‘Or my room.’ She shrugged. ‘They’d probably like the fairy lights.’
Oh God.
‘But… you’d be fine with it?’ I asked carefully. ‘Sharing a bed with me again?’
‘I should be asking you that question. I’m not the one who spent that first fortnight waking up to being groped.’
Not helping not helpingnot helping.
I started the car and pulled out of the driveway, more to give myself something to focus on than anything else. I didn’t need to look in the rearview mirror to know I had turned scarlet.
‘About which I’m sorry, by the way.’ She leant her head against the passenger side window. ‘But I’m sure I could, like, tie my hands to the bed-frame or something.’
Thank fucking God I was already blushing. The image of Sadie, in my bed, hands tied to the frame, felt like someone giving my brain repeated electric shocks.
‘I suppose it would help explain why we keep a Bunbury Suite,’ I choked out.
Foolishly, I glanced briefly across at her. She was still teasing her lip between her teeth, and it was a real mercy all my blood was currently in my face.
‘I just think it would be a good thing to do,’ she said. ‘Thegood thing to do.’
My mind was in the gutter and here was my wife, looking at the stars.
‘Fiona deserves some time to herself,’ she went on, as we pulled onto the Tasman Bridge. ‘And…’
‘And what?’ I prompted, when the silence stretched out a little too long.
‘Nothing, really.’ Sadie scrubbed a hand over her face. ‘I’ve just been thinking, lately. About my mother. About how maybe, if she’d had some other adults in her life that had been willing to look after me, then Chess wouldn’t have had to.’
There they were again, predictable as the sunrise. The flash of anger. The surge of protectiveness. The wave of guilt.
She let out a long breath. ‘It must have been exhausting for her,’ she said. ‘Imust have been exhausting for her. She was a child, butshe had to become an adult so quickly because someone had to look after me, and… there’s just no way I can balance the scales between us. Ever.’
I couldn’t say even a hundredth of the things I wanted to. There was no way Sadie would react well to me telling her exactly how cruel and unfair I thought Chess was being to her, even if it was the truth.
‘Rosie and Georgia are the most exhausting people on the planet,’ I said instead, ‘and I’d still lay my life down for them without hesitation.’
She sighed again. ‘I don’t know how you became so convinced you were a terrible sibling, Jonah. You’re great at it.’
‘I’ve been studying.’ I took my hand off the steering wheel for a moment and tapped a finger between two of her knuckles. ‘It helps, when you’re married to a master.’
The compliment did not hit as intended. Sadie’s shoulders slumped.
I gritted my teeth against all the things I wanted to say. It was completely hypocritical of me – a few months of decent brotherhood did not make up for my track record – but I just fundamentally did not get it. If Fiona could let go so easily and so readily and so generously of how awful I’d been to her, how could Chess not do the same for Sadie? How could she justleaveSadie like this, when she must know perfectly well how Sadie felt about being left?
There was a common trope in early modern theatre called the bed trick. Someone would think they were going to bed with one person, but, unbeknownst to them, they would end up in bed with someone else.
Early modern theatre was full of unbelievable nonsense, but the bed trick had always struck me as the pinnacle of it. Even if it was completely pitch-black, how could you not know that the person you were sleeping with was not the person you’d intended to?
These months married to Sadie had only reinforced my conviction. I wasn’t even going to bed with her anymore, but when she got in one of these moods, I didn’t need to touch her or even lie down next to her to know that a bed trick had been played on me. I loved her in all seasons – the heights of joy, the depths of misery, better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness, health, all of it – but it was crushing to see her like this, so far away from the woman she usually was, the woman I had meant to marry.
Because Sadie Shaw was not subdued. Sadie Shaw was not this greyed-out shadow. Sadie Shaw was a torrent of thought and intellect and confidence, a bonfire of a woman, gleefully torching whoever – me, usually – was in her path.
When she got like this, though, it felt like my bonfire of a bride had had water poured on her, only wisps of smoke escaping from a few smouldering coals.
And it made me absolutely fucking furious.
Furious at Chess, for pouring that water on her. Furious at Sadie, even, for continuing to blame herself for her own smothering.
