If the only person that would have blown back on was me, I might have actually done it. But parents’ gossip always spreads to the playground, and Lex and Rosie and Georgia were already the kids of The Man With The Secret Second Family. Better they also be the kids of The Woman Who Is Keeping Her Chin Up (Although Seriously, How Could She Not Have Known?) than The Woman On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it,’ I said to Michelle. ‘So why bother trying?’
‘Oh, come here.’
I submitted to another hug. ‘You’re so brave,’ Michelle whispered.
What I wouldn’t give for her to say something – anything – else to me. For the things she whispered to be the petty bullshit we used to gossip about while working in the library. For her to ask me if I thought the new kindy teacher was hot. To bitch about the ways they kept jacking up the prices of school uniforms. To talk about the fuckingweather.
But this was the only conversation I was allowed to have now. When Matt had left, he’d ensured that my entire life revolved around him, more than it ever had when we were together.
‘Thanks, Michelle,’ I lied. ‘That means a lot.’
I was twenty-one when I met Matt. I’d been in the middle of my undergrad degree, and I had an essay onParadise LostI should have been writing, especially if I didn’t want to be the recipient of yet another stern lecture about my grades and all the things that were expected of me as a scion of Professor Christian Fisher.
But when my best friend Kaitlyn texted me, inviting me to go out with a group of our friends, I’d saidfuck it, and gone.
We’d gone to the divey suburban Sydney pub we both worked in, because we got a staff discount. I’d been at the bar getting the next round when a handsome man in a well-cut suit had come up to me.That’s a lot of drinks you’re trying to carry, he’d said.Can I give you a hand?
I’d said yes. He’d helped me deliver the drinks to the table, then left.Hello, Daddy, Kaitlyn whispered.
Ew, shut up, I whispered back.
The glass of sparkling had arrived five minutes later.From that guy, my manager said, nodding over at the bar.He wants to know if you’ll drink it with him.
I’d paused, looking over at him. He’d raised his eyebrows at me, then his glass, and a shiver had gone through me, like someone had walked over my grave.
I’d taken the glass, hissedshut upagain at Kaitlyn when she wolf-whistled at me, then walked over to him.Just so we’re clear, I’d said, sliding onto the barstool beside him,this doesn’t mean I owe you anything.
His smile had been wolfish, sending that shiver rushing through me again.Oh, I think it does, he replied.Your name, pretty girl.
I’d crossed my legs tight against the fluttery feeling building between them.Fiona.
He probably knew I was a done deal by the time he took my hand.Fiona,he’d repeated, pressing a kiss to my knuckles.I’m Matt.
I’d gone home with him, back to an apartment that made it clear this was a man, not a boy. He’d laid me down in his thousand-thread-count sheets, and as he kissed his way down my body, I was already thinking about how I’d tell the story of my first ever one-night stand to Kaitlyn the next day.
But it wasn’t a one-night stand. I’d tried to sneak out at 2 am, and Matt’s hand had fastened around my wrist like a manacle.You, he’d growled,are not going anywhere.
We’d got married about eighteen months later, despite the strenuous objections of my family. I’d fallen pregnant with Lex soon afterwards, and Matt moved us to Hobart.Big cities are no place to raise a family, he’d said, stroking a stray strand of hair behind my ear when I’d asked why we weren’t moving to Melbourne instead, where he already worked several days a week.I always loved visiting Tasmania as a kid. I’ll commute when I need to: it’s a quick flight to Melbourne, just a hop across the strait. Tassie will be my oasis with my baby –he’d kissed me –and our baby.
Naïve, twenty-three, knocked up and in love, I’d agreed, completely failing to see the red flags that were even then waving in my face.
Matt didn’t want me in Sydney because that was where my family was: my family, who were united in firm agreement that I was throwing my future away on him – my family of professional argument-havers, who just might convince me they were right if I spent too much time with them.
And Matt didn’t want me in Melbourne because that was where Laura was. No, he wanted me on a whole different island to her: Laura, his childhood sweetheart, who he’d also been laying down in his expensive sheets; Laura, who was also pregnant with his child; Laura, who I never, ever,everwanted to meet.
Laura, who was standing on the other side of the mediator’s office, Matt’s arm around her shoulder, very obviously pregnant again.
‘Fiona, stay calm, okay?’ my lawyer Kavita murmured in my ear. ‘It’s important you keep your composure.’
‘Matt’s lawyers will have advised him to bring her along so you’ll have an emotional response and come off looking crazy.’ Chess angled her body so I couldn’t see them anymore. ‘And we’re not going to give him that satisfaction.’
I nodded. My mouth was dry.
Chess took my hands in hers and squeezed tight. ‘Remember, he doesn’t know what we know,’ she whispered. ‘We’re about to take him to the fucking cleaners.’
I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath in through my nose. ‘Okay.’
