Oh-So-Sensible Secretary

by Jessica Hart

  ‘He wouldn’t have sacked you. I wouldn’t have let him.’ There was an edge of irritation in Phin’s voice as he got up to join me at the window. ‘It was only a kiss, Summer, not embezzlement or industrial espionage. You should keep it in perspective. It wasn’t that big a deal.’

  ‘For you, perhaps,’ I said tautly. ‘You don’t care about this job. You don’t really want to be here. I know you’d rather be off travelling, challenging yourself…there are so many things you want to do. It’s different for me. My job is all I’ve got.’

  There was a long silence. We stood side by side, looking out of the window.

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well Lex interrupted us when he did,’ said Phin at last.

  ‘I’ll find you a replacement PA as soon as I can.’

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ he said, turning away, restless again. ‘I was thinking of taking off for a while. One of the crew on the Collocom ocean race has been hospitalised in Rio, and they’ve asked me if I could fill in on the next leg to Boston. I just heard today. I said I’d ring tonight and let them know.’

  Why was I even surprised? Had I really thought he would persuade me to change my mind? Phin would never be happy to stay in one place for long.

  ‘What about things here?’

  ‘There’s nothing urgent. The projects we’ve set up will keep ticking over, and if not maybe you could keep an eye on them. Otherwise I was just due to do PR stuff, and I might as well do that on a yacht. Gibson & Grieve is one of the race’s sponsors, so Lex can’t complain-especially not when he’s taken my PA away from me!’

  It would always have been like this, I realised. Me clinging to the safety of my routine, Phin always in search of distraction. It could never have worked. We were too different. Better to decide that now. Phin was right. It was just as well Lex had come in when he had.

  ‘So…what will we say about our relationship if anyone asks?’

  ‘You could tell everyone you got fed up with me never being around,’ he suggested. ‘That would ring true. Everyone knows I’m not big on commitment.’

  They did. So why had I let myself forget?

  ‘Or you could say that I wasn’t exciting enough for you,’ I offered. ‘Everyone would believe that.’

  ‘Not if they’d seen you take down your hair this morning,’ said Phin with a painful smile.

  There seemed nothing more to say. We stood shoulder to shoulder at the window, not looking at each other, both facing the fact that it was all for the best. I wondered if Phin was feeling as bleak as I was.

  ‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘it looks as if it’s all change for both of us.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phin. He turned to look at me, and for once there was no laughter in the blue eyes. ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done, Summer. I hope Lex knows how lucky he is.’

  ‘Thank you for all the doughnuts,’ I said unevenly.

  ‘They won’t be the same without you.’

  I wanted to tell him that I would think of him every time I had coffee. I wanted to tell him that I would miss him. I wanted to thank him for taking me to Africa, for making me feel, for refusing to let me give up on my dreams. But when I opened my mouth my throat was too tight to speak, and I knew that even if I could I would cry.

  ‘I must go,’ was all I muttered, backing away. ‘I’ll see you before you go, I expect.’

  I don’t know whether it made it easier or not, but I didn’t see him. He sent me an e-mail saying that he had got a flight the next day and that he’d be out of contact for a while.

  ‘I know you’re more than capable of making any decisions in my absence,’ he finished. ‘Enjoy your promotion-you deserve it.’

  I tried to enjoy it. Honestly I did. I told myself endlessly that it was all for the best. I had the job I’d always wanted and a salary to match. I would be able to save in a way I never had before. If I was careful, I could think about putting down a deposit on a studio at the end of the year. What more did I want?

  Whenever I asked myself that, Phin’s image would appear in my mind. I could picture him in such detail it hurt. That lazy, lopsided grin. The blue, blue eyes. The warmth and humour and wonderful solidity of him. The longing to see him would clutch at my throat, making it hard to breathe, and I wanted to run down the stairs, back to his office, to throw myself onto his lap and spin and spin and spin on his chair as we kissed.

  But his chair was empty. Phin wasn’t there. He was out on the ocean, in the ozone, the wind in his hair and his eyes full of sunlight. He was where he wanted to be.

  And I was where I wanted to be, I reminded myself, coming full circle again. I threw myself into work, and mostly people left me alone. There hadn’t been any need for an announcement. With Phin gone, and me concentrating fiercely at work, I think most people assumed that we’d split up. They eyed me sympathetically and murmured that they were very sorry. I was just glad not to have to talk about it.

  It was very different working for Lex. There were no coffee breaks, no doughnuts. Lex never sat on my desk or held my stapler like a microphone or pretended to make it bite me. It would never occur to Lex to call me anything but my name, and he wasn’t interested in my life outside the office.

  Not that I had much of one. Anne worried about me. ‘You went to all that trouble to get Jonathan back,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t understand why you won’t go out with him now. It’s not like he isn’t trying. He’s always asking you out, and this time he sounds serious. Look at all those hints he’s dropped about getting married.’

  ‘I don’t want to marry Jonathan,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘Because you’re in love with Phin?’

  I didn’t even try to deny it, but there was no point in thinking about Phin. I had to be realistic.

  ‘I do like Jonathan-I actually like him more now than I did when I was in love with him-but if I married him it would just be because he’s got a steady job and is ready to settle down. That’s not a good enough reason. I know that now. I’ve got my own steady job,’ I told Anne. ‘I don’t want a relationship for the sake of it. I’ve realised that I don’t need to rely on anybody else to make me feel safe. If security is what I want, I have to make it for myself. I’m earning a decent salary now, and I can think about putting down a deposit soon. I’m going to buy my own place, and then I’ll be safe.’

  Anne made a face. ‘I know security’s important to you, Summer, but don’t you want more than that?’

  I pushed Phin’s image firmly away. ‘Feeling safe will be enough,’ I said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  OF COURSE, it wasn’t that easy. It was all very well to resolve to make my own security and put Phin out of my mind, but how could I do that when he was stuck out in the wild Atlantic? I couldn’t think about buying flats until I knew he was safe.

  I followed the Collocom race on the internet. I knew six boats had set off from Rio, but they had run into appalling weather. One boat had lost its mast, a crew member on another had been swept overboard in gigantic waves, and I was in such a panic that I actually interrupted Lex in the middle of a board meeting to ask if he knew what boat Phin was on.

  ‘It’s not the one you think it is,’ said Lex, sounding almost bored. ‘Phin’s on Zephyr II. They’ve gone to rescue the boat that’s lost its mast.’

  So he would still be out there in those waves. Offering a belated apology to the board members, who were staring at my desperate interruption, I went back to find out everything I could about the seaworthiness of Zephyr II. My heart was in my mouth for four more days, until I heard that the weather had eased and the battered boats were all limping towards land.

  As if I didn’t have enough to worry about with Phin, my mother announced that she wanted to throw up the precarious existence she had eked out with her shop in Taunton to-and I quote-‘become a pilgrim along the sacred routes of our ancestors’.

  How she would support herself while criss-crossing the country on ley lines wasn’t clear. �
�It’s all part of the healing process,’ she told me, brushing aside my questions about national insurance and rent and remaindered stock. ‘This is important work, darling. The galactic core is in crisis. We must channel our light to restore its equilibrium.’

  It seemed to me that it wasn’t just the galactic core that was in crisis. Her financial affairs were in no better state, and sadly no amount of channelling was going to sort them out.

  ‘Can you believe it?’ my mother huffed incredulously when I tried to pin her down about what was happening with the shop. ‘They’ve cut the electricity off!’

  That’s my mother for you. No problem at all in believing that she has a direct connection to the galactic core-whatever that is-but entirely baffled at the notion that a utility company might stop providing electricity if they’re not paid on time.

  Is it any wonder I couldn’t concentrate on buying a flat?

  And, as it turned out, it was just as well.

  It became clear that I would have to go down to Somerset and sort things out for Mum. I had encouraged her to rent the shop a couple of years ago. It had seemed like something that would fix her in one place. I should have known that the enthusiasm would pass like all the others.

  Things were so busy at work that there was no way I could take time off for the first few weeks, but as soon as I heard that Phin’s boat had made it safely to port at the end of that leg of the race I nerved myself to ask Lex if I could have a couple of days the following week.

  ‘Are you thinking of a holiday?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ I told him about my mother’s shop. ‘I’ll probably need to talk to the bank and her landlord, otherwise I’d just try and do it all in a weekend,’ I finished.

  Lex looked at me thoughtfully. ‘It’s unfortunate for you that you’re so good at sorting things out. Take whatever time you need,’ he said, much to my surprise. I knew he hated it when his PA wasn’t there, and he was only just adjusting to having me instead of Monique. ‘Lotty will just have to steel herself to deal with me on her own.’

  He turned back to his computer. ‘I believe all the Collocom boats have made it to Boston,’ he said. ‘I imagine Phin will be on his way home soon.’

  Phin. I felt the memory of his smile tingle through me. ‘We’re not…it was just…’ I stammered, unsure how much Phin had told his brother about the agreement we had made.

  Lex held up a hand, obviously to forestall any emotional confession. ‘You don’t need to explain,’ he said. ‘I’d rather not know. Have you heard Jonathan Pugh is leaving us? Parker & Parker PR have poached him. It’s a good move for him,’ Lex added grudgingly.

  ‘I’ll still be in London,’ Jonathan said, when I congratulated him. ‘This doesn’t have to be goodbye.’

  He insisted on taking me out for a drink to celebrate his new job, and, once fortified by a glass of champagne, he took my hand and asked me to marry him.

  ‘We could be so good together, Summer,’ he said.

  I looked at him. He was clever, attractive, successful. I had adored him once, and now…now all I could think was that he was a nice man. I remembered how much I’d loved being with him, how I’d loved feeling safe, but his touch had never thrilled me. I had never felt the dark churn of desire when I was with him. I don’t think Jonathan had ever suspected I could feel desire at all until Phin had made him wonder.

  I think it was then that I stopped trying to tell myself that I wasn’t in love with Phin. I was, whether I wanted to be or not. I said no to Jonathan as gently as I could, and took the train to Taunton feeling as if I had let go of something I had been holding tight for too long.

  I felt a strange mixture of lightness and loss-the relief of leaving something old and unwanted behind combined with the scariness of setting off on a new road all on my own again.

  My mother was as vague and as charming as ever. She had got a lift into Taunton from the field where she and several others had pitched tepees in order to live closer to nature, and we had lunch together in an organic wholefoods café where tofu and carrots featured largely on the menu. I tried to get her to grasp the realities of giving up the shop, but it was hopeless.

  ‘The material plane has so little meaning for me now,’ she explained.

  I sighed and gave up. I had been the one who had dealt with all the financial arrangements when she started the shop, and it looked as if I would be the one who would have to close it down.

  Still, I was unprepared for quite what a muddle her affairs were in, and I had a depressing meeting with the bank manager and an even worse one with the owner of the shop, who was practically foaming at the mouth with frustration as he recalled his attempts to get my mother to pay her rent, let alone maintain the property.

  ‘I want her out of there!’ he shouted. ‘And all that rubbish she’s got in there, too! You clear it out and count yourself lucky I’m not taking her to court.’

  Mum wafted back to her tepee, and I spent that night in a dreary B &B. I sat on the narrow bed and looked at the rain trickling down the window. I felt so lonely I could hardly breathe.

  I had been so careful all my life. I had been sensible. I had been good. I had always said no instead of yes, and where had it got me? All alone and feeling sorry for myself, in a single room in a cheap B &B, with nothing to look forward to but another day spent clearing up more of my mother’s mess.

  I thought about ringing Anne, but she was out with Mark, and anyway she was so happy planning her wedding that I didn’t want to be a misery. Besides, the only person I really wanted to talk to was Phin.

  I missed him. I missed that slow, crooked smile, the warmth in the blue eyes. I missed the energy and humour that he brought with him into a room. I even missed him calling me cream puff, which just goes to show how low I was feeling.

  I missed the way he made me feel alive.

  Again and again I relived that last kiss. Why had I waited so long to kiss him like that? Why had I hung on so desperately to the thought of a commitment he could never give?

  It seemed to me, sitting on that candlewick bedspread-a particularly unpleasant shade of pink, just to make matters worse-that I had been offered a chance at happiness and I had turned it down. I’d been afraid of being hurt, afraid of the pain of having to say goodbye, but I was hurting now, and I didn’t even have the comfort of memories, of knowing that I’d made the most of the time I had with Phin.

  If he ever came back to Gibson & Grieve, I resolved, I was going to go into his office, and this time I would lock the door. I would shake my hair loose and slide onto his lap again, and this time I wouldn’t stop at a kiss. I wouldn’t ask for love or for ever. I would live in the moment. I’d do whatever Phin wanted as long as I could touch him again, as long as he would hold me again.

  I wrinkled my nose at the musty smell that met me as I opened the shop door the next morning. I had to push against the pile of junk mail and free newspapers that had accumulated since my mother had last been in.

  Depressed, I picked it all up and carried it over to the counter. Straight away I could see that someone had broken into the cash register. The only consolation was that they wouldn’t have found much money. The stock, unsurprisingly, was untouched. I didn’t suppose there was much of a black market in dusty dreamcatchers or vegan cookbooks.

  A manual on how to make contact with your personal guardian angel was propped on display next to a pile of weird and wonderful teas. I could have done with a guardian angel myself right then, I thought, riffling through the pages with my fingers as I looked around the shop and wondered where to begin.

  Coffee, I decided, dropping the book back onto the counter. There was a kettle out at the back, where the back door had been broken down. I supposed I would have to do something about that, too.

  The kettle didn’t work. No electricity, of course. Sighing, I went back into the shop-and stopped dead as the whole world tilted and a fierce joy rushed through me with such force that I reeled.

  Phin was s
tanding at the counter, with a takeaway coffee in each hand and a bag under his arm.

  ‘Oh, good,’ he said. ‘I’ve found the right place at last.’

  ‘Phin…’ I stammered. He looked so wonderful, lighting up the shop just by standing there. He was very brown, and his eyes looked bluer than ever. I was so glad to see him I almost cried.

  ‘Hello, cream puff,’ he said, carefully putting the coffees down.

  I still couldn’t take in the fact that he was actually there. I had wanted to see him so much I was afraid I might be imagining him. ‘Phin, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Lex told me you were down here trying to sort out your mother’s finances,’ he said conversationally. ‘I thought you could do with a hand.’

  ‘But how on earth did you find me?’

  ‘There aren’t that many New Age shops in Taunton, but I’ve been round them all. I only had one more to try after this one.’

  My throat was so tight I couldn’t speak.

  ‘It’s nearly eleven o’clock,’ said Phin, lifting the paper bag. ‘I knew you’d be craving some sugar.’

  ‘You brought doughnuts?’

  ‘I thought that was what you’d need.’

  No one had ever thought about what I needed before. That was what I had wanted most of all. To my horror, my eyes filled with tears. I blinked them fiercely away.

  ‘I always need a doughnut,’ I said unevenly.

  ‘Then let’s have these, and we can talk about what needs to be done.’

  We boosted ourselves onto the counter. I’ll never forget the taste of that doughnut: the squirt of jam as I bit into it, the contrast of the squidgy dough and the gritty sugar. And, most of all, the incredible, glorious fact that Phin was there, right beside me, sipping lukewarm coffee and brushing sugar from his fingers.

  Only last night I’d decided that if I ever saw him again I would seduce him into a wild affair, but now that he was here I felt ridiculously shy, and my heart was banging so frantically in my throat I could barely get any words out. Typical. I didn’t even know how to begin being wild.