Page 23 of Read My Lips

Setting a knife and fork down in their appropriate places, Simon did an odd little flex of his elbows like he was testing out the reach of his jacket.

“BSL’s your first language?” he signed. “Were your parents..?” His hand ghosted towards the side of his head, reaching for the sign for Deaf, but not quite following through. Maybe his sleeve was too tight. “You’re a... what’s it called? CODA?”

“Sorry,” I signed, wrinkling my nose as I made a show of looking down at myself, and then back up at him. “Thought I’d turned into an eight-year-old for a minute there.”

Child of Deaf Adult wasn’t exactly my go-to identification these days. What with being in the tail end of my twenties and everything.

Simon almost-laughed. “You know what I mean.”

With record efficiency, Georgia appeared, balancing a pair of plates. My bacon sandwich, and a wholegrain, poached-egg, avocado-fest about to slide right off and dump itself onto the floor if she didn’t correct the vertical incline stat.

The plates clattered down. She did not attempt conversation.

“Just Mam, actually.” Clarification felt important. So did application of ketchup. “Don’t know who my dad is.”

Relevance? None. Awkward over-share percentage? Pretty fucking high. The oversized plastic tomato on the table wheezed air all over my bacon, covering the plate in the anaemic spittle of non-brand red sauce.

“Oh.” If you googled ‘taken aback’, Simon’s face would be on page one. “I’m sorry.” The absent-minded tight little circle he signed over his heart lingered. Probably the only reason he wasn’t terribly sorry was because he couldn’t make the sign that big with his jacket on.

“Why?” I signed one-handed, still faffing about with the ketchup. “She was awesome.” Clearly his family was so far on the fully functional scale unintended single-parenting counted as a tragedy. I set the useless ketchup bottle down. “Didn’t need a deadbeat taking up space around the house, did we?”

Simon didn’t pick his cutlery up. “I thought you didn’t know him. He could be Prime Minister.”

“Pretty sure that’d be worse than a deadbeat.”

I grabbed the sauce bottle again and gave it a solid shake, a hard squeeze. And it splurged red over my entire plate.

Fantastic.

“Anyway,”I signed, “he didn’t think Mam was worth hanging about for. Everything I need to know about him, isn’t it?”

Ketchup oozed down the sides of my sandwich as I pressed the top slice of bread back on, coating me in stickiness. Simon looked faintly appalled. I tried not to notice.

“I suppose it is.” He tilted his head, watching me ruin half a dozen tiny napkins from the holder trying to get my hands clean like he’d never seen anything more fascinating in his life. My contribution to global deforestation. Go me.

The tip of his knife snagged the egg on his plate and orange-gold bled out all over his toast. He chewed slowly. Not that I was watching his mouth. Or the way he swallowed.

Simon set down his probably-flat-white to sign. “Is she why you’re an interpreter now?”

That old question.

“In a way.” That old cop-out. “Got myself an undergraduate and a masters in it, thank you very much.” I polished my blunt nails on the front of my crumpled shirt. What was the use of all the student debt and over-qualification if I couldn’t distract people with it?

“Oh, really? And you still took over my meeting?”

I grimaced. “Sorry. I bet you’re thinking I forged my way onto the register with a knock-off evening class to get a job now, right?”

Simon clacked his teeth at me, shaking his head softly. “I know you’re fully qualified.”

Did he though? “You’ve never asked about it.”

“Why would I ask? You’re far more fluent than me.”

I ducked my head. How pathetic – getting giddy over a fact, as if he was paying me a personal compliment. “Not exactly a high bar.”

“Excuse me?” Oh, I’d excuse him anything with his eyes gleaming gold at me under the cafe lights, all full of laughter and put-on outrage. “Blame the NHS. They told my parents I wouldn’t need it. Didn’t learn until I was a teenager.”

“Mainstream school, right?” I tilted my head, sucking a breath over my teeth, hamming up my wince. “I can tell.”