She took another sip of her coffee. ‘Fine, fine.’
‘And speaking of cold—’
I took off my cardigan and draped it around her shoulders. She had goosebumps all over her arms.
‘No freezing to death out here, Shaw,’ I told her sternly. ‘There are no good clichés about mysterious widowers solving murders on trains like there are about mysterious widows. I need you alive.’
I half-expected her to protest, but she didn’t. ‘Thanks,’ was all she said. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were pink with cold. ‘I’ll do my best not to get dirt on it.’
I made a dismissive hand gesture. ‘It’ll wash. Fifteen minutes.’
‘Fifteen minutes.’
I hoped, as I headed back up to our apartment, that I actually had all the ingredients for those corn fritters she loved. I’d intendedto serve a quick breakfast of bircher muesli, which I’d prepared the night before, but it’d keep until tomorrow.
Fi agreed to let us borrow her car, so Sadie and I headed straight to her place after our last lecture of the day. ‘Thank God Petrovski didn’t pick today to make one of his surprise appearances,’ she said, as we sat beside each other on the bus back from campus. ‘Can you imagine what colour he would have turned if he caught me teachingRed, White and Royal Blueto impressionable first years?’
‘Caughtus,’ I said, nudging her with my elbow. ‘I was there too. And I’m going to guess a sort of bilious chartreuse.’
‘No, that sounds like him about to be sick. It’d be something in the reds, the purples – some real head-about-to-explode colours. And you know exactly which one of us would get the blame.’
I sighed. You didn’t need to be paying close attention to see just how much contempt Petrovski had for Sadie. She wasn’t the only object of his ire – we’d both been in enough department meetings now to be able to very confidently make a list of who he liked and who he didn’t – but the difference in the way he treated us was so stark it would be comical if it wasn’t so awful.
‘Let’s just hope he doesn’t start sticking his head into seminars as well as lectures,’ Sadie added. ‘At least we have enough job security to defend ourselves. Veronica and Lin don’t.’
The bus rattled around the sharp corner down the hill towards Bellerive a little too fast. For a second, all of Sadie’s body weight pressed into me before she caught herself. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ The feeling of her pressed against me would, I knew, fuel my fantasies for many nights to come. ‘Look, I worry about Veronica and Lin too. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… do youthink I should try talking to my dad? See if he can get Petrovski to back off?’
She shook her head decisively. ‘We both know that wouldn’t do any good.’
I sighed again. I wished I could argue, but she was right.
‘Julia told me to start documenting everything Petrovski does, but I already was,’ she went on. ‘It’s the very first thing that Chess would have told me to do.’
Like it always did when she mentioned her sister, a wave of misery swept across her face. And like they always did whenever this happened, three emotions hit me in a precise, rhythmic order: first, a flash of anger; second, a surge of protectiveness; third, a deep, creeping, gnawing guilt.
‘That’s smart,’ I said, keeping my tone businesslike. ‘And you know I’ll back you up.’
‘Thanks, but I’m not sure how much it’d help. You’re married to me. They’d probably just assume I – I don’t know, withheld sex until you agreed to do what I wanted.’
Did shehaveto mention sex? Could she not have a little respect for the fact that sometimes I wanted her so badly it caused me actual physical pain? I’d thought that now we had our own apartment with separate bedrooms it would make Project Control easier, but if anything, it was only getting harder.46
‘Speaking of marriage,’ I said, carefully angling my body away from hers as we stood to get off the bus, ‘I had an idea for what to call our article. What do you think of “Bickering Like An Old Married Couple: Productive Disagreement as Pedagogy”?’
Fi was looking harried when we got to her place, and we offered to take the kids plant shopping with us to give her a break, but she declined. ‘Lex is reading, and the girls are at a friend’s place this evening,’ she explained, pressing her car keys into my hand. ‘Getting their shit together to get themtosaid friend’s place was a bit of a production – I thought I’d hid it well enough, but they got into their stash of Easter chocolate…’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Anyway, this afternoon was a lot, but now it’s just me and Lex and a quiet house for a few hours.’
Sadie chewed her bottom lip as we got into the car. ‘Do you think we should offer to take the kids one night next week?’
My hand slipped as I went to turn the key in the ignition. ‘Like, for the whole night?’
‘I know we babysit a decent amount but…’ Her voice trailed off for a few moments. ‘You married me because you want to help Fiona, right?’
‘Not just to help Fiona,’ slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
‘Yes, yes, gainful employment, whatever,’ Sadie said, breezing right past it. ‘But she clearly needs help. More help. So let’s help. What if we took the kids one night a week? Gave Fiona a night to herself?’
I let out a long breath, hoping she would assume it was because I was thinking. ‘Lex could sleep on the couch, but we’d have to put the girls in my room.’
