The Piano Man Project (21 page)

‘Come on,’ Honey said, steering Lucille gently along the pavement. ‘He’s probably ten times more nervous, you know. You have Mimi, and all of your memories of your parents. He’s on his own in all of this.’

Lucille nodded and braced her shoulders. ‘Let’s go and say hello to my brother.’

They didn’t have to wait long for the door to open. A few seconds after Lucille rang the bell, a dark-haired, efficient woman opened the shiny green door.

‘You must be Lucille,’ she said, putting Honey and Lucille at ease with a smile. ‘I’m Carol, Ernie’s assistant. Please, come inside.’

The interior of the house was just as well kept as the exterior, bright and fresh; well-polished floor tiles, gleaming woodwork, the scent of polish, and fresh flowers on the coffee table in the sunny lounge Carol ushered them into.

‘Ernie will be through in a minute or two. Can I get you some tea while you wait? Coffee?’

Lucille nodded and Honey shook her head, and Carol smiled widely. ‘Ernie’s been a bit like that today, too. Can’t make his mind up on anything.’ She leaned towards Lucille. ‘I don’t think he slept a wink last night, his covers had hardly moved when I made his bed up this morning.’

‘Told you,’ Honey whispered, when they were alone. ‘He’s as nervous as you are.’

‘Is my lipstick crooked?’

Honey could just about feel Lucille’s slight frame shaking on the sofa beside her. She’d asked about the condition of her lipstick twice that morning already.

‘Your lipstick looks perfect, your hair looks fabulous, and that dress is wonderful on you. Lucille, will you please just relax?’

They both looked up at the quiet hum of a motor in the hallway, and a couple of seconds later a wheelchair appeared in the wide doorway. Ernie. Honey hadn’t really anticipated what he might look like, but it wasn’t just green fingers that Ernie shared with his eldest sister. The shock of seeing someone so like Mimi in male form took her breath. She heard Lucille gasp beside her, and passed her a tissue to stem the tears already on the older woman’s cheeks.

‘Mimi should be here,’ Lucille murmured, getting to her feet because Ernie couldn’t. He pressed a button and moved his chair forward to the middle of the room, and Honey watched with a lump in her throat as Lucille bent and embraced her brother for the first time in their lives.

‘So many years,’ Ernest said, his voice strong even if his body wasn’t. ‘I’ve wanted to meet you my whole life, Lucille.’

‘I never knew,’ Lucille whispered, her shaky voice full of emotion. She pulled back, scrutinising his face. ‘You’re the image of our sister, Mimi.’ Lucille glanced across at Honey. ‘Isn’t he, Honey?’

Ernie looked towards the sofa, and Honey smiled and nodded. ‘You are. It’s uncanny.’

‘Sorry Ernie, where are my manners!’ Lucille said. ‘This is Honeysuckle.’

‘Your … granddaughter?’ Ernie said, looking hopeful.

‘No. As good as, mind,’ Lucille said, and the lump in Honey’s throat threatened to spill over into full-blown tears. She’d come along today as a support for Lucille. She hadn’t anticipated finding it so emotional herself. Hauling herself to her feet, she touched Lucille lightly on the shoulder.

‘Why don’t I leave you guys to it for a while? I’ll go and grab a cuppa and come back later.’

Lucille nodded, still holding on to Ernie’s hand. ‘I think I’d like that. We’ve a lot to catch up on, haven’t we Ernie?’

Honey let herself out of the front door and found Carol sitting in the sunshine on the front steps. She looked up at the sound of the door opening.

‘I thought I’d leave them to it for a while,’ Honey said, nodding back towards the doorway.

‘Lots to talk about, I expect,’ Carol said, lighting up a cigarette and then holding the box up towards Honey, who shook her head.

‘Thanks, though. Mind if I sit for five?’

Carol tucked the cigarette box into the pocket of her navy tabard and waved her arm. ‘Take a pew.’

Honey dropped down onto the steps and the other woman switched her cigarette into the hand furthest from Honey.

‘Sorry. Bad habit. Menthol though, not that they’re much better. Ernie’s been nagging me to give them up for years.’

‘You’ve worked here for a while then?’

Carol nodded. ‘I’ve been with Ernie for over twenty years. He’s more like family to me than my own lot.’

Honey traced her finger along a crack in the step, feeling rather like they were sizing each other up as much as Lucille and Ernie were inside, representatives and supporters from the blue and the red corner. She well understood the concept of friends feeling more like family; Lucille and Mimi had been surrogate aunts for several years.

‘It’s a shame his other sister couldn’t make it today,’ Carol said mildly.

Honey tried to find neutral words. ‘It was a shock for both of them, Ernie’s letter. Mimi will come around. She’s …’ Honey paused thoughtfully. ‘She’s strong willed, that’s all. I think she’s troubled by the whole idea of her mother having had a child before she was born, coming out of the blue like that.’

Carol bent and put the cigarette out in an ashtray concealed behind a low wall. This was clearly her favoured smoking spot.

‘I can see that. Ernie’s known about his sisters for the last forty years. I guess he’s had longer to adjust.’

Honey frowned, perplexed. ‘Can I ask why he never got in touch before now?’

Carol turned her head to look at Honey. ‘Oh he did. He wrote to his mother. To their mother,’ she corrected herself.

‘Really? But …’

‘She wrote back by return post and told him not to contact her again. That she’d put everything to rest years ago and she couldn’t bear to rake it all back up again.’

‘Wow. That’s just so sad,’ Honey said, floored. She knew that Lucille and Mimi would be equally as shocked. They sat in the sunshine for a moment, each digesting the information that was new to them.

‘Has Ernie always been disabled?’ Honey asked, trying to slot the pieces of Ernie’s story into Lucille and Mimi’s.

Carol shook her head. ‘Injured in the war. He was about twenty-three I think, been in a chair ever since.’

‘And he never married, or had any kids?’ Honey asked, wary of sounding as if she were prying but fascinated to hear Ernie’s story.

‘No one. He barely leaves the house. It’s a crying shame. He’s lived here all of his life, his ivory tower against the outside world ever since the war. He came home, closed the door, and that was pretty much that.’ Honey shook her head. Ernie seemed such a kind, gentle soul, it wasn’t fair or right that he’d cloistered himself away. She found herself holding back tears all of a sudden. The parallels between Ernie and Hal were there in plain sight. All those years Ernie had spent alone couldn’t be rewound, but she was damned if she was going to allow Hal to resign himself to the same reclusive fate.

‘His adoptive parents were nice enough from what I can gather, but he doesn’t have any other family left to speak of,’ Carol said. ‘I’m the only person he sees, besides his physio nurse who comes in most afternoons.’ A dark cloud passed over her features. ‘His health isn’t what it used to be.’

Poor Ernie, he seemed to have been dealt a bad hand of cards all round. Honey found herself feeling very glad that he’d been brave enough to write to Lucille and Mimi, and wishing that Mimi had been able to find it in herself to come and see him. Hopefully she’d be in a different mind about it after Lucille spoke to her about today.

‘So why get in touch again?’ she asked. ‘Why now, after all these years?’

Carol looked at the floor with a heavy sigh. ‘Like I said. His health isn’t great, and he’s not going to get any better. He’s a lonely man.’ The shadow that crossed Carol’s face told Honey that there was more to be said on the subject. It was clear that Carol was immensely fond of Ernie in the same way she herself was of Lucille and Mimi; she couldn’t bear the thought of either of them being unwell. So she didn’t pry, and her quiet reflection gave Carol time to speak at her own pace.

‘He’s put all of his affairs in order over the last month or so. He thinks I haven’t noticed, but of course I have. If I’m honest, I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to write to his sisters. The last thing he needed was another disappointment.’

Honey had already wished that Mimi had been there several times that day, and she wished it again now.

‘Ernie has never said a bad word about his mother. Do you know anything about her?’

Honey cast her mind back through scattered conversations with Mimi and Lucille over the week since Ernie’s letter had arrived and stirred up long-undisturbed memories. ‘She was a singer, from what I can gather. They haven’t exactly said anything untoward about her, but I get the impression she was hungry for fame and didn’t make it.’

‘Charming,’ Carol huffed softly. ‘Too ambitious to want her first-born.’

‘I honestly don’t know many more details, except she would have been young and unmarried. I suppose a baby out of wedlock would have been a scandal back then, and would have definitely killed her chances as a singer.’ Honey smiled sadly. ‘They didn’t have things like
The
X Factor
back in those days.’

Carol grimaced. ‘Probably a good thing.’

The two women sat companionably in the sunshine, probably both wondering how things were going inside the house.

‘I’ll try my best to get Mimi to come soon,’ Honey said.

Carol nodded, her eyes cast to the ground. ‘Do me a favour. Make it as soon as you can?’

Nodding, Honey glanced away. She would. For both the men she now knew in self-made seclusion, she would.

Friday morning rolled in grey and cool, but Honey woke up early and in a hot sweat.

It was today. Or tonight. Friday. No-date night with Hal. In an attempt to play it down in her head, she hadn’t told a soul. Not Tash, nor Nell, nor Lucille and Mimi, a choice she regretted as she threw up her breakfast five minutes after eating it. Her nerves were off the scale. Tash would have been the perfect person to help her dial it back down with her jokey good humour, but Honey knew that she’d be somewhere thirty thousand feet up at that moment and in no position to offer comfort. Nell … Nell was probably being politely boffed over her muesli, so no joy there either, and it wasn’t a conversation she should have with Lucille and Mimi. That left no one. No one except the one person who was aware of the arrangement. Hal. But what was she supposed to do? Knock on his door, and then what? Ask him if he was still on for casual sex later? She pulled a ‘you idiot’ face at her reflection as she tied her hair back in the hall mirror, shook herself into her mac, and left the flat.

Across the lobby Hal heard Honey’s door open and close, and listened for her footsteps. He was able to discern whether she was heading over to his or towards the front door, and today she paused just outside her own door. Was she deciding which way to go? Had she bottled it? Should he? He had grave misgivings about the whole situation. His body was undeniably turned on by the fact that Honey wanted him, and his head was certain that it was a mistake of monu-fucking-mental proportions. His hand touched the cool lock on his door, ready to open it and cancel. He stood still, bated breath. If she walked his way, he’d open it, call it off because that was no doubt why she’d be coming over. If she went out of the front door, he’d … and then the front door banged, and she left for work, robbing him of the luxury of choice. She hadn’t cancelled, and neither had he.

Hal greeted the pleasurable emotion that surged around his body like an old friend. Adrenalin in his veins. The feeling he’d lived for before the accident, the one where you’re right on the edge of doing something incredibly stupid and have to screw up insane amounts of courage to throw yourself off the ledge.

Except sometimes you didn’t have the safe landing you’d banked on. Sometimes it really was incredibly stupid. Sometimes it could wreck your life. Hal’s problem was that he honestly didn’t know which way this one was going to play out.

He heard her come in as he’d heard her go out hours before, from the front door to her own flat without deviation towards his door.

He could do this. There was a way to give her what she wanted without taking what he did. She probably wouldn’t like it, but this was his gig, his terms.

He reached for the whisky bottle.

Honey had spent her day in a swan-like state; serene on the surface, frantic on the inside where no one else could see. Her heartbeat was erratic, pounding too fast every time she thought about the night ahead. Her brain wouldn’t function when it came to shop-related matters, and she was hugely relieved by the arrival of an agency chef to help Skinny Steve because her brain wanted to think about Hal and their non-date all day. What should she wear? Where would they do it? She’d changed her sheets before work that morning to fill the time between throwing up her breakfast and leaving the house. Maybe the sofa would be a better idea; they might be able to slide naturally from conversation into sex. ‘How was your day, dear? Fine. Fancy a shag?’

In the end she’d decided that it would be best to just stop trying to plan it and let Hal take the lead. She was after all, the pupil, and he the teacher. By the time there was a knock on her front door just before eight o’clock that evening, she was mildly hysterical and badly in need of a fortifying drink.

‘Shit,’ Honey whispered, struck silent and statue still by the sound of the knock. ‘Shit!’ Her heart seemed to bang around behind her ribs almost as loudly as Hal had banged on the door. He was here. He hadn’t forgotten, or backed out. He was outside her door and she needed to let him in.

‘Coming!’ she called out skittishly, and then cleared her throat and put her hand over her mouth to hold in the horrible urge to gaily add, ‘or else I hope I will be,’ as she opened the door.

‘Honeysuckle,’ he said, and just the sound of her full name on his lips was enough for her to want to gasp,
do me
. Hal looked the same but subtly different, an ever-so-slightly less grungy version of himself. It was probably the fact that he was wearing a shirt rather than a t-shirt with his jeans, a shirt that followed close against his body and was as inky dark as the hair he’d made an attempt to tame.