Dolly blushed as he asked it, and he cursed himself a little for teasing her so easily. Dolly used to have a bit of a crush on him back in the day: she was long over it by then, he didn't doubt, but she was still the kind of floaty, bespectacled, pre-Raphaelite kind of a girl who was easily embarrassed, who was as often attracted to biological sciences as to art and poetry, and who was a perfect victim for his aunt's benevolent bullying. (Millie didn't exploit or overwork her peons. Her type of tyranny was more of the sort that saw herself as a very necessary mentor to the aimless and talented. Once let her get her hooks into you, if she considered you promising, and what you'd intended to be a pleasant saunter and cruise through life, might well turn into a grim pursuit of significant scientific discovery, and a hellbent career through every professional awards ceremony going, as you grabbed every gong on the way to a Nobel prize or Fields medal. And possibly expired, from the relentless rate of researches along the way.
And he knew that Millie had always considered Dolly more than promising. Poor girl.
"I won't be here for much longer," Dolly almost whispered, with a mousy tentative smile in Millie's direction, where she was tutting benevolently, driving her stick into the parquet of the lab floor. "But I simply couldn't tear myself away from this last project of your aunt's."
"Oh, yes," Ben said, turning to Millie, and giving her a bit of a sharp look, probably. "There's always one last project, isn't there?" Millie was also possessive about her protegees. As well as of her nephews. But he had other concerns right then, than poor sweet Dolly's liberty and autonomy over her own life and choices. He looked back at the bizarre cuboid of toughened glass – like a transparent egg with a few more corners, blown up to a thousand times the size – and he figured he knew what Millie, and Dolly's, latest fascinating project was.
YOU ARE READING
Erase You
RomanceMichael is a musician, Cambridge-educated but living in London. He's successful, attractive and has plenty to keep him busy and happy. So why can he still not get over his old college boyfriend, Ben? Fortunately his old Great-Aunt Millie, a notor...
