‘You’re such a fucking snob, Fisher,’ she said, but there was no venom in it.
I almost pickedSuits, which I’d been vaguely intending to watch for a while, but stopped myself just in time. Given the pointed absence of her sister at our wedding, and the fact that Sadie was here and not with her, a show about hotshot lawyers seemed… not ideal.
We ended up with some gentle small-town drama, set somewhere green and mountainous. The protagonists were both kind and competent, the stakes were low, the scenery was pretty. It didn’t require a lot of attention. The overall effect was somewhat meditative.
‘Top-up?’ I asked Sadie.
‘Maybe just half.’ She wrapped my old green cardigan tighter around herself.
I obliged, adjusting the air-conditioning so it’d be a couple of degrees warmer as I went to put the champagne bottle back in the fridge.
I’d been psyching myself up for a good half hour to ask what had happened with her sister when I realised Sadie was asleep. She’d burrowed into the corner of the couch, face pillowed on one of her curled hands, hair loose around her face.
People were supposed to look younger when they slept. I’d read more than enough books to know that. Sadie didn’t, though. In repose, she looked like she’d been holding her burdens at bay all day, only for them to collapse in on her now she was unconscious and unprotected. Twin worry lines cut deep furrows between her eyebrows. My fingers itched with the need to reach out and smooth them away.
The noise from the TV stopped.Are you still watching?popped up on the screen. I turned it off.
I could fall asleep here too. It would be easy. It was warm and cosy. The couch was soft. The two glasses of champagne had partially liquefied my bones.
If I fell asleep here, next to her, and it were a few hundred years earlier, it would count as the consummation of our marriage. Once you spent the night alone in the same room as someone, that was it. There was no going back after that for regretful newlyweds in the early modern period, no take-backs on the vows you’d spoken. You weremarried.
I ran my thumb over my wedding ring. I’d never really been a jewellery guy, and wearing it felt strange. Not wrong, exactly, but strange.
Then I exhaled. ‘Shaw.’
No response. ‘Sadie.’
‘Mmmm…?’
‘Time for bed.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Come on. Up we go.’
She didn’t resist as I worked one arm beneath her knees and the other under her shoulders. Her own arm draped bonelessly around my neck as I picked her up, her head lolling into my chest.
My bride was heavy in my arms as I carried her upstairs, over the threshold of Fiona’s old bedroom, the one next to mine. I couldn’t resist stroking some of those loose fiery strands out of her eyes as I tucked her into bed, cardigan and all. ‘Sleep well, okay?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ was all she said in response.
I went back downstairs. I cleaned up, putting the rest of the pizza in the fridge so she could have it for breakfast. I wiped down the coffee table, poured the dregs in our wine glasses down the sink, puta spoon in the neck of the champagne bottle and left a note about it on the kitchen bench for Elias.
I made myself a cup of the ginger tea Sadie hated so much and stared out the kitchen window for a long time, trying to resist the urge to twist the unfamiliar ring round my finger. I didn’t want the cheap gold finish to wear off too quickly, even if we did have spares.
Eventually, I went back upstairs. It took me a while to fall asleep, given the way my thoughts were stumbling and tripping over each other, but I managed it.
I awoke in the grey pre-dawn.
It took me a while to realise what had woken me. I was not and had never been a morning person. My brain didn’t really turn on properly until I’d had several cups of coffee.
But on the other side of the wall, my wife was weeping.
26 Our brief engagement had gone smoother than it had any right to, but perhaps the only truly awkward moment had come when my mother called me, said ‘Don’t tell your father about this, but—’ and offered to pay for a honeymoon suite in a fancy hotel for our wedding night. Obviously I had to tell her no – newlywed or not, there was no way Sadie was spending our last night in Sydney anywhere but with her sister, and I couldn’t run the risk of someone reporting it back to Mum if I stayed in the suite alone – but trying to come up with an explanation as to why my new bride and I wouldabsolutelyprefer to spend our first night as a married couple together under my parents’ roof rather than drinking champagne at the Ritz-Carlton was legitimately harder than my PhD.
27 Blunt – combatively blunt, even – but helpful.
28 We’d had an argument about whether we needed the photographer, which Sadie had eventually won. ‘It’s like the engagement ring,’ she’d said. ‘If we’ve got a couple of wedding photos on our desks at work, it’s an easy way to signal that we’re legit without having to act like a couple of horny teenagers in public.’
