Jonah was silent for several moments after I explained. ‘He brought hismistressto your divorce mediation?’ he said at last. ‘And she’spregnant?’
My scalp started to prickle.How the fuck did you marry this man?he didn’t say, but I heard anyway.
I loved my brother. I really did. The relationship between Jonah, me and our older brother Elias had been distant for a long time, but when Matt had left, they’d both come through for me in ways I never would have anticipated. Elias had taken a leave of absence from his research fellowship in Germany so he could stay with me for a while and help with the kids. Jonah had gone even further. It had been coincidence that brought him to Hobart – his then-girlfriend Sadie had got a job at a university here, which led to them getting married so she could bring him with her on a partner hire – but since he’d been here, both he and Sadie had helped me so much.
So yes, I loved him. I was more grateful to him than I would ever be able to express. But I could never forget that he – just like the rest of my family – hadtoldme not to marry Matt, that I would be making a massive, life-ruining mistake if I did; and so sometimes, even though he didn’t mean to, he made me feel so fucking stupid.
‘—can’t believe he’d do that to you,’ Jonah was saying. ‘And what’s he going to do now? Make a long weekend of it? Parade her around Hobart?’
My prickling scalp turned into another full-blown cold sweat. I hadn’t even thought of that.
Matt, taking Laura out to dinner. Matt, showing her the sights of the city. Matt, with his arm around her, inevitably running into Michelle or another one of the parents from school.
Their eyes drifting to Laura’s pregnant belly.
The way all the WhatsApp groups would fuckinglight up.
‘I’m so sorry he did that to you, Fi,’ Jonah said. ‘What a piece of shit.’
I made myself laugh. If I didn’t laugh, I would cry. Again. ‘Yeah. He is.’
The last call I had to make was to my parents. Theoretically, it was a good news call –Guess what, Dad, that chump is finally going to pay up, so I can stop bleeding you for money!– but I couldn’t make myself do it. Instead, I just leaned my elbow against the dining room table and rested my chin in my hand, staring into space.
I’d made a mistake, letting the kids go to Jonah and Sadie’s for the night. I hadn’t wanted to disrupt their routine – if I did, I’d have to explain to them why, and the twins had onlyjuststopped asking whether Daddy might ever come home – but I should have done it anyway. Without them, the house felt achingly, excruciatingly empty.
I couldn’t stop seeing it. Matt’s arm around Laura. That look on her face – that fucking wide-eyed, innocent, look-what-a-good-wife-and-mother-I-am look – when she told me that we had to put the kids first.
I gritted my teeth against it, but the thought slipped through anyway.No wonder he picked her.
I did not want Matt back. I was very clear about that. Almost every Thursday night while the kids were with Jonah and Sadie,I toyed with the idea of downloading an app and finding a hookup, just so the last hands to touch me weren’t his.
But just because I was done with him didn’t make the sting of the humiliation any less. He’d had both of us – and he hadn’t chosen me.
I groaned, letting my head fall forward against the table. My therapist and I had had many, many discussions about this.Given everything you’ve told me about the competitive environment in which you grew up, it’s completely natural that part of you views this as a competition she won and you lost,she’d said.And given you like to express your love through actions, it’s also natural that you feel that you didn’t do enough. But let’s try and reframe this thought pattern, shall we? I think we can agree Matt isn’t a prize you wish you’d won, so can we think about it as you being free of him instead?
I’d tried. But it was difficult to revel in being free of him when everything was just so fuckingdifficult, all the time. Losing Matt might have helped me regain my relationship with my brothers, but I’d lost so much else in the process.
I sighed. This wasn’t helping. I should do what Kavita and Chess had said and try and focus on the positives.
I texted my parents a brief summary of what had happened, with a promise to call and explain more later. Then I got up, reached up on tiptoe to get myself down a wineglass, and poured myself some of the prosecco Kavita had given me.
‘You won today, Fiona,’ I told myself, as firmly as I could manage. ‘Cheers.’
I took a sip, then spat it back out again. The prosecco was so sweet that it tasted almost like soft drink, the bubbles so aggressive they nearly went up my nose.
I glanced at the label. It was a cheap supermarket brand. If I showed this to Satoshi, he would probably faint – and then, when he came to, he would ban me from Tsundoku for even thinkingabout drinking something so terrible.Wine is supposed to be about pleasure, Fiona, he’d say firmly, steering me to the door.Come back when you remember that.
Then I blinked, remembering something that had happened back in February, when Sadie and Jonah had just moved to Hobart and I’d left Jonah with the kids so I could take Sadie out for a drink.
It was the first time I’d been to Tsundoku in the four months since the night Matt had told me about Laura. I’d been petrified that I’d walk through the door and the sight of Satoshi would send embarrassment screaming through my veins so powerfully that I’d run right back out again.So you know that wine mum who comes into my bar?I’d spent a lot of time imagining Satoshi texting his (young, beautiful, unspeakably cool) friends.Turns out her husband’s been cheating on her for years – and somehow *I’m* the first person she wanted to tell?????
But it hadn’t. Instead, an enormous grin had spread over his face and he’d practically leapt over the bar to hug me, and as he lifted me clean off my feet, just for a moment – the barest moment, the space between breaths – I’d felt like myself again.
Matt didn’t ruin it for me, I’d told Sadie, gesturing at the bar around us, with its artfully mismatched velvet chairs and overstuffed bookshelves.He might have taken just about everything else, but Tsundoku is still mine.
It was true practically as well as emotionally. Matt had been in Hobart for work in July (a fact he hadn’t bothered to tell me), and he’d tried to go to Tsundoku. I hadn’t been there, but Jonah and Sadie had, and according to them, both Satoshi and his brother Isamu had told Matt in no uncertain terms that he was never welcome there again.
I tipped my glass of terrible prosecco down the sink.
