Page 6 of Read My Lips

“You, mostly.”

Oh, he’d never mean that the way I wanted him to. Because I was a masochist, I zoned in on his lips as he wet them – again. Rats in cages learned faster than me.

Simon grimaced, scanning my face like he was weighing up how much to let me in on. “There’s… a situation. All the major media outlets were sent this”—he handed over his phone, with a thumbnail of a video filling up the screen—“at midnight.”

And then, with a pointed glance to the driver, Simon pulled a world first and voluntarily switched to signing. “It’ll be all over Social by the morning, if it’s not already.”

RICHARD WHITTAKER SHOCK GAY SEX TAPE!

I groaned. For so, so many reasons.

“Isn’t he getting married to the posh bird he knocked up?” I signed back. Was that supposed to be the Shock bit? Surely we were past the point where Gay was.

Simon’s eyebrow lifted. “You mean,” he said, “the Cambridge-educated peer of the realm, and businesswoman of the year he’s starting a family with?” He must not have had the vocab to sign all that.

“Yeah.” I nodded at the same time as signing. “Her.” He knew exactly who I meant.

Phoebe Huntley-Templeton was the fiancée of the over-privileged ex-rugby-player turned model whose muscled flank currently filled half of Simon’s phone screen. Apparently. His face must have popped up in it somewhere, but from the wall-to-wall undulating muscle, I couldn’t tell him from Adam. Or James. Or Luke.

“So, what,” I signed, piecing it together. “This is a deepfake?”

He knew that sign. It came up a lot in reputational crisis management.

Simon had been media coaching Whittaker for the past eighteen months, to no notable effect as far as I could tell from the endless meetings I’d interpreted. Richard had a consistent history of brand-damaging behaviour, but this was way, way left of his usual position.

“Why would you say that?” Simon’s frown coloured the tone of his signs with confusion.

“His wife’s pregnant.” My hands stretched space in the air in front of my belly for her expanding stomach.

Simon laughed. Very much at me. “Fiancée.” Simon signed it delicately – perching the invisible diamond on the invisible ring like he didn’t quite know what he was supposed to do with it. Then he shook his head on an eyeroll. “There’s this word… I believe it’s b-i-s-e-x-u-a-l?” Only he could maintain sarcasm through finger spelling.

Automatically, I echoed the full sign back at him with a double fingered waggle. “Bisexual. But... Richard Whittaker. He’s all…”

Chiselled loomed in my back brain. It skittered right off and hid when Simon’s eyebrow arched up with so much precision it might as well have been a question mark.

“Manly?” I coughed, freezing midway through shaping out the point of the beard Richard did not have in real life.

Effete and full of unicorn sparkles I was not, and yet could be described as very much into participating in Shock Gay Sex, so why was I looking at Richard and thinking he never would be? Hello double standards, my old friend.

“Manly?” Simon’s eyebrow quivered, his fingers drawing to the same point below his chin.

“Shut up. I didn’t mean that, did I?”

The driver braked hard for a red light, summoning a wave of nausea. Flashbacks to childhood car sickness flickered to life. I swallowed hard, determined to keep them down along with my guts. “So, he’s gay now?” The suggestive joystick of a sign felt odd to use in front of Simon when normally it was all business between us.

“None of your business.” He didn’t need a translation for that sign. “Point is, everyone’s scrambling to fact-check, hustling for exclusives before it hits the morning news.”

When it came to PR, after three years working with Simon, I knew what landed when, mattered. Dots joined whether you wanted them to or not. It was better to be the person pointing towards the relevant ones.

“So you want me in the crisis meeting,” I signed, “in case someone tries to steer it in the wrong direction right under your nose?”

“Glad you haven’t totally pickled your brain tonight.” The glow of his smile edged into the silent mouth-shapes he was making as his hands brushed past his face. Far too contagious. As always.

“Fuck off. It’s the weekend.” Monday, I’d revisit my professionalism. Right after I’d sorted out my invoices. And rediscovered my self-esteem. “I’m doing you a favour here, remember? This is my time off.”

Simon curled his lips in on themselves like he was guarding his teeth.

“I do know that.” He leaned in, holding my eye and squeezed my knee for the longest second in the history of the world. “You’re my very favourite human, Ben.”