‘No, that’s not what I…’
Jonah exhaled. ‘You know there’s no way I can ever repay you for this, right?’ he said at last.
I opened my mouth.
‘Don’t pretend I’m talking about the rings. You know what I mean.’
He took one of my hands in both of his. Another shiver shot up my spine, and it took every skerrick of willpower I had not to let him see it.
‘Thank you, Sadie,’ he said.
‘It’s fine.’ Deeply uncomfortable with his level of sincerity, I tugged my hand free before he could see that all the hairs on my arm had stood up. ‘It’s not that big a deal. We wear a couple of rings and stay flatmates for a few years. Then we can get divorced, go on our merry way and spend the rest of our lives pretending to be bitter exes.’
I shepherded him over to the cash register. ‘Imagine how easy it’ll be working together then. We already have so much practice fighting.’
Jonah made a harsh, barking sound in the back of his throat that might have been a laugh.
‘Let’s face it, Fisher,’ I said, tapping my credit card against the reader. ‘I was born to be your ex-wife.’
The meeting with the celebrant turned out to be simple. She was a tall South Asian woman with curly hair and a bright smile, and she talked us through everything we needed to do calmly but warmly, her signature on our forms as our witness an authoritative scrawl. ‘I assume you picked us because you want the full Going to Gretna Green experience – getting married as quickly as possible, but with minimum fuss,’ she said. ‘I’ll get everything sorted, and we’ll get you married before you need to leave for your new jobs. You don’t need to worry about a thing.’
The meeting with HR at the university, though, was not so simple. ‘We were not aware that this was your situation, Dr Shaw,’ one of the people on the Zoom call said coldly. ‘Or yours, Dr Fisher.’
Jonah had his arm around me – half so we’d pass as a couple, half so we could both fit into frame. I could feel him shaking.
I took a deep breath and tried to channel Francesca Shaw, The Lawyer Who Eats Lawyers. ‘When would it have been appropriate for us to disclose our relationship? During the hiring process? When it would substantially disadvantage our chances?’
‘Sadie’s chances in particular,’ Jonah said. His arm was still shaking, but his voice was steady. ‘There’s plenty of research demonstrating the internalised bias hiring committees hold against married women in their twenties and thirties, because of the assumption they’ll take time out for maternity leave.’
‘This can hardly be an un-anticipated circumstance,’ I added. ‘Your contract has an express clause around partner hire where the partner is appropriately qualified.’
I reached up and laced my fingers through Jonah’s where they rested on my shoulder, trying to provide him with some steadiness and show off my engagement ring all at the same time. It was an attempt to visually suggest something I did not want to – and that my inner Chess absolutely would not let me – put into words: that if they didn’t use the partner hire clause to hire Jonah, they would lose me too.
‘No one could be more appropriately qualified than Jonah,’ I said. ‘The fact that he was shortlisted for this job is ample evidence of that.’
We put up a good fight and the university reps tersely agreed to look into it, but afterwards, neither of us were convinced that it was going to work.
‘Well, it was fun while it lasted,’ Jonah said heavily. ‘Thanks for trying.’
‘Don’t despair just yet,’ I said. ‘Maybe they just have terrible personalities.’
He smiled, but it was humourless. ‘I don’t think I’m going to get a eucatastrophe this time, Shaw.’
I sighed. I didn’t either.
And even though that would be awful, I was also kind of relieved. If they turned us down – if they sent us an email saying,LOL, nice try, but permanent academic jobs aren’t just lying around for anyone with a wild scheme and a ring to scoop up– then I wouldn’t have to tell Chess about any of this.
I was at ESU, tying up some loose ends, when I got the email from Jonah.FW: Employment contract (Lecturer, Level B)was the subject line.
Then a text, two seconds later.It worked.
Followed swiftly by another.So I guess we have to start telling people?
We bickered over the details of the plan, but the way forward was clear.
Academia was a small, incestuous world. The more people who knew our relationship existed somewhere between ‘sham’ and ‘scam’, despite its technical legality, the likelier it was that Jonah and I would find ourselves not just unemployed but unemployable.
We had to sell this toeveryone.
