Sunday Night, Canberra: The Client Who Only Wanted to Talk

It was one of those Canberra winter nights when the frost starts forming before you've even finished dinner. I'd booked him for two hours, a new client with good references and very careful emails. His messages had the precise, slightly formal punctuation of someone who writes reports for a living.

He arrived in a heavy coat and a scarf, apologised for the cold he'd brought in with him, and sat on the edge of the armchair like he was waiting to be called into an interview. I offered tea. He accepted with visible relief.

The first hour

He told me early on that he wasn't sure he wanted anything more than conversation, and asked whether that was all right. I said of course. It's his time; he's paid for my company, and company is exactly what I was offering. I watched his shoulders drop about three centimetres.

He talked about his job, carefully, without details. He talked about his divorce, less carefully. He talked about how he'd moved into a unit near the lake and still hadn't hung any pictures, two years later, because hanging pictures felt like admitting he'd stay. I asked him which pictures. He described a print of the coast near where he grew up, a painting his grandfather did, a photo of his children on a beach.

The second hour

At some point he stopped talking about his life and started asking about mine, in the way people do when they finally feel safe. I gave him what I could. I told him about my garden, my terrible attempts at sourdough, and the time I got snowed in at Thredbo with a group of strangers and ended up running a trivia night.

We laughed a lot. At one point he took off his scarf, and it felt like a small ceremony.

Afterwards

When the two hours were up he thanked me, paid without fuss, and said he'd probably hang the grandfather's painting this week. I told him to send me a photo of it on the wall if he felt like it. He said he might.

I've been doing this long enough to know that the physical side of my work is only ever part of it. What people pay for, more often than they realise, is attention: the full, warm, unhurried kind that the world rarely gives them.

Three days later an email arrived. No words, just a photograph of a painting of the sea, hung very slightly crooked. I think it's perfect.