‘Your mother didn’t seem to have any trouble believing me.’ Gib watched her scrabbling through the drawers in search of a corkscrew. ‘She told me that I sounded like a dream come true,’ he went on virtuously.
Phoebe muttered under her breath as she located the corkscrew at last and attacked the foil at the top of the bottle. ‘You’re not taking this seriously!’ she accused him.
‘And you’re taking it too seriously,’ said Gib. ‘You need to lighten up, Phoebe! Everything’s under control.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ grumbled Phoebe, twisting the corkscrew. ‘Have you organised a suit yet?’ She bet he hadn’t.
‘Yes.’
Oh.
‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’ The cork popped out and she poured the wine into a glass, pausing for a second to savour its pale golden beauty before she went back to her fretting.
‘What about this job you’re supposed to have?’ she demanded as she carried her glass over to the armchair next to him. ‘I’ve told Mum you’re a banker now, so you’d better be able to carry it off.’
‘Relax,’ said Gib lazily. ‘I’ve been doing some research. Look.’ He picked up a brochure from the floor by the sofa and waved it at her.
Phoebe took it with her spare hand. ‘This is for the Community Bank,’ she said blankly.
‘I know.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘It was lying on the table with some of the other stuff you brought home with you,’ said Gib, and Phoebe was too busy studying the brochure to notice the faint hesitation in his voice. ‘I thought I might as well take advantage of the research you’ve been doing for your programme, so I had a look through it. If anyone asks, I’ll say I work in their development section. I ought to be able to bluff my way through on that.’
‘That’s not a bad idea.’ She looked at him with grudging respect. ‘It’s a bank, but not a real bank.’
‘What do you mean, it’s not a real bank?’ For once Gib was roused out of his lazy good humour and he sat up to object. ‘It lends money, it supports its customers, it’s an integral part of the financial infrastructure of the countries where it operates …’
Phoebe looked at him in surprise. ‘You have been reading the brochure, haven’t you?’
There was a tiny silence, and then Gib lay back down. ‘I told you I’d been doing some research,’ he said.
‘I’m glad to hear you’re getting into your role so well,’ she said dryly. ‘Anyway, I just meant that because it’s an ethical bank, if you meet any other City types there, they won’t expect you to be flash and boast about bonuses. They’ll probably make allowances if you seem a bit …’
‘A bit what?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Phoebe with a touch of irritation. Why did Gib have to pick her up on everything? ‘A bit different, I suppose.’
She sipped her wine reflectively, trying to spot the flaws in Gib’s idea, but the more she thought about it, the better it seemed. ‘No, I think it might work,’ she said with gathering excitement. ‘We could say that’s how we met,’ she went on, getting into the idea.
‘Exactly,’ said Gib.
Phoebe ignored his smugness. ‘People know that I’ve been working on the programme. I’m so desperate that I’ve asked most of Ben’s City friends if they’ve got any contacts in the States who might know about the Community Bank, but hardly any of them had even heard of it—which is good news for you,’ she added as an aside. ‘We can pretend that someone put me in touch with you, and you were so impressed by me on the phone that we arranged to meet and … Bam!’
‘Ah, so it was love at first sight?’ said Gib provocatively.
Phoebe rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, all right, it was love at first sight, if that’s what you want! If you’ve already told Mum that’s how it was, there’s not much I can do about it anyway.’
She might be reassured that Gib was getting ready to play his part, but as Ben’s wedding approached, Phoebe grew more and more apprehensive. By the time the following Saturday came round, she was so jittery with nerves that she could hardly speak.
‘You’ve got to calm down,’ said Bella that morning. ‘You’re wound so tight, you’re going to snap! Here, give me that,’ she added, seeing Phoebe lay her dress onto the ironing board. ‘You’ll just burn it if you try and iron it in that state. Sit down and relax for a minute.’
‘I can’t relax,’ said Phoebe, hugging her arms together edgily as Bella tested the iron with the tip of her finger. ‘I keep thinking of all the things that could go wrong.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like Gib forgetting who he’s supposed to be,’ she said with a pointed glance at where he sat reading the paper at the table in jeans and a T-shirt, long legs stretched out before him and quite unperturbed by all the activity around him.
‘Hey, I resent that!’ he said, without looking up from his paper. ‘I’m John Gibson, Gib to his friends, development manager at the Community Bank with special responsibility for setting up funding programmes and links between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, and I can now bore for England and the States about development strategies, ethical investment opportunities and interest assessment.’
‘See?’ said Bella, impressed. ‘He’ll be fine.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Phoebe fretfully, rummaging through her make-up bag in search of a mirror. ‘It would just take one little slip, and they’ll all know that my fantastically successful lover is in fact my unemployed lodger!
‘I didn’t sleep a wink last night thinking about it,’ she went on, opening the mirror and contemplating her face glumly. ‘Excellent, bug eyes and puffy skin! Just what I need this morning!’
‘Nothing a bit of make-up won’t cure,’ said Bella reassuringly. ‘Put on some lippy and you’ll be fine.’
‘I think it’s going to take more than lipstick this morning,’ said Phoebe, refusing to be comforted. ‘God, I look a mess!’
‘No, you don’t,’ said Gib, lowering his paper to study her. ‘You look absolutely beautiful.’
It was so unexpected that Phoebe’s jaw dropped, and Bella looked up from her ironing in surprise.
‘Blimey! She hasn’t even got her make-up on yet!’
‘Phoebe doesn’t need make-up. She always looks beautiful to me,’ Gib said soulfully, and belatedly Phoebe realised that he was just proving that he had his role down pat.
Mortified by her blush—what if he thought she had taken him seriously?—she lifted her chin and retreated behind her haughtiest air. ‘You’d better not say anything like that today, or they’ll know you can’t be serious,’ she said.
‘Why?’
Phoebe glanced back at the mirror. Her face stared uncompromisingly back at her. ‘I accepted a long time ago that I’m not beautiful, and I never will be,’ she said flatly.
Gib looked across the table at her. She wasn’t pretty, it was true. Her face was too full of character and her features too strong to be anything as insipid as pretty. Instead she was vivid and dramatic, with those fierce eyes and that mouth that hinted at a passionate nature well hidden behind her prickles.
‘I don’t agree,’ he said.
Phoebe saw Bella’s hand still