Sometimes – usually when Jonah and I were arguing over one of our lectures – I thought about the story Fiona had told me that first night at Tsundoku.If this is what university is going to be like, I think I’ve fallen in love with it.
Sometimes – like when he set a new dish in front of me, designed just for my tastes – it was hard to understand how I’d ever hated him. This man had been raised so coldly, so combatively, and yet every day of our marriage, he’d treated me with such care – me, and Fiona, and the kids.You’re a good husband, Jonah.
Sometimes – like when I caught a glimpse of him coming out of the bathroom wearing a towel slung low around his hips; or when he was focusing hard on dinner, wrists flexing as he flipped something in a pan; or on mornings like this one, when I woke before my alarm in the Bunbury Suite but pretended to be asleep so I could spend more time sprawled on top of him – I thought about whatChess had said to me, in that last, awful fight we’d had.Sadie, if you want to fuck him, just fuck him.
There had been a moment last month when I’d seriously thought about it. When he’d taken me shopping for plants, and he’d pulled me out of the path of that trolley and against his chest, and his eyes had darkened behind his glasses and his lips had parted and his breath had been hot and uneven against my skin – I’d been this close to sayingfuck itand jumping him.
But I couldn’t risk it.
He was the only thing I had in the world now, and if I let myself have him – let myself close any of the remaining distance between us – let myself get really, truly, properly attached – it was going to destroy me when this ended. Petrovski was running late for our meeting – not especially surprising, given he had about as much respect for other people’s time as he had for women – so Jonah and I took up residence in our cupboard office while we waited. ‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘You’re quiet this morning.’
‘Fine, fine.’ I waved a hand dismissively. ‘Just worried about what kind of workload nightmare there is in store for us next semester, that’s all.’
Jonah turned his chair around to face mine, as much as he could without our chair wheels tangling. ‘No matter what, we’re finishing our old-married-couple article first though, right? We’ve got to get those research points.’
‘Trust me, I’m well aware.’
‘Sorry. I know you don’t need me to mansplain how important research points are. I’m just…’ He ran a hand through his hair.‘I have nightmares about what would happen if we went through all of this just to fail probation.’
‘Yes, imagine,’ I said, forcing away the uncomfortable prickle that always went through me when I was reminded of our expiration date, ‘having to go through being married to me for absolutely no payoff.’
He gave me a strange look. ‘Shaw, that’s not what I—’
The lift dinged. ‘Good morning, Jonah, Sadie,’ Petrovski said, with no acknowledgement it was nearly lunchtime. ‘Shall we have that chat?’
This was the first time Petrovski had deigned to invite us into his inner sanctum. His office wasn’t as big as Vargas’s, but it was still ten times bigger than ours. ‘Have a seat.’ He gestured to two chairs, set confrontationally in front of his desk. ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’
The good news, apparently, was that our co-teaching this semester had proven to be such a success (despite all the times Petrovski had walked into our lectures and openly disapproved, something he pointedly neglected to mention) that they wanted us to do it again. ‘We’ll do exactly the same thing for the two compulsory first-year units running next semester,’ he said. ‘Each of you will nominally chair one, but you’ll teach them both together. We’ll really bed down that foundation for the years to come.’
Twenty-six more lectures to write. Awesome. Just awesome.
‘Now, though,’ Petrovski said, making an extremely condescending face as he looked at me, ‘comes the bad news. We’re putting the new popular fiction unit on hold indefinitely.’
My jaw – tighter than it had ever been, as I hadn’t got around to finding a new myotherapist yet – dropped.
‘Are you seriously telling me,’ I demanded, ‘I spent all that time writing that new unit – the whole reason you hired me in the first place – only for you to shelve it?’
‘I know this is upsetting, Sadie.’ He was talking to me like I was five. ‘But the budget is very tight right now, and sometimes, we can’t afford to run all the units we want.’
‘Then shelve mine,’ Jonah said tightly. ‘Shakespeare’s in plenty of other units. You don’t need more.’
‘The decision has been made,’ Petrovski said. ‘In this difficult time for the faculty, it’s important that we focus on our core business: providing our students with the high-quality literary studies education that they come to Lyons for. And, with respect, Sadie, the kinds of things you do don’t necessarily fall under that remit.’
I was going to punch him. I was going to punch him right in his smug tweedy face. ‘Would you like benchmarking data from popular fiction units at other institutions? Because I can provide that. These are consistently high-enrolment, extremely popular units.’
‘I hear you.’ Now he was talking to me like I was three. ‘But the university has a reputation to uphold.’
‘And Sadie is a tremendous asset to it!’ Jonah said. ‘That’s why you hired her!’
‘Jonah, I appreciate you’re defending your wife.’ Oh, so now he was talking like I wasn’t even in the room. Cool. Cool cool cool. ‘But this little foray into the popular was one of Sofia’s initiatives, and as she transitions out of her role as Head of School, I’m sure you can agree we need to realign our priorities.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Where’s Vargas going?’
The evil little smirk on Petrovski’s face told me everything I needed to know, even before he opened his mouth. ‘She and the leadership team have mutually agreed that it would be better if she explored other opportunities.’
Fuck.
‘Professor Carmichael will be taking over as Head of School’ – Double fuck. Julia was going to flip a table – ‘and I’ll be serving ashis deputy, as well as remaining in my role as head of the Literary Studies department.’
