September 6th, 1964
Gemma felt better today. Not by much, but enough to think there was some improvement. Or maybe she was growing used to the discomfort that it was fading into background noise. As she pulled her blanket tighter and sipped her chicory, she assessed her condition. The headache and fever both persisted, but she found they didn’t take up all her mental energy when she was alone with no one to focus her attention on.
Lucky thing too, as Gemma felt she’d made enough progress with Verloc to proceed into the compliment phase of Mary Ann’s interview tactics. She’d need more to talk about than his hair though, she thought as she bit into her apple. She’d probably played that angle out as far as it was going to go, but she was coming up empty on anything else to praise Verloc for. Gemma couldn’t see what Sally ever saw in him, and her theory that their relationship was only ever a facade on Sally’s part was starting to look a lot more likely. Still, if Sally had managed to stick with him for three years, there had to be something admirable about Verloc that Gemma could use to flatter him into submission.
Discussion