“You are Lucy Mayweather,” she told me, and I nodded slowly. I’d been in the office for a month, but it was as though this was the first time Victoria had actually seen me.
“Your mother was Felix’s nanny.”
I nodded again. This conversation didn’t seem to need much input from me anyway.
“She is a kind lady.”
I blinked in surprise and then felt my face soften. “Yes, she is.”
“Do you have a condition?” Was what Victoria blurted out next.
“Er…” I blinked at her. “Well, I?—”
“Vicky,” Lottie said, flashing me a smile and then looking up at her boss. “Remember we talked about being blunt and being rude?” Victoria nodded, her attention still on me. “Well, this is one of those times where you’ve edged into rude. You can’t really ask people if they have aconditionlike that.”
Victoria frowned. “But if she has epilepsy, then her inattention at her desk could be explained by an absence seizure.”
“I don’t have epilepsy,” I rushed in to say.
“Then why were you staring into space, not aware of your environment?”
“Vicky, give it a rest,” Lottie muttered.
“It’s okay,” I said, my face heating. “Sorry, I was daydreaming.”
“Daydreaming?” Victoria said in a confused voice as if she was only just hearing about this phenomenon for the first time and found the entire concept too bizarre to be real. “Well, that’s a shame. Epilepsy absence seizures have potential treatments. I don’t think the same can be said for daydreaming.”
I pressed my lips together to hold back a laugh. Meanwhile, Lottie was rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry,” I reassured Victoria. “I don’t need treatment.” In fact, daydreaming was pretty much essential to my real career, but I wasn’t going to tell these women that. I shivered again, still feeling the cold and Victoria’s sharp eyes took that in as well.
“You’re cold,” she stated.
I bit my lip and slowly nodded.
“It’s eighteen point five degrees in here,” she went on to tell me, and I blinked. Point five… was this woman for real? “That isnota low ambient temperature.”
I looked left and right for some sort of out from this weird conservation, but the office space around me was deserted. Where was Slimy Will when I needed him?
“Why are you cold?” Victoria pushed.
I shrugged. “I have cold intolerance. It’s been a problem since I was small. Everyone else will be in t-shirts and I’ll have to wear two jumpers. I think my own personal thermostat is a bit screwy.”
“Let me see your hands,” she commanded.
“Honestly, Vicky,” Lottie said in a hushed voice. “Leave the poor girl alone. We’re going to be late for the meeting.”
“They’ll start without us. William has clearly gone ahead. He should be capable of introducing the scheme.” Lottie sighed and mouthed, “I’m sorry,” as Victoria turned back to me. “Now, show me your hands.”
I lifted my hands up onto the desk. The tips of three of my fingers had gone white.
“You have Raynaud’s,” she said; again, not a question, but I nodded anyway. The Raynaud’s had developed in my mid-twenties in addition to the cold intolerance. “Fascinating.” Wow, calling someone’s painful medical condition fascinating was cold.
“Vicky, come on now,” Lottie said in a gentle voice, and I wondered why she had to be gentle with such a seemingly spiky woman. “We do need to get to that meeting. Will might be capable sometimes, but he’s also perfectly capable of pissing everyone off too.” Then Lottie reached over and put her hand over Victoria’s wrist. This gesture seemed to be some sort of trigger to pull Victoria away from her focus on me.
“True,” Victoria acknowledged. “Goodbye,” she said to me, making a sharp turn on her heel and walking briskly down the corridor towards the conference room.
“Sorry,” Lottie said to me through a wide smile. “She can be a bit much. I better catch her up before she goes in there. Who knows what she’ll say otherwise? See you later.” And off she went at a jog after her boss.
I stared after her, thinking that Lottie was probably more my type of person, but I was simply too shy to approach her, and besides, she was always with Victoria. I tried to imagine myself finding her later and asking if she wanted to go out for a drink or something, but just couldn’t see it happening. I jumped as the phone next to me rang. Like an idiot, it was only after five rings that I thought to pick it up. Seriously, I was the very worst assistant in the history of the world.
