Page 33 of A Study in Sparkling

‘We don’t have to talk about it.’ Sadie tore off a corner of her croissant. ‘Not if you don’t want to. But we’re friends, right?’

‘Of course.’

‘So you can talk to me. And I won’t tell Jonah. Not that I think he’d be particularly keen on hearing about his sister’s sex life, but if that’s something you’re worried about, I can keep my mouth shut.’

‘There’s not much to talk about.’ I tore a corner off my own croissant, the wordssex lifesitting awkwardly in my stomach in a way I couldn’t quite identify. ‘It’s… I don’t know what it is, to be honest. It’s… new.’

‘Have you had sex?’

I started to shake my head, then stopped. ‘Depends how you define it, I guess.’

Sadie raised her eyebrows.

After a moment, I sighed. ‘Fingers.’

Her grin deepened. I had to bury my face in my hands again.

‘Come on, Fiona, there’s no need to be embarrassed,’ she said. ‘Was it good?’

‘I think I saw the face of God,’ I moaned.

‘Even less reason to be embarrassed! I love this for you.’

I looked at her from between my fingers.

‘Seriously,’ Sadie said. ‘After all the shit you’ve been through, you deserve to see the face of God. And Satoshi’s such a sweetheart. If there’s one person in the world you could trust to look after you, it’s him.’

‘I thought that about Matt.’

The words were out of my mouth before I was even conscious of saying them. Slowly, Sadie’s grin melted away.

‘Not that the situations are even remotely the same.’ I picked up the piece of croissant I’d dropped, tearing it into even smaller pieces. ‘Satoshi and me could never be anything… you know, serious. And it’s not like I think he’d ever set out to hurt me – not on purpose, anyway – but…’

My voice trailed off. I wasn’t even sure of what I was trying to say.

‘Trust is hard,’ Sadie said. ‘Especially when you’ve been burned.’

I nodded.

‘But I think you’re underselling it,’ she said. ‘What the two of you could be.’

I snorted. ‘You know I’m eight years older than him, right?’

‘So?’ She popped a piece of croissant into her mouth. ‘You’re both adults.’

‘Adults who are at completely different stages of their lives, though. I have three kids. He works about eight hundred and forty-seven hours a week. And he’s – Satoshi.’

‘Exactly. He’s Satoshi. You know him. Your kids love him. And sure, he works a lot, but wasn’t Matt always at work?’

I bit back my immediate thought – that at least I could trust Satoshi to actuallybeat work when he said he was – and picked up my phone instead. ‘Let me show you something.’

I opened up Tsundoku’s Instagram and scrolled back through a few years’ worth of beautifully curated photos. ‘Here.’

‘What am I looking at?’ Sadie took my phone. ‘Who’s this? Satoshi, obviously, but who’s the other guy?’

‘Kieran. His ex. That’s the kind of person he usually goes for.’

‘Men?’