There were any number of places in Hobart Matt could take Laura tonight. Any number of places, full of any number of peopleI knew, any number of ways he could humiliate me even worse than he already had.
But he couldn’t take her to Tsundoku.
And if I really was going to celebrate today as a victory, then I could do much worse than having a glass of nice wine in the one place Matt had never managed to take.
Chapter TwoSatoshi
Tasting today: 2023 arneis, Piedmont, Italy.
Excellent expressions of this mischievous grape are elusive – but if you manage to get your hands on one, don’t, under any circumstances, let it slip through your fingers.
‘Sorry, Birdie, I know I’m late,’ I said, doing up the last two buttons on my work waistcoat as I half-ran into the bar. ‘Study group ran over and traffic back across the bridge was a nightmare. Give me five minutes to run upstairs and feed Yquem, and then you can—Isamu?’
‘Okaeri.’ Isamu glanced over his shoulder at me, elbow-deep in one of my fridges.
‘What are you doing here? Please tell me you’re not reorganising that.’
‘Of course I’m not. I know how you feel about your systems. I’m just checking—’ he pulled out a bottle of Bibliophile fumé blanc ‘—your stock levels.’
He eyeballed the level in the bottle, then put it back in the fridge. ‘And I’m here because Birdie had a family emergency. She couldn’t get a hold of you, so she called me – in a panic, I might add. I was in town anyway, so…’ He shrugged.
‘Why were you in town? We didn’t have a meeting scheduled.’
‘Dinner plans.’ He took out a bottle of grüner veltliner. ‘Not everything I do revolves around you, Sato.’
I gritted my teeth. I really thought I’d fixed the issue of Isamu interfering in my half of the business when, earlier in the year, he’d rented out the Hobart apartment he used to share with Noriko and moved to the vineyard full-time. And for a while, things had been fine. I’d even begun to hope that maybe – finally – I’d proven myself enough that he considered me capable of doing my job without crumbling into dust.
But once again, hope had kicked me in the teeth. As soon as vintage – Isamu’s busy period – ended for the year and he no longer had to spend all his time in the winery, these unannounced, occasional pop-ins had started back up.I’ve got a few things to do in town, just thought I’d stick my head in and see how things are going, he’d say, as if there were an endless amount of tasks a winemaker had to do in the city.
I knew he missed Noriko. I knew he was probably lonely out at the vineyard, with only our mother, the occasional guests in her B&B and his books for company. And if he wanted to sit down and talk about it, that would be fine.
He didn’t, though. My brother had never talked about his feelings in his entire life. Instead, he threw himself into other things so he could pretend he didn’t have them.
I, unlike him, had been to therapy, and so I understood that our nomadic upbringing had instilled in us both a strong need for control. But just because I understood that need for control didn’t mean I didn’t loathe him trying to exert it over me.
Isamu closed the fridge. ‘We need to have a conversation about Birdie.’
‘She’s really come along. Her service skills are excellent now.’
‘Her skills aren’t the problem. The fact that this is apparently the fifth time she’s called out in a month is. It doesn’t matter how good she is if she never turns up.’
‘Her mother’s sick.’ I folded my arms. ‘If Okasan got sick, we’d both drop everything to look after her. I’m not about to fire someone for doing exactly what I would do.’
‘You can’t keep picking up her slack, Sato.’ Isamu switched to Japanese, presumably so the customers in the corner wouldn’t hear him lecturing me like a child. ‘I assume you’ve been the one working her shifts?’
I didn’t say anything. He knew the answer.
One of the core promises of Tsundoku was that there was always a qualified somm on the floor. That meant me, Birdie or – in a pinch – Isamu. I’d also used to have Noriko on call, but since the divorce, she was no longer an option. If Birdie couldn’t work, I had to.
‘I know you can’t afford to hire another junior somm,’ Isamu said. ‘But something has to change. You can’t study for the MS and run your half of the business and work every single shift at the same time – especially not if you’re still set on sitting all three parts of the exam in August.’
I clenched my jaw. He wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t mean I was going to give up ground.
I’d set myself this ridiculous goal soon after the night I’d fallen in love with Fiona and she’d promptly vanished from my life for several months. Birdie hadn’t been ready to run a shift by herself then, so I’d been working constantly, but it still wasn’t enough. I’d needed something to hurl myself into the way that Isamu hurled himself into micro-managing me; something to distract me from the gnarled, twisted-up ball of emotions in my stomach – the longing, the yearning, the agony, and worst of all, the hope – and the MS was the thing I’d chosen.
The exam had three components: theory, tasting and service. I was hoping to pass all three – something few people rarely managed, especially not on their first attempt – at an exam date in Paris in less than a year’s time. Isamu had been livid when I told him –Are you trying to kill yourself?he’d demanded – but I’d held firm.
‘It’s all right for now,’ he went on. ‘I’ve got the time to pinch-hit. But what about when vintage hits in the new year? I won’t be able to leave the winery, and then—’
