking about this, Fi. Now the divorce is on the home stretch, we need to have a serious talk about the long-term.’
‘We’re not doing shit until I consult with their therapist,’ I managed to force out from between my gritted teeth. ‘You haven’t been in their lives for an entire year. They need to be prepared.’
‘Of course. I’d like to be part of that discussion, so we can make the plan together.’
If I had been holding a glass, I would have crushed it in my hand.
‘I don’t want to hurt them.’ Matt’s tone turned gentle, and I was reminded, suddenly, of the way he’d talked to me when I was pregnant, wrapping his arms around me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder, and cooing to my belly.
I’d used to cherish those memories, but now they made me want to climb out of my own skin. ‘They’re my kids too. I love them.’
‘You haven’t—’
‘—done a great job at showing it, I know. I tried so hard to make things clean that I went too far. But I want to fix it.’
‘When are you leaving?’
He sighed. ‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘Good. Stay on the west side of the river until then. We’ll stay on the east. You can text me when you’re back in Melbourne. I’ll let you know what their therapist says.’
‘Fi—’
I hung up. If I had to speak to him one second longer, I was going to burst into messy, violent, angry tears.
I didn’t remember much of what Matt had said the night he’d told me about Laura – entire stretches of it had blurred into one long, endless scream – but two words had burned themselves into my brain.
Clean break, he’d dared to say. I know this is difficult, but I think it’s best for everyone if I just leave and we make it a clean break – as if the fact that their father was choosing his other family over them was like a broken limb that would heal perfectly if we just got the kids in plaster casts soon enough.
Then he’d made it so clean that I hadn’t heard a word from him for months.
No phone calls picked up, no messages responded to, no emails replied to, no answers at all to very reasonable questions like, So are you planning to contribute any money at all towards the raising of your children?
or Are we actually legally married or is our marriage certificate some kind of forgery?
or How the actual fuck have you kept this going for so long?
I hadn’t been happy with Matt before he’d left. I’d been hungry for something more – a lot more – than what he was giving me. But I hadn’t realised just how badly I needed him – just how much I relied on him – until he was gone.
I let out a long breath. Thank god it had been that night Birdie dropped all the glasses.
Otherwise, Matt would have told me about Laura in the middle of Tsundoku, the way he’d clearly planned to so I couldn’t make a scene.
No matter how much I loved the place, and no matter how much I adored Satoshi, there would have been no way I could ever go back there then.
Satoshi.
I leaned back against the kitchen bench.
I’d wanted to sink into the ground when we’d run into him at Abode. I hadn’t thought I’d ever be able to feel anything but embarrassed in his presence ever again, but something had melted in me when he’d presented that pink lemonade to the kids like it was a bottle of the finest wine.
I wasn’t wrong. I was me, he was him, and we could never really be anything.
But Sadie wasn’t wrong either. There could be no softer place to land than with this kind, generous, patient man.
And what had happened in the restaurant corridor had shown that he was offering to be that landing place not out of charity or pity or compassion, but because – somehow – he wanted to. You’re not asking anything of me, he’d said, that I don’t want to give you.
There were things I didn’t want to ask. There were things I didn’t want to need. I didn’t want to rely on anyone, ever again. No one knew better than me the humiliating depths in which relying on someone could land you. I had no desire to hand anyone the hammer they could use to break me.
But as I watched my daughters play, I surrendered to the ever-present, dangerous urge to get ahead of myself, and let myself imagine Satoshi standing here with me.
Not some fantasy sex dream version of him, ripping my clothes off and setting me alight, but just Satoshi, my friend Satoshi, here in my kitchen, putting his arms around me and letting me lean back against his chest.
You’re safe, he would murmur, breath warm against the shell of my ear. I’ve got you.