style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I’m a bit of a perfectionist.’
‘So I gathered.’ I could tell he was trying not to laugh, and I was beginning to regret being so honest.
‘You did ask,’ I pointed out defensively.
‘I did. Maybe I should have asked you what you do like.’
‘I like my job.’
‘Being a secretary?’
I nodded. ‘Organisations like Gibson & Grieve don’t work unless executives have proper administrative back-up. I like organising things, checking details, pulling everything together. I like making sure everything is in its right place. That’s why I like filing. I find it satisfying.’
Phin didn’t say anything. He just looked at me across the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, putting up my chin. ‘I do. Shoot me.’
He grinned at that. ‘So…an unexpectedly kind, nitpicking perfectionist with an irrational prejudice against poor punctuation and a bizarre attachment to filing. I think we’re getting somewhere. What else do I need to know about you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? There must be more than that.’
I drank my coffee, unaccountably flustered. I was more thrown than I wanted to admit by the blueness of his eyes, by that lazy smile and the sheer vitality of his presence. There was a whole table between us, but I was finding it hard to breathe.
‘I really don’t know what you want me to tell you,’ I said. ‘I’m twenty-six, I share a flat in south London with a friend, and my life is the exact opposite of yours.’
His eyes gleamed at that, and he leant forward. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you come from a wealthy family whose stores are a household name,’ I pointed out. ‘You make television programmes doing the kind of things the rest of us would never dare to do, and when you’re not skiing down a glacier or hacking through a jungle you’re at all the A-list parties—usually with a beautiful girl on your arm. The closest I get to an A-list party is reading about one in Glitz, and I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than set foot in a rainforest. We don’t have a single thing in common.’
‘You can’t say that,’ Phin objected. ‘You don’t really know anything about me.’
‘I feel as if I do,’ I told him. ‘My flatmate, Anne, is your biggest fan, and after listening to her talk about you for the past two years I could take a quiz on you myself.’ I pushed my empty cup aside. ‘Go on—ask me. Anything,’ I offered largely, and even gave him an example. ‘What’s your latest girlfriend called?’
A smile was tugging at the corner of Phin’s mouth. ‘You tell me,’ he said.
‘Jewel,’ I said triumphantly. ‘Jewel Stevens. She’s an actress, and when you went to some awards ceremony last week she wore a red dress that had Anne weeping with envy.’
‘But not you?’
‘I think it would have looked classier in black,’ I said, and Phin laughed.
‘I’m impressed. Clearly I don’t need to tell you anything about myself, as you know it all already. Although I think I should point out that Jewel isn’t, in fact, my girlfriend. We’ve been out a couple of times, but that’s all. There’s no question of a real relationship, whatever the papers say.’
‘I’ll tell Anne. She’ll be delighted,’ I said. ‘She’s got a very active fantasy life in which you figure largely, in spite of the fact that she’s very happy with her fiancé, Mark.’
‘And what do you fantasise about, Summer?’ asked Phin, his eyes on my face.
Ah, my fantasies. They were always the same. Jonathan realising that he had made a terrible mistake. Jonathan telling me he loved me. Jonathan asking me to marry him. We’d buy a house together. London prices being what they were, we might have to go out to the suburbs, and even pooling our resources we’d be lucky to get a semi-detached house, but that would be fine by me. I didn’t need anywhere grand. I just wanted Jonathan, and somewhere I could stay.
I realise a suburban semi-detached isn’t the stuff of most wild fantasies, but it was a dream that had kept me going ever since Jonathan had told me before Christmas that he ‘needed some space’. He thought it was better that we didn’t see each other outside the office any more. He knew how sensible I was, and was sure I would understand.
I sighed. What could I do but agree that, yes, I understood? But I lived for the brief glimpses I had of him now, and the hope that he might change his mind.
Phin was watching me expectantly, his brows raised, and I had an uneasy sense that those blue eyes could see a lot more than they ought to be able to. He was still waiting for me to answer his question.
Jonathan had been insistent that we keep our relationship a secret at the office, so I hadn’t told anyone. I certainly wasn’t going to start with Phin Gibson.
‘I want a place of my own,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t have to be very big—in fact I’ll be lucky if I can afford a studio—but it has to be mine. It has to be somewhere I could live for ever.’ I glanced at him. ‘I suppose you think that’s very boring?’
‘It’s not what I was expecting, and it’s not a fantasy I understand, but it’s not boring,’ said Phin. ‘I don’t find much boring, to tell you the truth. People are endlessly interesting, don’t you think? Obviously not!’ he went straight on, seeing my sceptical expression. ‘Well, I find them interesting. Why is it so important for you to have a home of your own?’
‘Oh…I moved around a lot as a child. My mother has always been heavily into alternative lifestyles, and she’s prone to sudden intense enthusiasms. One year we’d be in a commune, the next we were living on a houseboat. When my father was alive we had a couple of freezing years in a tumbledown smallholding in Wales.’
It was odd to find myself telling Phin Gibson, of all people, about my childhood. I didn’t normally talk about it much—not that it had been particularly traumatic, but it was hard for most people I knew to understand what it was like growing up with a mother who was as charming and lovely and flaky as they come—and there was something about the way he was listening, his expression intent and his attention absolutely focused on me, that unlocked my usual reserve.
‘Wales was the closest we ever got to settling down,’ I told him. ‘The rest of the time we kept moving. Not because we had to, but because my mother was always looking for something more.
‘Basically,’ I said, ‘she’s got the attention span of a gnat. I lost count of the schools I attended, of the weird and wonderful places we lived for a few months before moving on.’
I turned the cup and saucer between my fingers. ‘I suppose it’s inevitable I grew up craving security the way others crave excitement. My mother can’t understand it, though. She’s living in a tepee in Somerset at the moment, and for her the thought of buying a flat and settling down is incomprehensible. I’m a big disappointment to her,’ I finished wryly.
‘There
