This was not the Jonah Fisher I knew. This was not Tweed Jonah, the Jonah who would argue every little point, fight every little fight, who might unroll a scroll at any moment containing a hundred-thousand-word manifesto entitledWhy You Are Wrong About Everything,complete with another thirty thousand words in footnotes.
This wasn’t even Cardigan Jonah, sitting across from me in the dark of the kitchen, vulnerabilities on full display.
This was some other, third Jonah. Broken Jonah. Defeated Jonah. Armourless Jonah.
I almost turned on my heel and ran out of the room.
This was a terrible idea. This was an idea so bad it would probably send me straight to the hitherto-unexplored tenth circle of hell, the one Virgil had decided against showing Dante on the grounds that seeing all the heretics and fraudsters and traitors and whatnot was quite enough for one day and there was no need to go to the worst circle of all.
Jonah was looking at me.
I bit my lip again.
It had been nice, that night before the job was listed. It had felt right, in a way that things had not felt right in a long time. When I’d put my hand on his and saidTruce?and he’d turned his palm to face mine and saidTruce,and somehow, out of nowhere, we’d been sitting there at the kitchen table, holding hands…
That had felt like a step forward. A real step – an adult step – when I had been stuck in the same place for so long.
‘This is going to sound insane,’ I said, ‘but I was wondering if you’d like to marry me.’
Chapter SixJonah
Sometimes, when you’re cooking, your ingredients will defy all the laws of chemistry and physics and do something completely unexpected.
Once, for example, I was making dinner for a girl I was seeing. It was our third date and I wanted to impress her, so I was making Roquefort soufflés. It’s a difficult recipe, but I’d mastered it – I’d made it dozens of times before – so I was smugly confident that once I put my beautiful, evenly risen, golden soufflés down in front of her, she’d be so impressed we wouldn’t even make it to the macarons I’d made for dessert.
They collapsed the second I took them out of the oven.
I’m so sorry, I’d said.I don’t understand what happened.
Jonah, it doesn’t matter, she’d replied.I bet they’re still delicious.
No. I can’t let you eat these. I have to remake them.
My next attempt failed too. She left halfway through my third attempt, and I ended up sitting miserably at the kitchen table late into the night, shoving my face full of macarons, trying to work out how this rock-solid recipe I’d used so many times could have possibly failed.
Up until this moment, the Roquefort Soufflé Incident was themost incomprehensible, inexplicable thing that had ever happened to me.
‘…I’m sorry?’
‘I’m wondering if you want to get married.’
It didn’t make any more sense the second time.
‘I recognise this sounds insane,’ Sadie said again.
I was fairly sure I was having some kind of out-of-body experience, which is the only excuse I have for what I said next. ‘I didn’t know you felt like that about me.’
‘Oh, fuck off, Jonah.’
‘You just asked me to marry you!’
‘No, I asked ifyouwanted to marryme.’
‘What makes you think I want to marry you?’
‘Just – shut up, okay?’ Sadie snarled. ‘I am not in love with you. Believe it or not, I have managed to use my powers of deductive reasoning over the past fifteen years and have also figured out that you’re not in love with me. This is a business proposition.’
She sat down on my bed –Sadie Shawwas sitting on my bed, that was infinitely more unlikely than me fucking up those soufflés three times in a row – and opened her laptop. ‘My contract has a provision for partner hire.’
