Study in Sparkling

Book : Love Notes

by Jodi McAlister

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Wine and books pair with friends and lovers in a delicious, heartfelt romance featuring, from the acclaimed author of An Academic Affair.

Fiona Fisher thought she had it all: a loving husband, three kids, and a solid plan to get the PhD no one in her family thought her capable of. But when her husband reveals that he's leaving her for his secret second family, Fiona is devastated and completely humiliated.

Satoshi Tsukamoto wants it all. He’s the proprietor of a cult wine bar, and he’s studying for the hardest exam in the world: the Master Sommelier exam. There aren’t enough hours in the day for anything else – even Fiona, his favourite customer, and the woman he’s inconveniently in love with.

On paper, Fiona and Satoshi make no sense. He’s eight years younger than her and a consummate bachelor. She’s a single mother and doesn't know if she'll ever be able to trust anyone again. But how can Fiona resist when Satoshi proposes they give into their mutual attraction to let off some steam? And how is he supposed to resist when the woman he adores is finally within his grasp – even if they’ve agreed to keep things casual?

Release date: July 28, 2026

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia

Print pages: 336

Sample

Chapter One: Fiona Chapter One Fiona
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, girlie-pops.” I squatted down to Rosie and Georgia’s level so I could hug them goodbye, careful not to let the hem of my gray court dress touch the muddy ground. “You have a good day at school, okay?”

“Yes, Mummy,” my eight-year-old daughters chorused.

I kissed them each on the cheek. “Remember, it’s Thursday, so Uncle Jonah and Auntie Sadie will pick you up so you can stay the night with them.”

“Yay!” Georgia said. “Thursdays are my favorite!”

“Uncle Jonah makes the best dinners in the whole world,” Rosie said.

My offended face was not entirely faked. Intellectually, I understood the novelty for them of spending one night a week with my brother and his wife. The regular presence of Jonah in their lives at all was still a novelty, really—he and Sadie had only moved to Hobart eight months ago. Emotionally, though, it was difficult to hear that the twins preferred their Thursdays with them to every other night of the week with me. “And what am I, chopped liver?”

They both giggled. It was one of my favorite sounds in the world, that identical laugh of theirs, and I couldn’t resist hugging them again. “Be good, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.”

“Look, Georgia, there’s Madison!” Rosie said.

The twins scrambled free of my embrace and ran after their friend, the backpacks they still hadn’t quite grown into bouncing around on their backs.

Just like they had too often over the past year, tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. Watching them run away from me always made me conscious of the fact that my heart lived outside my body.

“Mum?”

I blinked the tears back. “Yes, sweetheart?”

“Do you want me to come with you today?”

Lex had a serious expression on their face. They were twelve now and approaching the end of Year 6, so they were usually out of the car at school drop-off the second I turned off the engine, too cool to be seen with their mother or little sisters. Today, though, they’d lingered, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the twins, but I heard you on the phone to Uncle Elias the other night. I know you’re seeing Dad today. I thought maybe it would be good—maybe it would be helpful—if I went with you.”

“Oh, Lex.”

I pressed my tongue hard to the roof of my mouth. I was not going to burst into tears at school drop-off. I was not. There were several other mums and dads watching us curiously, and I was already the laughingstock of the Parents and Friends Association. If I started crying now, I would never hear the end of it.

“That’s so lovely of you to offer,” I said, “but you don’t need to worry. Your dad and I are going to figure things out like grown-ups. It’s going to be fine.”

“You don’t have to lie to me.”

“Sweetheart, I’m—”

“You don’t,” Lex insisted. “You don’t have to say it’s fine. I know it’s not. I know Dad hasn’t paid you any child support. I know you had to ask Grandpa for money.”

I scribbled patricide on my mental to-do list. I’d tried to keep the worst of the brutal realities of the split from Lex and the girls, but when my parents had come to Hobart a few months ago to visit Jonah and me, my father had bellowed So when exactly is that chump going to pay up so you can stop bleeding me for money? at the top of his lungs over the dinner table. The girls hadn’t understood, but Lex had, and the ugliness of that realization written all over their face had made me want to vomit up all my internal organs.

“That’s true,” I said, tasting bile in the back of my throat, “but that’s what today’s meeting is about. We’re going to get that sorted. And your dad—”

“Don’t say he loves me.”

Of course he loves you, I wanted to say, but I didn’t like lying to my children. I had to press my tongue to the roof of my mouth again.

“I just thought it might be helpful to have me there,” Lex said stubbornly. “So if Dad really doesn’t want to have anything to do with us anymore, he has to say it to my face—and everyone has to hear him do it.”

“Sweetheart, can I give you a hug?”

Lex paused for a moment—they weren’t much of a hugger, preferring fist bumps to most other forms of physical contact—then nodded. I wrapped my arms around them, jaw aching from how tight I was clenching it, my eyes feeling like someone was inside my skull scrubbing them from behind with steel wool.

“You,” I said into their shoulder, keeping my voice low so no one around us would hear, “are the best, bravest kid in the entire world, okay? And I love you so much.”

They tolerated the hug for a few moments before they drew back, the flag pins on their collar catching briefly on my hair. “So can I come?”

I shook my head. “It’s going to be very long, very boring, and very, very sensible. And I’ll have my lawyer and Auntie Chess with me, making sure everything goes smoothly.”

Lex studied me. I had to resist the urge to hold my breath.

“Okay,” they said at last. “But Mum… don’t be nice to him.”

“Sweetheart—”

“I mean it. You’re so nice to people, all the time. Don’t be nice to him. He doesn’t deserve it.”

They were completely right, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I could say aloud, not with the prying eyes of a thousand school parents nearby. “Tell you what,” I said instead. “How about next Tuesday, when the girls have indoor soccer training, you and I go and have a hot chocolate at Tsundoku? I bet Satoshi has some new books for you.”

Lex gave me a withering look. “Cool bribe, Mum.”

“Is that a no, or…?”

They sighed, exasperated in the way only a preteen could be. “Obviously not.”

I grinned, then pecked them on the cheek. “Have a good day, okay? And don’t let the girls terrorize Uncle Jonah and Auntie Sadie too badly.”

“I’ll try,” Lex said long-sufferingly, “but I don’t have magic powers.”

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth again as I watched them walk through the school gates. I’d fucked up so many things in my life, but somehow, in the midst of it, I’d produced three perfect children.

And Matt had walked away from them.

I dug my keys into the meaty part of my palm as I headed back toward the car. I had to face him today—in person for the first time in a year, instead of over Zoom—and I was going to have to find a way to keep calm and behave like an adult and not just scream How could you?! and leap across the table to scratch his eyes out.

“Fiona!”

Fuck.

“Michelle!” I pasted a smile onto my face. “How are you?”

Once upon a time, Michelle had been—if not a friend, then a friendly acquaintance. Her son Henry was in the same year as Lex, and we’d volunteered together in the school library every second Friday. We were in the same parent WhatsApp groups, and we’d bonded over our shared dislike of some of the sleazier dads.

But then Matt had left.

I couldn’t volunteer anymore, needing every spare second of every day to either work or look after the kids. I’d tried to keep the more salacious details of Matt leaving out of circulation, but Hobart was small. Once it was out, it was out—and the humiliation began.

“I’m doing well,” Michelle said. “How are you, honey? That dress looks great on you.”

I submitted to her hug, which came complete with a patronizing rub of her hand up and down my back. I’d learned the hard way that the quickest way out of these interactions was through. The trick was to be as boring as possible.

So instead of Thanks, I’m wearing it because I’m about to go to mediation with my almost-ex-husband, I just hugged her back and said, “I’m fine, thanks.”

Michelle pulled back, both hands on my shoulders. “You don’t need to put on a brave face for me. How are you really?”

I thought about saying late and making a dash for it, but then Oh no, poor Fiona might be about to completely lose it would go circulating through the WhatsApp groups. The last time that happened, a group of parents had organized a fundraiser for me, and it had been the single most excruciating experience of my life.

“Oh, you know,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers and praying she hadn’t overheard any of my conversation with Lex. “It’s not easy, but I’m managing. My brother and his wife moved down in February for work, and they’ve been a huge help.”

“You’re so brave.”

I resisted the urge to grit my teeth. “Just doing my best.”

Michelle leaned in closer, and I braced myself. “So, have you met her yet?”

I didn’t need to ask who she meant. “No,” I replied, keeping my voice breezy and businesslike. “I don’t want to, to be honest.”

“Oh God, Fiona, you’re a better person than me!” Michelle rubbed my arm. I dug my keys harder into my palm. “If I were in your shoes, I’d be hunting her down like a stalker. So I could try and understand, you know?”

I might be the only one of my siblings without a PhD, but it didn’t take a genius to read the subtext. Tell me why Matt picked her and not you. What does she have that you don’t?

The moment that news of what Matt had done had started to spread, people had been hungry for the gory details. At one point, the questions—so polite, but so pointed—had been coming so thick and fast I’d considered just holding an Ask Me Anything in one of the WhatsApp chats. Her name is Laura. She’s eight years older than me. They’ve technically been together longer, but I’m the one he’s legally married to (which was surprisingly difficult to work out, save your follow-up questions until the end). They have two kids: Micah is twelve, and Nikki is five. I don’t know much about her otherwise, but considering I had no idea that whenever Matt went to Melbourne for work he was actually going to see them, I’m confident she’s probably smarter than me. What else do you want to know, you fucking ghouls?

If the only person that would have blown back on was me, I might have actually done it. But parents’ gossip always spreads to the playground, and Lex and Rosie and Georgia were already the kids of The Man With The Secret Second Family. Better they also be the kids of The Woman Who Is Keeping Her Chin Up (Although Seriously, How Could She Not Have Known?) than The Woman On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it,” I said to Michelle. “So why bother trying?”

“Oh, come here.”

I submitted to another hug. “You’re so brave,” Michelle whispered.

What I wouldn’t give for her to say something—anything—else to me. For the things she whispered to be the petty bullshit we used to gossip about while working in the library. For her to ask me if I thought the new kindergarten teacher was hot. To bitch about the ways they kept jacking up the prices of school uniforms. To talk about the fucking weather.

But this was the only conversation I was allowed to have now. When Matt had left, he’d ensured that my entire life revolved around him, more than it ever had when we were together.

“Thanks, Michelle,” I lied. “That means a lot.”

I was twenty-one when I met Matt. I’d been in the middle of my undergrad degree, and I had an essay on Paradise Lost I should have been writing, especially if I didn’t want to be the recipient of yet another stern lecture about my grades and all the things that were expected of me as a scion of Professor Christian Fisher.

But when my best friend Kaitlyn texted me, inviting me to go out with a group of our friends, I’d said fuck it, and gone.

We’d gone to the divey suburban Sydney pub we both worked in, because we got a staff discount. I’d been at the bar getting the next round when a handsome man in a well-cut suit had come up to me. That’s a lot of drinks you’re trying to carry, he’d said. Can I give you a hand?

I’d said yes. He’d helped me deliver the drinks to the table, then left. Hello, Daddy, Kaitlyn whispered.

Ew, shut up, I whispered back.

The glass of sparkling had arrived five minutes later. From that guy, my manager said, nodding over at the bar. He wants to know if you’ll drink it with him.

I’d paused, looking over at him. He’d raised his eyebrows at me, then his glass, and a shiver had gone through me, like someone had walked over my grave.

I’d taken the glass, hissed Shut up again at Kaitlyn when she wolf-whistled at me, then walked over to him. Just so we’re clear, I’d said, sliding onto the barstool beside him, this doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

His smile had been wolfish, sending that shiver rushing through me again. Oh, I think it does, he replied. Your name, pretty girl.

I’d crossed my legs tight against the fluttery feeling building between them. Fiona.

He probably knew I was a done deal by the time he took my hand. Fiona, he’d repeated, pressing a kiss to my knuckles. I’m Matt.

I’d gone home with him, back to an apartment that made it clear this was a man, not a boy. He’d laid me down in his thousand-thread-count sheets, and as he kissed his way down my body, I was already thinking about how I’d tell the story of my first ever one-night stand to Kaitlyn the next day.

But it wasn’t a one-night stand. I’d tried to sneak out at 2:00 am, and Matt’s hand had fastened around my wrist like a manacle. You, he’d growled, are not going anywhere.

We’d gotten married about eighteen months later, despite the strenuous objections of my family. I’d fallen pregnant with Lex soon afterward, and Matt moved us to Hobart. Big cities are no place to raise a family, he’d said, stroking a stray strand of hair behind my ear when I’d asked why we weren’t moving to Melbourne instead, where he already worked several days a week. I always loved visiting Tasmania as a kid. I’ll commute when I need to: it’s a quick flight to Melbourne, just a hop across the strait. Tassie will be my oasis with my baby—he’d kissed me—and our baby.

Naive, twenty-three, knocked up, and in love, I’d agreed, completely failing to see the red flags that were even then waving in my face.

Matt didn’t want me in Sydney because that was where my family was: my family, who were united in firm agreement that I was throwing my future away on him—my family of professional argument-havers, who just might convince me they were right if I spent too much time with them.

And Matt didn’t want me in Melbourne because that was where Laura was. No, he wanted me on a whole different island to her: Laura, his childhood sweetheart, who he’d also been laying down in his expensive sheets; Laura, who was also pregnant with his child; Laura, who I never, ever, ever wanted to meet.

Laura, who was standing on the other side of the mediator’s office, Matt’s arm around her shoulder, very obviously pregnant again.

“Fiona, stay calm, okay?” my lawyer Kavita murmured in my ear. “It’s important you keep your composure.”

“Matt’s lawyers will have advised him to bring her along so you’ll have an emotional response and come off looking crazy.” Chess angled her body so I couldn’t see them anymore. “And we’re not going to give him that satisfaction.”

I nodded. My mouth was dry.

Chess took my hands in hers and squeezed tight. “Remember, he doesn’t know what we know,” she whispered. “We’re about to take him to the fucking cleaners.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath in through my nose. “Okay.”

“It’s all going to be over soon,” Kavita said comfortingly.

“And he’s going to pay,” Chess said, much more menacingly. “Big-time.”

I exhaled slowly, opening my eyes again. This could be worse, I tried to make myself believe. This could all be so much worse.

At least I had Chess and Kavita. Chess, a high-powered corporate lawyer who had flown in that morning from Sydney, was Sadie’s sister. They’d had some kind of falling-out after Sadie and Jonah had gotten married that I didn’t really understand, but they’d mended fences a few months ago, and she’d been a massive help ever since. She’d taken one look at the family lawyer representing me in the divorce, said a flat no, found me Kavita (She seems like a marshmallow on the surface, but she’s a shark, she’d assured me over a glass of wine at Tsundoku), and talked her into taking my case pro bono. Then, when Chess found out I was married to that Matt Sinclair, who was apparently notorious in some of the circles she ran in, she’d taken on digging into his finances personally. He’s a rich arsehole business bro, she’d told me bluntly when I protested that she was doing too much. I deal with them all the time and I know all their tricks for hiding money. Let me use my powers for good for once.

I wished I could have enjoyed the way the color drained from Matt’s face in the mediation meeting as Chess outlined everything he’d tried to conceal, ticking various offshore accounts and shell companies off on her fingers in response to his lawyers’ argument that he didn’t have the assets to pay me more than the bare minimum in child support. I wished I could have enjoyed the muscle that started to twitch in his jaw as he realized that despite all his money, my legal team was better than his; the way his nose started to turn red as he figured out he wasn’t going to get away with leaving as cleanly as he thought.

But I still had the memory of all those years in my veins. Every time I’d let him touch me. Every time I’d let him kiss me. I love you, he’d told me time and time again, this pathetic, venal, red-nosed man—and blithely, without a doubt, I’d believed him.

“Fiona, you need to be reasonable here.” It was the first sentence Matt had said directly to my face in months, ever since that cold, gray morning last year when Satoshi had walked me home. “I’ve got four other children to support.”

“Four?” escaped me before I could bite it back.

Matt caressed Laura’s belly. “Twins.”

Cold sweat began to bead in my hairline.

I was barely half-aware of what was happening as Kavita and Chess hammered out a child support agreement with Matt’s lawyers. I only really understood that we’d gotten what we’d wanted—the house, the car, and a generous monthly sum that would mean I could stop taking money from my parents and wouldn’t have to take every single copywriting gig I could find just to keep us afloat—when Chess squeezed my fingers under the table. I could hear my own blood, rushing in my ears.

“All right,” the mediator said. “Let’s move on to custody and visitation.”

“My client agrees that Ms. Fisher should have primary custody of Alexan—”

“Lex,” Chess, Kavita, and I all snapped at the same time.

“Yes, of course, my apologies—of Lex, Rosemary, and Georgia,” Matt’s lawyer said. “We would, however, like to discuss visitation.”

“No.”

Both Chess’s and Kavita’s hands landed on my knees under the table, but I ignored them. “Absolutely not.”

“Fiona,” Matt said, his voice infuriatingly even, “they’re my children too.”

“You don’t deserve them.”

“I know the circumstances aren’t ideal, but—”

“The circumstances aren’t ideal?! You abandoned them!”

“How about we take a quick five-minute break?” Kavita suggested.

“I thought it would be easier for you,” Matt said. “Not to have to see me. And for them not to see me either for a bit, so they didn’t get confused.”

“Confused?”

“Fiona—”

“They know what you fucking did, Matt! They know you chose her—”

“Her name is Laura.”

“—and your other kids over them, and they’re going to have to carry that for the rest of their lives! Do you know how long it took for Rosie to stop crying herself to sleep? How Georgia keeps having nightmares about waking up all alone? How angry Lex is? Do you really think I’m going to let you see them again, after what you fucking did to them?”

“That’s not your choice to make, Fiona,” Matt said. “That’s what we’re all here to decide. And if you could calm down and stop swearing at me, maybe we could figure it out like adults.”

“Don’t tell her to calm down,” Chess said sharply.

“Don’t address my client, Ms. Shaw,” Matt’s lawyer shot back.

“I just want my kids to meet their siblings!”

The words erupted suddenly from Laura, the first thing she’d said the whole meeting. “I just want Micah and Nikki to meet their siblings,” she repeated, flushing bright red as one hand came to rest on top of her belly. “I know this whole situation is a mess. I’m so sorry, Fiona, I really am. I can’t imagine how tough this is for you. But we need to think about what’s best for the kids—and surely what’s best is for us all to try and be a family?”

Her eyes were wide and earnest and well-meaning, and it made me want to scream until my throat was bloody.

Matt put his arm around her, thumb tracing protective circles on her shoulder the same way he used to do to me. “Exactly,” he said. “We have to put the kids first.”

Dots started swimming in front of my eyes. “Kavita,” I said, “did you say something about a five-minute break?”

I only just made it to the bathroom before I threw up the entire contents of my stomach—everything except the humiliation, which, no matter how hard I retched, would not come out.

Afterward, Kavita and Chess tried to reassure me that everything was going to be all right. “I know it might not feel like it, but this is a good result,” Kavita said. “We could take him to court, of course, but given there was no abuse of the children, it’s not likely we’d get a ruling for no visitation whatsoever. At least this way most of the contact they have with Matt will be by phone or video call, and none of it will be without you being present.”

“He doesn’t deserve to even look at them.” I sniffed. I’d managed not to cry in the meeting, but back in Kavita’s office, the waterworks had started.

“No, he doesn’t,” Chess agreed. “But if we went to court and pushed for an extremely hard-line custody agreement, that might reopen the discussions around child support—Why should he pay for kids he’s not allowed to see? would be the line his lawyers would run—and we could end up with a much worse outcome.”

“Exactly,” Kavita said. “Settling this now in mediation is much better for everyone involved, Fiona. I promise.”

I ached, suddenly, for my children. I wanted to put my arms around the three of them and hug them as tight as I could, holding them to me even once the girls started wriggling and Lex told me that they’d reached their quota of hugs for the month, thank you very much; to tell them I loved them and that I would protect them and that I would never, ever leave them.

Kavita opened her desk drawer and took out a bottle of prosecco. “We won today,” she said, handing it to me. “And you should celebrate, okay?”

Chess’s phone started vibrating. “I have to go,” she said. “But I’ve got a couple more days before I have to go back to Sydney. How about I take you and the kids and Sadie and Jonah out to dinner tomorrow, somewhere nice? My treat.”

I nodded. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else.

The house was quiet when I got home, my footsteps echoing on the floorboards as I dropped my handbag on the kitchen bench, put Kavita’s prosecco in the fridge, and stooped to pick up Georgia’s discarded stuffed elephant. I pressed it to my face for a moment, inhaling her smell before putting it on her bed.

Maybe she’d take her elephant with her when she and Rosie and Lex met Micah and Nikki. Lex, who was reserved at the best of times, was almost certainly going to refuse to speak to them, but the girls had never met another kid they couldn’t bulldoze into being friends. Here, Georgia might say, marching up to Nikki and thrusting her elephant into her hands. Come and play with us.

We’d get through the visit. I’d lull myself into thinking the worst was over. But then we’d all be sitting around the dinner table, and When can we see Daddy again? Rosie would say. I miss him.

I like having a little sister, Georgia would add. Can we go and live with them?

I clutched the back of the couch as the world started to swim in front of my eyes again. “Stop catastrophizing,” I ordered myself.

It was something I’d been working on with my therapist, although I wasn’t sure I’d made much progress. I’d always had a tendency to get ahead of myself, but when Matt left, it had got a million times worse. The smallest thing could send me spiraling, unable to breathe because of the endless torrent of worst-case scenarios. An unfamiliar car parked on the street might belong to a banker here to foreclose on me. My dad’s name flashing up on my phone might be because he was about to tell me that Money doesn’t grow on trees, Fiona, it’s time for you to stand on your own two feet. The smallest sideways glance from another parent might snowball into a future where the kids got taken away from me because I was too much of a mess to be a mother.

Once I’d taken several deep breaths and was reasonably sure I wasn’t going to throw up again, I sat down at the kitchen table to make some calls. The first was to the kids’ therapist, to make appointments for them as soon as possible. Matt effectively ghosting us had already traumatized them enough. I shuddered to think what seeing him again—not to mention meeting their half siblings—might do.

The second was to my own therapist, which was going to put a strain on our monthly budget but definitely wasn’t optional, given the circumstances.

Then I called Jonah. “How did it go?” he asked the instant he answered the phone. “Did you win?”

I resisted the urge to sigh. Did you win? was such a quintessentially Fisher thing to ask.

I gave him a brief outline of the child support and visitation agreement. “While I’d much rather pretend Matt and his other family don’t exist, I suppose that isn̵