‘Yes,’ I replied, as we slid into seats about two thirds of the way back. ‘She hired me. Then dropped a terrifying amount of teaching on me.’
‘That’s not surprising.’ Julia put her handbag on the floor, took out a box of mints, and offered me one. ‘There’s been a lot of creative workload accounting going on for the last couple of years. The suits she’s talking to are middle managers in the faculty exec team. They don’t give a shit about either scholarship or student experience. All they care about is slashing the budget to bare bones in any way they can.’
‘Sounds familiar.’ This was exactly the same thing that would have forced me completely out of academia if I hadn’t got this job.
‘Sofia’s a good egg. People underestimate her, but she’s got an iron will and she’s held her ground on a lot of fronts. The fact that we’ve managed to get some new permanent hires’ – Julia nudged me with her elbow – ‘is proof of that. But there’s only so much she can do when things are coming from above her head. If they start talking about “Renewniversity”?’ – she put scare quotes around it with her fingers – ‘or Phase Three in this meeting, the shit’s about to hit the fan.’
‘What’s Phase Three?’
‘The suits have this three-phase plan – the Renewniversity plan – to reduce faculty spending, but given Phases One and Two were both rounds of redundancies, I don’t think it’s a very complicated plan.’
Oof. I made a mental note to tell Jonah later that we needed to transfer our union memberships over to the Lyons branch ASAP.
Automatically, my eyes sought him out. He was standing talking to a woman in a short-sleeve shirt and a bow-tie whom I recognised from the hiring committee. He caught me looking and gave me a somewhat sheepish – and perhaps apologetic? – wave.
Julia followed my gaze. ‘Friend of yours?’
‘You could say that,’ I said. ‘He’s my husband.’
It was the first time I’d said those words since our wedding.My husband.
A line from one of the books in my treasuredAnnebox-set flickered into my mind. I couldn’t remember the exact wording, but it was right after Anne and Gilbert finally got married. Gilbert introduced Anne to someone as ‘my wife’ for the very first time, and nearly burst with the pride of saying it.
That wasn’t exactly the emotional response I was having, but…
Well, it wasn’t embarrassing, being able to point to Jonah Fisher across a room and say ‘See that man? I’m married to him’.
Jonah turned back to his conversation, and – oh no, the line of his blazer was very flattering, andsince when did he have such a good arse?!
Thankfully, Julia distracted me before I could fall too far down the rabbit hole. ‘You managed a partner hire? Here? In this climate? Did you have to promise to sacrifice your firstborn child on the sacred altar of the faculty budget?’
I laughed, absolutely refusing to interrogate the notion that ‘firstborn child’ was something people were going to assume Jonah and I wanted to have. ‘Judging by the amount of teaching they’re wringing out of us, they should have hired, like, twelve people.’
‘It’s still impressive,’ Julia said. ‘Well done on navigating the two-body problem. That’s unbelievably difficult to do. Literally the first thing that happened to me when I got my job here was a divorce.’
Before I could ask her more, Vargas stepped up to the lectern. ‘All right, everyone!’ she said, tone cheerful despite the two middle managers standing menacingly behind her. ‘Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’
Julia interpreted for me as the three-hour meeting got underway, leaning over and whispering explanations of who the various speakers were. The Associate Head of School for Research was apparently a good person to know (‘they keep telling us there’s no internal funding for research, but she’s good at finding it’). The Associate Head for Student Experience meant well but was largely ineffective (‘maybe people would listen to her more if they were actuallyinthe classroom’). The dean of the Faculty of Arts, who popped in for twenty minutes to lambast everyone for the poor results of a recent staff satisfaction survey, was a snake (‘get readyfor some hilarious emails about how great he is at supportingour peopleandour wellbeing, I like to play a drinking game with them’).
Jonah, who was sitting a couple of rows ahead of me with some other men in tweed, took out his phone during this particular speech.I know we have a ton of shit to do, he texted me,but let’s move transferring our union memberships to the top of the to-do list.
One thing I had always appreciated about Jonah, even during all the years we were feuding, was that despite his astronomical levels of privilege, he’d always been a staunch union man.Great minds, etc, I sent back.
Didn’t know you rated my mind that highly, Shaw.
I sent him back an eyeroll emoji.
The last agenda item of the meeting was an update from all the heads of department – two of whom Jonah had apparently unwittingly sat between. I would have to make fun of him later for being drawn to other tweed bros like they were a swarm of salmon. ‘That’s Tom Carmichael, my department head,’ Julia whispered as one of them stood up. ‘He’s a piece of shit. Whatever you do,do notbe alone in a room with him.’
Well, shit. I would have to have a different kind of conversation with Jonah.
The last person to stand up was the tweed bro on Jonah’s other side. ‘Well, it’s wonderful to be making my first speech to you all as the new head of the Literary Studies department,’ he said, clapping his hands and then rubbing them together. ‘It definitely won’t be my last.’
‘Lachlan Petrovski,’ Julia said in an undertone. ‘Only been here six months, but already knifed your old head of department. Different breed of piece of shit to Carmichael – more power-hungry misogynist than active predator – but definitely also a piece of shit.’
I ran my tongue over my teeth in disquiet. Of all the people in the room, Jonah had gravitated immediately to the powerful arsehole who was friends with his dad.
‘Let’s finish this meeting on a cheerful note, shall we?’ Petrovski said. ‘I’m happy to announce that we’ve got not one, but two new hires starting in Lit Studies this week. Jonah, Sadie, will you come up here please?’
