I’d meant everything I’d screamed at him earlier. Seeing academic powerbrokers gravitate to him, the way they always gravitated to him, drove me up the fucking wall.
But wasn’t this exactly what I’d tried to tell Chess, and been infuriated that she couldn’t manage to hear? That Jonah was a human, under the tweed? Maybe even a good one?
I thought again of his dad taking his teddy bear away and telling him he could have it back once he made a persuasive enough argument. Nice as it must be to have the world falling over itself to do you favours, having them do it because of your connection to a man like that – a connection you did not ask for and could not change – must be galling.
I hadn’t been wrong, but I still owed him an apology.
I’d already picked out a couple of romance novels to send to Chess, but I ran my fingers along the spines of the books, looking for something that might pique Jonah’s interest.
It took me a while, but eventually, I settled on a dusty old cloth-bound volume entitledSpecimens of the Elizabethan Drama.Jonah almost certainly owned all the plays it contained – some of the titles sounded very familiar, and there was nowhere else I would have learnt them but from him – but whoever had owned the book previously had filled it with marginalia. Jonah annotated his books like a BookTok girlie, so maybe he’d get a kick out of it.
I took my selection of books up to Satoshi, who was back behind the bar. ‘Can I also buy a bottle of your reserve pinot noir?’ I asked. ‘It’s my sister’s favourite. I want to send her a care package.’
‘Ah, the Noriko! Your sister is clearly a woman of excellent taste.’ Satoshi reached under the counter and pulled out a bottle. I took out my wallet, inwardly wincing. I’d pay any sum in the world if it meant Chess would speak to me again, but this was still going to take a serious chunk out of my as-yet-unaffected-by-my-new-job bank account.
But he just waved me away. ‘On the house.’
‘No!’ I only just resisted the urge to immediately put my wallet back into my bag. ‘This is expensive wine. You can’t just give it to me for free.’
‘The next time you come, I’m happy to charge you full price and aggressively wave the tip jar in your direction, but tonight, your money’s no good here.’
Satoshi jerked his head towards where Fiona was sitting, flipping through one of the books he’d given her for Lex. ‘She’s a good person. There aren’t a lot of good people in the world, but she is one. All she does is look after other people.’
His tone was off-handed, casual – and yet the guilt it sent crashing into me was heavy as a truck.
Fionawasa good person. Moreover, she was a good person that the world had fed into a woodchipper – and my first reaction when she’d invited me out for a drink was irritation.
Jonah was a good person too. It might not always show, and he might not always get the tactics right, but only someone intrinsically good – intrinsically kind – would treat me the way he’d been treating me.
They had been raised by the worst man in the world and they were still good people. They might not have been close, but when Fiona was in trouble, Jonah’s first instinct had been to run to her, to protect her, to look after her.
And I, a person raised by a fierce protector, someone who would do – who haddone– literally anything for me?
There must be something deeply, profoundly, fundamentally broken in me, to scream,‘You’re always trying to look after me!’at Chess as if that were a bad thing. To be annoyed at a nice woman who just wanted to take me out for a drink. To be completely unable to hear Jonah when he tried to tell me how being viewed through the lens of his father made him feel.
The Fisher siblings were good people, but I wasn’t.
No wonder everyone always untied themselves from me in the end.
‘The least I can do,’ Satoshi said, still looking over at Fiona, eyes tender behind his green-framed glasses, unaware that I was having yet another crisis, ‘is give a bottle of nice wine to someone who’s going to look after her for a change.’
‘That’s so kind of you,’ I said, words bubbling out of my throat, because if I didn’t talk I was going to either cry or run. ‘Although I’m not sure how well Jonah and I are looking after her at the moment.We went and looked at a few potential places to rent before we went round to her house this evening, and we got into a screaming argument. She practically had to turn the hose on us.’
‘You need somewhere to live?’ Satoshi’s gaze refocused on me. ‘Because I might be able to help you with that.’
Chapter FourteenJonah
Our new apartment was in Bellerive, the same tranquil small-town-esque suburb that Fi lived in, only a short bus ride away from campus – and it was, by any measure but certainly by comparison to the other places we’d looked at, an absolute miracle. The bedrooms were big enough to fit our desks and our bookshelves. The kitchen made me salivate: wide black stone benchtops and cabinetry, picked up in the tapware and in the industrial-style light fittings throughout. There was a spacious balcony with a view over the river and the cricket stadium, which the outgoing inhabitant – our new landlord, Isamu Tsukamoto – had covered in plants. There had been no doubt that we were going to take it, the Hobart rental market being what it was, but when Isamu mentioned that the internal courtyard of the complex was also a community garden, it was clear we’d gotten very,verylucky.
Not to mention that we were getting the place absurdly cheap. ‘You’re doing me a favour,’ Isamu told us when we met him to inspect it. ‘I want to lease this place so I can move to the vineyard permanently. Having to list it and spend time vetting potential tenants would mean more time in Hobart.’
‘But you don’t even know us,’ I felt obliged to say.
‘I know your sister. She vouches for you. I trust her.’
Presumably Fionahadn’tmentioned just how strained our relationship had been until very recently.
‘And if the Francesca Shaw I’ve been sending wine to for the last three years is indeed your sister,’ he said to Sadie, ‘then I’ve got collateral. Trash my place and I’ll cut her off.’
