She put her thumb up then grunted and turned the movement into a face palm. “Perfect. When you’re ready.”
“I need one thing.”
She looked up from the panel. “Yes.”
“Tell me one thing about you. One thing and I’ll give you the next four hours without interruption.”
One thing, what could one thing matter? She sighed. “I lived in London.”
“One thing I don’t already know.”
“You should be specific about the rules.”
“Rules are made for—”
“You don’t want people to know you’re blind.” Well hey there, that was professional. She put her head down on the edge of the panel, a slider poked her eyebrow.
“Not true, but I’m not my choroideremia either.”
She sat upright and looked at him. Mortification was a sensation a lot like nausea and revelation tasted like blood. Hamish was the fight, the injury that thwarted his ambition, and Georgia was his martyr.
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be, but you have to tell me two things now.”
Two things that would tell him nothing; a small price for her insensitivity. “I’m an only child and my parents are dead.”
He was quiet, but his expression changed, he dropped his chin and frowned, and she knew she’d told him the wrong things. He’d expected eye colour or favourite food. He’d have taken a joke answer. She should’ve said she liked cake decorating and collected souvenir spoons. She’d lost the knack for banter a long time ago, she no longer had the words to fill in the fun bits, couldn’t join the dots between one amusing sentence and another to form a friendship.
“I’m ready when you are, Damon.”
He voiced the content, stopping often to correct his phrasing, perfect a paragraph. Working only from his memory and audio prompts from his software. She’d never seen that done before. He sipped on lemon water Lauren provided, and there was very little for Georgia to do but watch him and the voice levels and stew in the rancid juices of her own social ineptitude.
At the end of the session, Damon rubbed his neck, packed up his gear and came through the door to the control room. “Okay?”
“All good.” She stood and got the next door for him. “Do you need us to
call you a taxi?”
“No. I’m fine. See you tomorrow.”
She watched him go down the corridor, open the last door and exit into reception. As he turned, he had a ready smile for Lauren. A nicer person would’ve gone with him, held the door, insisted on helping him to a taxi. But Damon didn’t define himself as his disease and she wasn’t going to be a nice person for him. She’d engineer his sound quality, but she’d master her own self-preservation.
7: Sorting Colours
“When you’re ready, Damon.”
He was rip-snorting ready to crack the problem of Georgia. She was the single most interesting thing in his life right now. He stood at the lectern and looked out towards the control room. “I’m thinking about getting a dog.” He hadn’t been until this moment, but it must’ve been wagging the tail of his subconscious. At least it was a decent conversation opener, who didn’t like dogs?
No response.
He scratched his head. She was so walled off and he couldn’t work out whether he’d offended beyond repair with that kiss to her hand, or she simply didn’t like him. Had that happened before? Probably, inevitably, but it wasn’t something he was aware of. Most people were better fakers than Georgia. And given who he was, the way he was, the tendency to overplay polite was high. Everyone was frightened of giving offence and surprised he had a sense of humour.
But not Georgia. Not that she was offensive exactly, she didn’t tiptoe around him, but she was terminally terrible at polite social discourse. She was easier with Trent and the other Avocado people he’d met, but she was still oddly self-contained. Either Lauren was right, and Georgia was a gold class snob, in which case his developing obsession with her was a hopeless thing and he’d tire of it, or there was a thread he could pull to unwind her. He wanted to find that end, untwist it from its spool and unwrap Georgia so he could see the real her.
Or go blind trying.
“Georgia, have you ever owned a dog?”