‘Yes, you do,’ Sadie said quietly. ‘Don’t be obtuse. Please.’
Her head was bowed, moonlight kissing the curves of her face in the darkness. There was only a flicker of flame in her hair, where light from one of the other apartments was caught in it. Her breath was a faint puff of white in the cold night air.
In mine, her hand – usually so steady, so certain – was trembling.
‘I don’t understand, though,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you… Aren’t we…?’
It would be naive to finish the sentence the way I wanted. Of course Sadie wasn’t happy. We might have found something comfortable and companionate and maybe even contented with each other, but there hadn’t been a single moment since the day I’d spotted her across the park in her pale-green wedding dress, dragging that suitcase behind her, that she’d beenhappy.
‘You haven’t done anything wrong, Jonah.’
She looked at me at last. ‘I never really dreamed of having a husband,’ she said, ‘but if I had, I would have dreamed of one like you.’
You have me, I wanted to say.You’ve always had me.
‘Have you met someone else?’ I asked instead.
She blinked. ‘No. When would I have had time to meet someone else?’
‘Then why?’
She looked at the ground again, breath coming out of her in a rush.
‘If you don’t want to do this anymore, that’s fine,’ I said. ‘Of course that’s fine. I would never force you to stay married to me if you don’t want to be. I would never force you to do anything you don’t want to do. But – we talked about keeping this going for three years, Sadie. It’s only been a few months. So I just don’t understand why… now.’
‘You don’t need me anymore.’
A tear winked like a diamond on her cheek before she roughly thumbed it away. ‘You’ve got what you wanted out of this. You’ve got your job – and you’re probably much more likely to fail probation if we stay together than if we split up.’
‘Sadie, no.’
‘And you need your job,’ she said, barrelling forward, ‘so you can stay here in Hobart and help Fiona. You’ve found this place in her life – this proper, solid place – and I don’t want to put that in danger.’
‘I’m not the only one with a place in her life,’ I said. ‘They all adore you. Fi. The girls. Lex.’
‘They haven’t known me very long, though.’ Her voice was hoarse. ‘It’ll be easier for them if we split up sooner rather than later. The longer someone stays in your life, the harder it is when they leave.’
I was going to kill her sister.
‘What about work?’ I tried. ‘We’ve got another fifty-two lectures to write. Do you really want to negotiate a divorce, on top of that? One of us having to move out?’
‘No! Of course I don’t! I… I like what we have, Jonah. I like this life we’ve built together.’
‘Then let’s keep living it!’ I said. ‘I like it too, Sadie. I like everything about it. I like coming down here in the morning and bringing you coffee and hearing you talk about your garden. I like sitting down with you after work and having a glass of wine together. Hell, I even like watching that fucking dating show with you!’
She shook her head, thumbing another tear away.
‘Nightmarish as our workload is, I like being a lecture team with you,’ I said. ‘I like co-authoring that article with you. I like it when you disagree with me. I like how you make me think. More. Better. I always have. Ever since the first day I met you.’
‘Jonah, please.’ Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Don’t make this harder than it already is.’
‘I don’t want to make things hard for you.’
I cupped her face in my hand, tipping it up to mine. ‘I mean it. I’m not interested in making your life difficult. Especially not after the way you turned it inside out for me. I’m never, ever,evergoing to stand between you and what you want.’
She choked back a sob.
‘But I want you to know that I’m happy,’ I said. ‘Here, together, with you – living this little life of ours – I’m happy. And I’ll gladly keep doing it, as long as you want.’
