I looked up again.
She was standing, one hand curled around the top of a chair. In the dim light, she was like an image from an old black-and-white movie, hair and eyes and clothes dark against her pale skin, my bad vision putting her in low resolution.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Do you want a cup of tea? There’s that disgusting ginger one you like.’
‘No. Thank you.’
She paused. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
No,I should have said. I had spent fifteen years doing my level best never to show weakness to this woman. In that moment, I had no armour, no defences. I was nothing but an open, gaping wound.
‘My family is poison,’ I said. ‘I’mpoison.’
She blinked.
‘You can sayI told you so,’ I added bitterly.
She didn’t.
Instead, Sadie sat down across from me. ‘I know I devote the better part of my life to being a bitch to you, but surely you don’t think I’mthatbad.’
‘This isn’t a question of good or bad. It’s a question of accurate and inaccurate. And in this case,I told you sowould be extremely accurate.’
‘Jonah, what happened?’
I sighed, reaching for my glasses and putting them back on. ‘It’s my sister.’
‘The one who incurred the wrath of your dad by daring not to get a PhD?’
I stared. How did she remember that?
‘I listen when you talk, Fisher,’ Sadie said. ‘How else am I supposed to dismantle your arguments?’
God. Her mind was a fucking steel trap. ‘Yes. Fiona.’
I stood up, the intimacy of sitting across from her suddenly too much. ‘When we got to the restaurant tonight, my dad argued with the sommelier for ten minutes over what bottle of wine to order.’ I found my ginger teabags in the cupboard, topped up the kettle, and flicked it back on. ‘Then he spent another five minutes mansplaining to my mother why she was wrong to want to order à la carte and that we should get the tasting menu. And then, just as the waiter was pouring the wine, my dad casually mentioned that Fiona’s shithead husband Matt has left her for his secret second family and is refusing to pay any child support.’
It was too polite a way to say it, too euphemistic, too kind.I hope things are looking up for you on the job market, Jonah,my dad had said, swirling the wine in his glass, tasting it, making a face, but then eventually nodding in approval to the waiter.Now Fiona’s gone and ruined her life and come begging for money, we’re not going to be able to catch you if you fall.
What do you mean?I’d asked, mouth going suddenly dry.What’s happened to Fiona?
‘Oh, Jonah,’ Sadie said.
‘Fi had no idea.’ The kettle started to boil. ‘No clue at all that anything was wrong. Matt just sat her down one day and said, “Surprise, my investment bank actuallydoesn’tneed to fly me to Melbourne every week, I have another life and another wife and other kids there, and I like them more than you, bye.”?’
I just don’t understand how she didn’t realise,my father had said, after he’d interrupted my mother about twelve times as she tried to – considerably more sensitively – outline the story for me.I know Fiona was never the brightest spark, but surely this kind of thing isn’t that difficult to spot.
‘What a complete fucking arsehole,’ Sadie said.
I choked on a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob asthe kettle boiled. ‘Thank you for being the first person to have an appropriate reaction to the situation.’
‘What other reaction is there?’ She got up, took the kettle out of my shaking hands, and poured hot water into my mug for me. ‘Your poor sister. Is she okay?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
