Page 29 of People Skills

‘I think this should be an all-in household situation. Solidarity and all that.’

‘My brain is fine. It’s very open and unblocked.’

He grunts and raises his eyebrows. ‘What is your daily screen time in hours?’

‘That’s private.’ Very private. I would rather he looked at my medical records than my screen-time hours.

‘Interesting,’ he says.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I will be screen-free after six, but I need my phone on so I can hear if Hillary needs me.’

‘What could she possibly need from you after six?’ he asks.

‘All kinds of things.’

‘Give me an example.’

‘She might need me to respond to some emails.’

‘That sounds like something you could do in office hours.’

‘Urgent emails. And other things,’ I say, keeping it deliberately vague. It feels like a betrayal of Hillary’s confidence to reveal what she might message me about. She doesn’t reach out often outside of hours, really. Well, not every night. The rule is, she’ll call me for emergencies, text me for urgent things, and email for non-urgent things that can wait until the next day. We agreed on this early on, and at first it worked well, and then what constituted ‘urgent’ and ‘emergency’ became more and more loosely defined. Now the most common reason for her to contact me is not to request I do anything but to answer a question like What was the name of that woman at the printer? Or What was the shampoo my hairdresser said I should try? Or Who is that comedian I think is funny? These all fall under the heading ‘urgent’ now. I have become an extension of her brain, an overflow area to keep all the mundane information she doesn’t have space for.

I can feel Xavier’s judgmental eyes on me. He doesn’t understand. Of course he doesn’t, he’s probably never truly worked for someone in his life.

‘Maybe you need a detox from my mother,’ he says.

‘Your mother is my job,’ I say. ‘And I love my job.’ I am firm on this. I will not be drawn into bitching about Hillary or complaining about work to him.

He looks like he doesn’t believe me.

‘Did you love your job at Jones & Peterson?’ he asks.

‘I did,’ I say, averting my eyes, because I don’t want to answer any more questions about it.

‘What books did you work on?’ he asks, clearly not getting the hint.

‘Lots of books,’ I say, vaguely. It hurts, still, to think about it all.

‘Did you work on Rachel York’s Emotional Damage? I saw two copies of it on your shelf. I love that novel.’

‘I was Rachel’s editor, yes,’ I say. Emotional Damage is one of my favourite books I worked on. It’s a novel about a woman who gets divorced and goes on a journey of undiscovery, making as many mistakes as possible. It’s sad and weird and funny, and editing it was one of the highlights of my career. Rachel sent me such a heartfelt email when she found out I was leaving that I forwarded it to my personal email, so I could reread it and reassure myself I am not bad at my job. I am a good editor, here’s the proof. But I didn’t reread it, I just let it get lost in the swirling abyss of my gmail inbox while I languished in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house.

‘I think we reached out to your agent to ask if you’d endorse it, but you said no,’ I add.

‘Well, I was an idiot,’ he says. ‘And it was probably during the period where I was ignoring my agent’s emails.’ I am worried he’s going to keep asking questions about my time as an editor, but thankfully he doesn’t.

‘Do you play chess?’ he asks instead. ‘I saw the board in my room.’

‘Oh sorry, I forgot that was in there. I play a little. I was pretty into chess in high school.’ And I started playing again online during the period where I was living with my parents, unemployed, but it turns out obsessively playing chess in a dark room at 3 am with no future prospects is not the same as being the smart girl in chess club at high school.

‘Really?’ he says, looking interested.

‘Yes.’

‘We should play,’ he says, and my heart sinks a bit.

‘Oh, you’re one of those guys.’