I exhaled sharply through my teeth. Every atom in my body felt magnetised, like there would now just always be this inexorable pull towards her, but I couldn’t function like this. How was I supposed to go on living my life with this doomed longing hanging over me?
I shoved the mop into the bucket. This had to be some kind of temporary insanity. Service could have been a disaster this evening, but Fiona had ensured that it wasn’t. Maybe this was just some kind of extreme form of relief, or gratitude, or something. I’d been working very long hours for the past couple of years to get Tsundoku off the ground, along with the intense MS study schedule I’d recently started. It was bound to catch up with me. Wasn’t that what Isamu kept telling me?
Whatever it took, I had to get myself under control, or I was going to lose my entire mind.
The front door rattled. ‘We’re—’ I called on autopilot.
The wordcloseddied on my lips. There, on the other side of the door, was Fiona.
My heart stopped beating.
This wasn’t real. This was a fantasy, one where I would open the door and she would fall into my arms.
I opened the door. She fell into my arms.
‘Fiona!’ I staggered for a moment under her sudden dead weight. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘I – I – I didn’t know where else to go.’
Even in the warm lighting, her face was pale, so drained of blood she looked almost green. Her hair was a mess, as if she’d clutched her fists in it. She was still in the little black dress she’d worn to dinner, but her feet were jammed into two different sneakers.When she looked up at me, her eyes were wide and wild, whites visible all the way around the iris, and she was shaking, teeth chattering, fingers icy as they clutched at my shoulders.
I grabbed her jacket off the rack and wrapped it around her. ‘What happened?’
‘Matt,’ she choked. ‘He – he—’
‘He what?’ My hands fisted into the lapels. ‘Did he hurt you?’
‘N-n-n-n-no.’ She was on the borderline of hyperventilating. ‘Yes, but – not like you’re thinking. He – he – fuck, Satoshi, what am I going to tell the kids?’
Her knees gave way beneath her. It was so sudden that I only just managed to catch her before she crumpled completely to the ground.
‘Come on.’ I bent down so I could loop her arm around my shoulder. ‘Come with me.’
I half-led, half-carried Fiona out to my office, sitting her down in my desk chair. She was still shivering, so I took my winter coat off the hook on the back of the door and draped it around her shoulders like a cloak. ‘Here.’ I grabbed a bottle of wine from an open case, uncorked it quickly and poured her a splash. ‘Let’s slow everything down, all right? Take a few breaths. Take a few sips. You’re safe. I’ve got you.’
Fiona wrapped her hands around the bowl of the glass and did what I said, inhaling and exhaling shakily. ‘I can’t taste anything.’ Her voice was small. ‘There’s nothing.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s not important.’ I knelt in front of her. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’
She squeezed her eyes shut, entire face screwing up with the force of it, but she couldn’t stop the tears falling down her cheeks. ‘I’m so stupid, Satoshi.’
‘No, you’re not.’ I took the glass from her and put it on the desk so I could try and warm her icy hands in mine.
The sound that escaped her could only be described as a laugh, but there was no joy in it. It was the kind of laugh that someone who wasn’t in love with her might call hysterical – humourless and half-crazed.
‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘Matt doesn’t want another baby. He has a whole other family in Melbourne – and he’s leaving us for them.’
OCTOBERONE YEAR LATER
Chapter OneFiona
Tasting today: $6 supermarket NV prosecco, indeterminate region.
If you want to get depressed or drunk, this will get you there. If you want literally anything else, you know you’ve headed down the wrong path, right?
‘All right, girly-pops.’ I squatted down to Rosie and Georgia’s level so I could hug them goodbye, careful not to let the hem of my grey court dress touch the muddy ground. ‘You have a good day at school, okay?’
‘Yes, Mummy,’ my eight-year-old daughters chorused.
