Honeymoon with the Boss

decide what it is I really want to do with my life.’

Now that she had finally given up dreaming of Andrew.

Tom was frowning. ‘I didn’t know about this.’

‘That’s why I’m temping,’ said Imogen. ‘Didn’t you know? I’m only filling in until you appoint a properly qualified executive PA.’

He had known that, of course. He just hadn’t wanted to think about it. He had been too busy steering Collocom away from the rocks to take the time to choose the right person. Besides, Imogen might not be your classically cool and competent secretary, but she had been managing well enough. There had been no reason to think about replacing her.

‘When’s all this going to happen?’ asked Tom, conscious of an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. That wasn’t dismay, was it?

‘As soon as you appoint a permanent PA. I’ve been saving for nearly a year now, so I’m ready to book my ticket whenever you find the right person. I assumed you were putting it off until after the wedding, but if you interview in April and we have a handover in May, I could be packing my bags in June.’

‘June?’ No mistaking the dismay now! ‘That’s only three months away!’

Imogen nodded. ‘I know, but if it’s awkward when we get back, well, at least it won’t be for long.’

Tom looked out into the night and tried to imagine the office without Imogen. Oh, he’d known she would go one day, but he hadn’t thought it would be so soon. She was as much part of his life as Julia had been, if not more so. He saw Imogen almost every day, after all. It would be strange without her now.

But it wouldn’t be the first time he had had to get used to a new PA, Tom reminded himself, alarmed by the bleak drift of his thoughts. He would be fine.

‘That might work out quite well then,’ he said, conscious that he sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. ‘You’re right, it might be difficult to go back to our old boss/PA relationship after being here, but if you’re leaving soon, that won’t matter.’

‘Exactly,’ said Imogen, keeping her smile bright.

What had she expected? That Tom would fall to his knees and beg her not to leave him?

No, it would be better this way. There was bound to be speculation at the office when they went back. The sooner she left and got on with her new life, the better, but for now, being friends, even temporary ones, seemed like the best way to get through the next three weeks.

‘So are we agreed?’ she said. ‘As long as we’re here, we’re not boss and PA any more, but just friends?’

There was only the tiniest moment of hesitation, then Tom nodded. ‘Agreed.’

‘Great,’ said Imogen. ‘Now that’s settled, let’s go and see what’s for supper. I’m starving!’

She chatted easily as she set out the delicacies that had been left in the fridge, and Tom found himself almost mesmerised by the readiness with which she was prepared to treat him as a friend. It made him realise how little he had known about her when she was just his PA. He had had no idea that she could be that sharp or that funny, and he watched her as if he had never seen her before as she told him about her friends, about the flat she shared with her friend and the life she led in London, so different from his own.

Suddenly Imogen broke off with a grimace as she listened to her own words. ‘This must all sound so dull to you!’ she said.

‘Actually, it doesn’t,’ said Tom, almost to his own surprise. They had found a bottle of perfectly chilled wine in the fridge, and he leant across the table to top up her glass.

Imogen didn’t believe him, of course. What had she been thinking of, rabbiting on about wine bars and chaotic supper parties and the snap quizzes she and Amanda held to test their embarrassingly wide knowledge of TV soaps? She cringed at the memory.

‘But your life is so much more glamorous!’

She couldn’t imagine Tom sprawled in front of the television, for instance. He and Julia would have gone out to smart restaurants or grand parties. They would have been to the opera or polo matches or the kind of clubs she and Amanda only ever read about in magazines.

‘Is it?’ said Tom. ‘My apartment may be bigger than yours, and I may live in a more exclusive part of town, but I don’t do much when I’m there. I just work.’

‘What about when you were with Julia?’

He shrugged. ‘We’d eat out a lot, and yes, there would quite often be some kind of reception, but those events aren’t nearly as much fun as they’re cracked up to be.’

What had he and Julia done together? Tom tried to remember. Julia was into art, but galleries and openings bored him rigid. He had often used work as an excuse not to go with her. Perhaps Patrick had gone instead?

It was all obvious in hindsight, of course, but shouldn’t he have wondered how much he and Julia had in common before he’d asked her to marry him? He had thought that a similarly cool and careful approach to life would be enough. How wrong could you be?

He looked across the table at Imogen, whose own approach to life could by no stretch of the imagination be described as cool and careful, certainly not from what she’d been telling him.

‘I don’t think you’d enjoy my life that much,’ he told her. ‘It sounds as if you like the one you’ve got. You’ve got lots of friends, you seem to have a good time. You’ve got a job. Why give that up and leave your life behind to travel?’

‘Because I need to get away,’ said Imogen, her expression uncharacteristically serious.

Resting her arms on the table, she turned the glass pensively between her fingers. ‘I spent five years holding on to an impossible dream,’ she went on after a moment. ‘Five years wanting something I couldn’t have. I’ve finally accepted that it’s not going to happen, but I think I need a complete break to do something completely different before I can move on properly.’

‘Five years is a long time to want something-or was it someone?’

‘Someone.’ Imogen nodded.

Tom thought about what she had told him on the beach and searched his memory for a name. ‘Andrew?’

‘Andrew,’ she confirmed. ‘We were students together,’ she told Tom. ‘I fell in love with him the moment I laid eyes on him in Freshers’ Week and we were inseparable for three years.

‘I was so happy all that time,’ she remembered, her smile tinged with sadness. ‘It never occurred to me that it would end. I just assumed that, once we graduated, we’d get married and spend the rest of our lives together.’

‘So what happened?’ asked Tom.

‘Oh, nothing dramatic. Andrew just…grew out of me.’ Imogen managed a smile, but it was a painful one. ‘After all, we were very young when we met, just eighteen, and only twenty-one when we graduated. People kept asking me what I wanted to do, meaning that I should be thinking about a career, but all I wanted to do was be with Andrew. He was more ambitious. He wanted to be a journalist, and that’s what he did. He’s doing well, too. He’s just been made education correspondent on one of the national papers.’

‘And you didn’t blend with his decor any more, was that it?’

‘No, not really.’ It was second nature for Imogen to defend Andrew now. ‘Andrew realised that we wanted different things out of life. I was always happy to live in the moment, but he’s a planner and thinks about the future in a way I never did. I think he was feeling stifled too, although he didn’t put it like that.’

‘How did he put it?’

‘He said he thought we both needed a bit of space. We’d been living together for three years, after all, and neither of us had ever really spent any time on our own. He thought we should have a chance to meet other people before we settled down, and he was right. Twenty-one is much too young to tie yourself down for life-although I didn’t think so at the time, of course,’ she added with a wry smile.

Tom was trying to imagine Imogen as a student, and realised he could do it quite easily. She would have been exactly as she was now, he thought.

‘How did you react?’

‘With disbelief at first. Andrew wasn’t just my lover, he was my best friend. I couldn’t imagine life without him, and it had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t feel the same. Then I decided that he was right,’ said Imogen. ‘It would be best if we had some time apart. So we both went to London, and he got himself a flat and I moved in with Amanda for a while as I was absolutely sure he’d come back. I did a secretarial course, got myself a job and waited