‘I want to.’ My mother was by far the least assertive member of the Fisher family, but her tone made it clear that this was the end of the discussion. ‘I know it’s just a little thing, but sometimes little things can go a long way.’
She wasn’t wrong. I was already a long,longway ahead, in a world where Satoshi was in that hotel room with me, throwing me onto the bed and making me forget everything, and…
‘Thanks, Mum.’ I rubbed my hand against the fluttery feeling in my abdomen. ‘That’s nice of you.’
‘Mummy, you’re all red,’ Rosie said, when I re-entered the house. ‘Did you get sunburned in the backyard?’
‘I’m just a bit hot.’ I fanned myself.
‘But it’s not hot,’ Georgia said.
‘I was walking up and down while I talked to Grandma.’ I thought there were no new depths of embarrassment for me to plumb, but if my eight-year-old daughters somehow managed to intuit that I was having explicit sexual fantasies about the nice young man who ran the bar…
It had just been sosexy, though. The feeling of his fingers against my waist – the other ones twined tight through mine as he pushed my hand over my head – the press of him against me – it had just been so – so – so—
So much. It had been so fuckingmuch, making me feel like the tightly-wound cords holding me together might come swiftly unravelling, and I might shatter into a million little pieces.
My phone buzzed with a text. It was Jonah.Heading to the farmers’ market. Do the girls want to come on a little adventure?
The girls were indeed keen on a little adventure, and I’d just finished braiding Georgia’s hair when Jonah arrived on my doorstep. ‘Do you want to – Rosie, no, your jumper’s fine, it’s just the farmers’ market, you don’t need to be elegant – take my car?’ I asked. ‘That’ll be easier than trying to manage the girls on the bus – Oh, hi, Sadie.’
‘Hi, Fiona.’ Sadie leaned in to hug me, a twinkle in her eye. ‘I brought you a coffee and some croissants. Chess went back to Sydney this morning, so I thought you and I could have breakfast while Jonah and the girls are at the market.’
Fuck. ‘Sure,’ I said, so brightly it must sound completely fake. ‘That sounds lovely. Girly-pops, be good for Uncle Jonah, okay?’
‘We’re always good for Uncle Jonah.’ Rosie took his hand. ‘And we know the rules. No running where he can’t see us, and—’
‘—definitely no running into the road,’ Georgia finished.
‘Good. Don’t get so excited you forget, all right?’ I bent down to hug them. ‘I love you.’
‘Lex, do you want to come too?’ Jonah took my proffered keys. ‘There’s room in the car.’
They shook their head. ‘Can I have a croissant?’
‘Sure,’ Sadie replied. ‘There’s plenty.’
Like a coward, I hoped Lex’s presence would get me out of having this conversation, but no such luck. The instant they had a croissant in hand, they disappeared into their room, leaving me alone with my very lovely, very clever, very much grinning-at-me-knowingly sister-in-law.
‘How about we sit outside?’ I suggested. If we had to have this conversation, I didn’t want Lex to overhear. I wasn’t at all sure how they’d react to the idea of their queer hero hooking up with their mother.
The memory of it made my face heat up again as Sadie and I made our way out onto my front porch. The firm, slippery pressure of Satoshi’s fingers inside me as he crooked them, stroking. The way I would have come again so fast and so violently if Charlotte hadn’t knocked at the door. How I would have slid off the desk and onto my knees the second I recovered the capacity for thought and motion, how once I got my mouth on him any question of him doing this solely out of a misplaced sense of charity would be completely obliterated, and—
Sadie started laughing. ‘Yourface, Fiona.’
I covered it with my hands. ‘Stop.’
‘You and Jonah are exactly the same. You both go red so fast when you’re embarrassed.’
‘I’m not embarrassed.’
I was, obviously, but not the way she meant. Nice suburban mothers were not supposed to have vivid sexual fantasies about younger men while having nice suburban conversations with their sisters-in-law. My face was so hot against my fingers it felt like I might burn myself.
‘Good, because you shouldn’t be.’ Sadie took one of the coffees out of the cardboard holder and set it down in front of me. ‘If anyone in the world deserves some fun, it’s you.’
Funwasn’t the right word to describe it. It had felt very, very serious when Satoshi had backed me into the wall, intense in a way that I hadn’t felt since…
I swallowed. Nothing had felt even remotely like that since Matt Sinclair had taken twenty-one-year-old Fiona Fisher home with him, fastened his hand around her wrist, and told her she wasn’t going anywhere.
