‘I don’t want you to get your hopes up,’ I said again.
But it was hopeless, because ‘I don’t want you to get your hopes up’ was not a magical phrase. I couldn’t just tack it on the front of good news and expect Fi to say, ‘Oh, okay then, note taken. I won’t allow this to affect me emotionally in any way.’
Ofcourseshe was going to get her fucking hopes up. I was the worst brother in the world.
‘It’s no guarantee,’ I said desperately. ‘I know one of the other scholars who got shortlisted and she’s brilliant. Unbelievably brilliant.’
‘Is it Sadie?’
I blinked. ‘How do you know about Sadie?’
‘You’ve been talking about her constantly for fifteen years. Like,constantly. Painfully intelligent, never lets you get away with anything, the bane of your existence even though you defend her every time Dad’s like “ew, popular culture, how lowbrow”, right?’
I blinked again. ‘I mentioned her to Elias and he barely knew who she was.’
‘It’s hard to get a word in edgewise with our family when you don’t have a PhD,’ Fi said, ‘so I spend a lot of time listening.’
The pit of guilt that had been sitting heavy in my stomach since that horrible birthday dinner deepened.
‘How do you feel about her being shortlisted?’ Fi asked.
I rubbed my hand over my beard. ‘I’d have been surprised if she wasn’t. Offended on her behalf, even.’
‘Those are all how you don’t feel, Jonah. What about how you do feel?’
‘I…’
I thought for a long moment, reaching for my water glass and taking a sip to give myself time to formulate a reply. ‘I don’t really know how to answer that question.’
It wasn’t that I didn’t have any…feelingsabout Sadie getting shortlisted. I did. A lot of them.
But I’d just sort of assumed it would happen. That either both of us would get shortlisted, or neither of us. It was difficult to imagine a world where we weren’t in the trenches of the precariat together, trying to clamber over each other to get out.20
And anyway, it didn’t matter how I felt.
I had to get this job. I had to get it so I could help Fi, and then all my feelings about Sadie would be irrelevant, because I would be in Hobart, and she would… not.
‘No,’ Elias said, pointing his finger at me as we Zoomed to do a mock interview and I cautiously expressed my inability to imagine no longer being in Sadie’s orbit. ‘This is not helpful. This is not productive. This is exactly the kind of thinking that will kneecap you.’
‘I don’t know how to stop, though.’ I took my glasses off to clean them. ‘I can make sensible arguments to myself all day long. There’s something in me that just doesn’t want to listen.’
‘It’s your dick, Jonah. Don’t romanticise it.’
I nearly dropped my glasses.
‘Oh, don’t look so scandalised,’ Elias said. ‘I’ve been exactly where you are, remember. I’m not going to let you make the same mistakes I did.’
I let out a long breath. ‘Fine. What do I need to do?’
‘Avoid her. Out of sight, out of mind.’
‘I live with her!’
‘In a house with doors, presumably. Use them.’
Elias leant back in his chair. ‘And whatever you do, no bonding on the interview trip. That’s how she’ll get past your defences. You’ll end up having a drink at the hotel bar and somehow the first civil conversation you ever have will turn deep and meaningful and then she’ll tell you something like “I’m thinking about leaving my husband” and your brain will dissolve into porridge and she’ll waltz right past you into the job you want.’
Oh wow. Next time I saw Elias in person, I needed to get him drunk and make him tell me the Julia story.
