‘You get your app in?’ I dared to ask Sadie when she came into the kitchen as I was cooking dinner.19We hadn’t spoken more than ten words to each other since the job was listed, but something about hittingsubmithad given me hope that maybe – just maybe – we could return to the terms of the sixth ceasefire, if only for a little while.
‘Yes,’ she said shortly. ‘You?’
Well, that hope was short-lived.
‘Yes.’
She nodded – an acknowledgement, nothing more – then took her gardening gloves off the hook next to the kitchen door and slid her feet into her gumboots.
‘Good luck,’ I said.
‘I’m going to work in the veggie patch, not off to war.’
‘No, I mean—’ She knew perfectly well what I meant, why was she leaving me to flail like this? ‘With your application.’
The pause she left before she spoke again was excruciatingly long.
‘You don’t mean that, Jonah.’
The kitchen door snicked close behind her before I had the chance to reply.
Which was a good thing, really. Because she was probably right.
There would be dozens – potentially hundreds – of scholars applying. The competition would be vicious. There were many, many people standing between me and this job.
But Sadie Shaw had a way of narrowing my focus, ensuring that the only thing I saw was her.
17 Don’t ask me about the cognitive dissonance this must require, because I can’t explain it.
18 Okay, sure, Sadie also didn’t have a brother in academia, but given a) Elias was yet to secure a permanent academic position despite years of trying, and b) shedidhave a terrifying sister, the scales on that one felt a bit better balanced.
19 As a general rule, the more I was trying to paper over my feelings, the more complicated recipes I attempted. Consequently, that day I was making Beef Wellington. For one.
DECEMBER
Chapter ThreeJonah
The day I got the email was the day I finally told Fiona.
She was surprised when I asked her to Zoom with me. She was always surprised, even though I’d made a point to chat with her and the kids at least once a week ever since I found out what Matt had done, and every time, that surprise was like a little knife in my heart.
‘I don’t want to get your hopes up, Fi,’ I told her, after I’d said my hellos to my twin seven-year-old nieces Rosie and Georgia and my eleven-year-old nibling Lex, ‘but I’ve just been shortlisted for a job in Hobart.’
Fiona pressed her hands to her face. The internet connection crapped out for a second and she was frozen there, like Edvard Munch’sThe Scream.
‘Really?’
‘It’s not a guarantee. Obviously it’s not. I’ve been shortlisted for jobs before and not got them. But they’re after an early modernist, and Elias and my old PhD supervisor both told me my application was strong – please don’t cry!’
‘I’m sorry.’ She wiped tears away with her wrist. ‘It’s just… God, Jonah, this is such good news. Everything’s such a mess – Matt’stotally gone off the grid and I don’t haveanyone– and – and… I could really use you right now.’
For one perfect moment, my heart swelled in my chest. Icoulddo this. I could mend what I’d broken, all those years ago. I could help my sister.
And then reality sank in, and I realised that I’d made an awful error of judgment.
I’d considered it carefully before I’d told her. If Fi knew I was up for this job – if she was counting on me – then I wouldhaveto keep my eyes on the prize. There could be no letting Sadie get in my head if the prospect of letting Fi down was this real.
That was a decision I’d made to manipulate my own feelings, though. I hadn’t realised, not really, not properly, not until she started crying, the actual weight of Fiona’s.
