Page 28 of You Can't Hurt Me

“Little do you know, you’re already shedding clues the whole time, giving away more than we ever really realize.”

“Really? Surprise me, then,” he says, sitting back and folding his arms, his forehead furrowing.

I hesitate for a moment, wondering how accurate I should be. A consuming interest in someone is never a good look.

“Okay, for starters, appearance is important to you. During our first interview, I noticed how you checked your reflection in the glass door on the way down here. You had a haircut earlier that day too because you knew you were going to be photographed before I turned up—I could tell by the red skin on the back of your head where it had been shaved.”

His hand instinctively strokes the back of his neck. I plow on, secretly pleased.

“My feeling is you spend your life studying other people’s brains so you don’t have to turn the microscope on yourself. We’re all guilty of that in our jobs, I guess. It’s the way we like to stay in control.” I pause for effect. “The smoking was a surprise though, I didn’t expect that.”

He sits up a little straighter. “Okay, my turn. You’re an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. You like attention more than you care to admit, feel you can be overlooked in certain situations, so you reassure yourself that’s a benefit in your line of work. But I’m not sure you really believe it.” His eyes hook into mine and I struggle to muster a smile. “You’re pretty allergic to the therapist’s couch too, aren’t you? You preach about it, may even have tried it but, like me, you decided it wasn’t for you.”

If only you knew, I want to say. Instead, I brush strands of my bangs across my forehead, suddenly worrying that my complexion is giving me away.

“I don’t think you were too worried about experiencing pain. In fact, you displayed high tolerance levels in the lab. What you really don’t like is feeling exposed.”

“Touché,” I say. Here I am, proving his little theory right, making my excuses to take flight.

“I’m sorry if I touched a nerve.” He looks amused and entirely unapologetic.

“Sure. It’s funny, if anything,” I say, unconvincingly. “I’d happily talk about myself and bore you with my vanilla childhood, but we have work to do.”

Satisfaction twitches at the corners of his mouth. “Nothing about you, Anna, strikes me as vanilla.”

As another hour passes, I’m aware of the proximity of his foot close to mine, restlessly circling the air. I register the urge to kick him, hard, so he’ll finally engage, stop treating whatever I say as irrelevant white noise.

“You missed this chapter. No red ink. What did I do right?”

“Sorry.” I smile. “I just ran out of time.”

“Or maybe red ink?”

At least there’s humor in his eyes again, a self-deprecating lightness. Something that I imagine Eva would have found charming.

“Look, I know this is a trial for you. Emotion isn’t something neuroscientists exactly embrace. Maybe we can even mention that in the opening chapter, an admission to the reader that this is a different medium for you?”

He nods, unconvinced, his fingertips tap on the back of his phone.

“I mean, not wanting to talk about emotions is something the reader would respect you for admitting to. We could explore it from a neuroscience perspective, how we use different parts of our brain to compartmentalise?”

“Sounds like pop psychology to me. Wrong discipline.”

“But it’s not the point. What I’m trying to say is that your science shouldn’t be the most important thing about your book. You’re excluding the reader. Do that and they won’t read it. I don’t blame them, I wouldn’t either. You have to challenge yourself, aim higher.”

I toss the notes I’ve been holding in my hand onto his keyboard. Some of the pages miss and fall in his lap. He stares at them for a moment or two, says nothing. Sweat prickles my palms. Will this be a confrontation? For a moment I think he’ll explode but, he doesn’t. Instead, he looks at me properly for the first time today and his mood shifts.

“Anna, look, I’m sorry.”

I bend down to pick up some of the papers that have scattered to the floor. “I shouldn’t have thrown them. I—”

“Seriously, you’re right. I do rely on jargon, terminology, to hide behind. You’re not the first person to point it out, or probably the last. I spend my life absorbed by the brain, the very place where emotions reside. I, of all people, can see the irony in that.” He lets out a hollow laugh.

“If you can, then there’s potential to change. As long as you trust the questions I ask you, and you’re not defensive, we can do this.”

“Right. A fruitful collaboration.” He smiles, his features relax. Without warning he gathers up his chapters scattered on the desk, opens up the bottom drawer and throws them in, shutting it with a theatrical slam.

“Happy?”

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