‘Forget it.’ He stood. ‘I guess the babysitter can go home early.’
‘Matt—’
‘I’ll see you at home – if you can fit that into your busy schedule.’
The door of the bar slammed shut behind him. Fiona sighed. ‘Sorry about that, Satoshi.’
‘There’s no need to apologise.’ Married, she was sounbelievablymarried, and yet she was fizzing through my blood like sparkling shiraz anyway. ‘If you need to, please go. I’ll be fine.’
‘No.’ She picked up Matt’s abandoned glass and took a long swallow. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second with pleasure, and I fell even deeper in love with her. ‘There’s no point talking to him while he’s like this. Besides, I—’ she took another sip before grinning at me over the rim of the glass ‘—have work to do.’
It was incredible, really, how the loveliest person in the world could completely ruin your life in a single evening.
Later, when dinner service had passed, the chef had gone home, and only a few quiet drinkers remained, I made Fiona sit down. ‘Not only do you not have to do this,’ I said firmly, taking the cloth she was using to wipe down tables out of her hands, ‘I’m not going to let you.’
‘But you sent Birdie home already. And it’s no trouble.’
I put my hand between her shoulder blades and steered her towards the bar, the world tilting briefly on its axis as the ends of her hair brushed my knuckles. ‘This is my bar. I’m the boss. And the boss says sit down.’
The chef always left post-service plates for the floor staff. We never ate in front of customers, but I broke my own rule and brought the plates earmarked for Birdie and me out to the bar. ‘You ordered this, about, oh, two hours ago?’ I set one in front of Fiona. ‘Sorry it’s late.’
She laughed. ‘I should have known you’d never forget my order.’
The seasonal special that evening was a spring vegetable and goat’s cheese risotto. It had suffered a little from being left under the heat lamps, some of the cheese going gluey, but it was still fresh and flavourful, full of sugar snap peas and asparagus. ‘Can I pour you something?’ I asked, desperate to find my way back to more well-trodden neural pathways. ‘I’ve got a new Sancerre and I could use some pithy phrasing for the tasting notes.’
‘Oh no, my arm, you’re twisting it so hard.’ Did she have to keep smiling at me? I only had so much strength.
I busied myself with the familiar ritual of pouring wine – taking down glasses, opening the bottle, smelling the cork, tasting to check for faults – so I didn’t do anything ridiculous, like falling at her feet and telling her I would die for her. ‘What do you think of this?’
Fiona closed her eyes, inhaled the bouquet – oh fuck,oh fuck,I’d always thought she was pretty but how had I not realised she was exquisite? – then sipped. ‘Oh, that’s lovely. Like a summertime salad – charred peaches and basil and sunshine.’
‘That’s much better than what I’ve written so far.’ I leaned into the bar, trying to make it take some of my weight. ‘Althoughsilex soil influences, aged in old oak, bottled à la chèvrehas a certain poetry to it, I guess.’
‘We can pretty it up, don’t worry. What’s bottling à la chèvre?’
‘Hand-bottling direct from barrel using gravity. It’s not very common outside Sancerre, but Isamu learnt how to do it one of the times we lived in France, and he’s made a few vintages of sauvignon blanc that way. I’ll dig one out of his cellar next time I’m at the winery so I can show it to you.’
‘Won’t he mind?’
Isamu would definitely mind me raiding his museum stock, but I shrugged. ‘Wine is about pleasure, not preservation. It’s meant to be drunk.’
‘Speaking of Isamu—’ she took another mouthful of risotto ‘—is he still annoying the shit out of you?’
‘Oh mygod,Fiona, I can’t even tell you how much he’s annoying the shit out of me.’
This, at least, was safer territory. We’d both scraped our dishes clean and were nearing the bottom of our wineglasses by the time I’d finished telling her the latest instalment in the ongoing saga of Isamu channelling all his repressed emotion, about the fact he and Noriko had gone no-contact after their recent divorce and she’d elected to do all her business with us solely through me, into trying to micromanage my half of the Bibliophile/Tsundoku dual enterprise even more intensely than usual.
‘He’s been talking about moving out to the vineyard full time,’ I said. ‘Which would make my life easier, to be honest. It’s bad enough that he won’t shut up about me taking the MS. If he’d stuck his head in here tonight and caught me letting a customer help run service, he’d insist on being a god-like overseer of everything I do until the end of time.’
‘I’ll never tell him, I swear.’ She drew a cross over her heart. ‘Although surely I’m not just another customer, Satoshi.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ I replied hoarsely, the simple sound of my name on her lips sending blood rushing to my head. ‘Do you think I complain about him to anyone who walks through the door? He’s my business partner as well as my brother. We have an image to maintain.’
Fiona chuckled. ‘In that spirit, then – can I complain about Matt for a minute?’
It was the worst thing she could have said.
There was nothing crueller than hope. That was one of the first lessons you learnt when you grew up the way I had, constantly uprooted the second you managed to settle somewhere. If you allowed yourself to hope things might be different this time,you were only setting yourself up for pain. Better to accept the things you could not control and focus on the ones you could.
