Jonah snorted. ‘Come on, Fi. Yes, you are.’
He found the teabags. ‘Elias and I rolled over for Dad so many times when we were younger. We let him shape us – mould us – but you never did. You were the only one who stood your ground.’
‘Look where it got me, though.’ I gestured futilely. ‘You all tried to tell me marrying Matt was a terrible idea, and I didn’t listen.’
‘Sure, fine, maybe we were onto something that time, but even broken clocks are right twice a day.’ The kettle boiled. ‘No matterhow it turned out – standing up to us took a spine of steel, Fi. And all three of the kids are just like you. Can you imagine someone trying to talk any of them out of something they wanted to do?’
My eyes filled with tears.
‘Imagine trying to convince Lex to put their book down,’ Jonah went on, pouring water into the mugs. ‘Or Rosie and Georgia to – Are you all right?’
‘Fine, fine.’ I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘That’s just… really nice, Jonah. Thank you.’
He put his arm around me. ‘They’re the best kids in the world, Fi,’ he said, squeezing me tight. ‘And that all comes from you.’
The kids slept in the next day, but Elias was up early. ‘You don’t know how much I missed this,’ he said, parking himself on the couch in front of the cricket. ‘Christmastime in Europe has its perks, but this – this I missed.’
Jonah came around later with the puppy and the leftovers from the brunch he’d made for Sadie. ‘We spent the morning together,’ he explained, a dreamy look on his face making it pretty clearhowthey’d spent the morning together, ‘but she and Chess are having a girls’ afternoon, and I didn’t want all this food to go to waste.’ He got distracted by the beginning of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, though, which Elias had switched over to in the lunch break, and plonked himself beside him on the couch.
My living room thus commandeered by my brothers, I ended up spending the afternoon outside, sitting in the shade and reading with Lex, the sound of the cricket a low hum through the open window as the girls played with Bunbury and the sun moved slowly across the cloudless sky. We were both reading our Christmas gifts from Sadie and Jonah: Lex was tearing throughPetby AkwaekeEmezi, and I was making significantly less progress withPart of Your Worldby Abby Jimenez.
It wasn’t the book’s fault. It was perfectly good. But it was a romance novel about an older woman falling for a younger man – it might technically have been from both of them, but it didn’t take a genius to see Sadie’s fingerprints all over it – and it had sent my mind wandering, circling around the wordstrong-willedlike water going down a drain.
My knee-jerk reaction had been that Jonah was wrong. He didn’t have all the information, after all. Anyone who knew just how badly I was hesitating with Satoshi would never describe me as strong-willed.
But then there had been the way he’d put it: that no one could talk me or my kids out of doing something they wanted.
I wanted Satoshi. There was no denying that. And every time I tried to make myself give him up, I couldn’t.
Was Jonah right? Was I actually so strong-willed that it had come all the way back around to stop me from doing what I knew I really should?
The kids and I had been in the backyard for about two and a half hours, during which time I’d managed to turn half the pages of my book while taking in approximately one per cent of the content, when the doorbell rang. ‘I’ll get it!’ Jonah called from the living room. ‘It’ll be Sadie.’
‘Okay!’ I called back.
I picked up my phone, quickly googling a summary of the book. I was going to sit down and read it properly, but if Sadie asked me about it, I needed to have something to say.
‘Fi, can you come here for a sec?’ Jonah called.
I set my book and phone down on the table and shuffled inside, wondering what on earth he could possibly need my help with. He’d eventually won the battle over cleaning up last night, proving thateven if he hadn’t been when we were younger, Jonah was definitely now just as strong-willed as me, and—
‘Hi, Fiona,’ Matt said from the other side of the screen door.
I could barely see him behind the enormous pile of gifts he was carrying. I could barely see the gifts either, because dots had started swimming in front of my eyes.
Jonah put his hand on my lower back, steadying me. ‘What are you doing here?’ I managed to force out.
‘Laura and I spent the holidays here,’ Matt said, ‘and – well, how could I resist bringing the kids their gifts in person?’
He shifted the weight of the stack in his arms. ‘Can I come in and put these down? They’re heavy.’
‘No.’
‘Come on, Fi.’ I could feel his tone of voice in every fibre of my being, and it made me want to turn my whole body inside out. ‘Don’t be like this. I didn’t come yesterday – I didn’t want to tread on your toes—’
‘How fucking dare you?’ Jonah grated.
‘Mate, stay out of it,’ Matt said. ‘This isn’t about you. This is about me and her and the kids, and – come on, Fi, it’sone day, the divorce is final tomorrow. Are you really going to send me away?’
