The Piano Man Project (32 page)

‘Robin,’ Honey laughed, thrilled to see him. ‘How did you know?’

‘A little bird might have told me,’ he winked, and then winced at the shrill sound of a whistle.

‘A little bird with a big whistle, by any chance?’ Honey looked over to where Nell was good naturedly marshalling newcomers into place.

Robin nodded. ‘And these marvellous boys are my students,’ he said, emphasising the word ‘students’ in a conspiratorial,
you get my drift
kind of way. ‘Strictly speaking I’m supposed to conduct these sessions in the community hall to comply with their tags, but today my dance company is on tour, baby!’ His voice dipped in the middle of his sentence to spare the parole gang from embarrassment, and then rose at the end to almost operatic levels. He clicked his Cuban heels for good measure, and then pirouetted away towards Nell and her whistle. Honey smiled at each of Robin’s charges as they filed past her, most probably just relieved to not be spending the day listening to country music and doing the grapevine.

Hope flared hot in Honey’s chest. This was happening. It was really happening, even better than she’d dared to hope.

Skinny Steve reappeared with more tea and biscuits to rally the troops, walking along the line and chatting amiably. Honey watched him, struck by the change in him since Hal had arrived. There was a confidence to him, a baby swagger learned from his new master. It suited him well.

‘Get off me!’

A braying, male, distinctly alarmed voice reached her from down the line, and frowning, she hurried down to find Tash snapping purple fluffy cuffs around Christopher’s wrist and chaining him up next to the line dancing ex-cons.

His eyes lasered in on Honey as she approached.

‘Honeysuckle Jones! Unfasten me this instant or you’re fired!’

A boo went up in the crowd, and Robin’s line dancers all glowered in a way that made it clear they’d really love to break their parole conditions.

Tash grinned and dangled the little keys between her thumb and forefinger in front of her face.

‘She can’t. I’ve got the keys.’ She gave them a little shake for effect, and then let them go right over the drain in the road. They teetered for a second on one of the metal ridges, and she nudged them lightly with her toe until they slipped over and tumbled into the water beneath with a faint splosh. The crowd were behind her every step of the way, laughing as she put her hands to her expertly made-up cheeks in fake shock. ‘Oops. Sorry.’

Honey took advantage of the fracas to slink back down to Lucille and Mimi at the far end.

‘Christopher just arrived,’ she said, with a worried grimace.

‘That’s all we need,’ Lucille said, her blue eyes clouding with apprehension. ‘Where is he?’

‘Tash just chained him to the railings down the other end.’

Billy hooted. ‘I love that young lady.’

‘I love you too, Billy Boy,’ Tash laughed, appearing beside Honey. ‘This is fun! I sort of recognised him when he hopped out of a taxi and had him in cuffs before he could even pay the driver.’

‘What if he calls his bosses?’ Honey dithered. If head office got wind of things they’d no doubt come down hard to shut the protest down before it grew any bigger. And going on the way things had gone so far, it was going to grow quite quickly.

‘Call them on what?’ Tash grinned. ‘This?’ She fished a mobile out of her pocket and shrugged casually. ‘It kind of fell out of his suit pocket when I was chaining him up.’ Honey knew Tash well enough to know that ‘fell out of his pocket’ was a loose interpretation of the truth. The girl was a brilliant liability. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ she said, squeezing Honey’s shoulders. ‘I’ll keep it safe for him. He’s bloody lucky I didn’t drop it down the drain along with the handcuff keys.’

Honey often wished she were as bold as Tash, or as efficient as Nell. They’d each brought their own unique skills today, and between them they seemed to be pulling things off.

‘You really should go and let the kitchen know how quickly the numbers are growing,’ Mimi said, her beady eyes on Honey.

‘I can do it,’ Tash volunteered, and Honey almost shoved her towards the home out of relief at not needing to see Hal.

Billy had other ideas though, grabbing Tash’s arm with his free hand as she moved past him.

‘My darling, I think I’ve got a frozen shoulder. Do you think you could give it the quickest of massages? You look like you’ve got the perfect hands for it.’

Tash flexed her fingers. ‘Go on then. These hands have had a lot of practice.’

Mimi, usually territorial over Billy, just smiled serenely. ‘The kitchen, Honeysuckle.’

Coerced, Honey sighed and picked her way along the path towards the home. Towards the kitchen. Towards Hal.

Inside, the Sunday staff had gathered, bewildered. Without anyone to care for they were rudderless, and they turned to Honey as she walked through the doors.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ Nikki asked, one of the carers who Honey knew vaguely.

‘Well, it’s up to you guys. You can stay in here, or you can go out there and make your voices heard. Your jobs are on the line here, as well as the residents’ home. You have a dog in this fight too.’

She left them there, straightening her shoulders as she heard their murmurs of assent, when the door swung shut behind her. Maybe Tash was rubbing off on her after all. Outside the kitchen door a moment or two later, she regulated her breathing and hoped like hell that she could keep the kick ass attitude in place, at least for the next five minutes. Thank God Skinny Steve was in there too. ‘Safety in numbers’ had never felt a more appropriate phrase for the day.

Staying at the flat hadn’t been an option for Hal that morning. He’d promised Honey and Steve that he’d be there, but his reasons for being at the home were more selfish than that. He didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts today; he made bad company and even worse decisions. His brain was under siege, held hostage by the past. How had things gone so wrong? He’d woken yesterday with a plan to let his birthday slide past unmarked, and it had somehow ended up being the most significant birthday of his life.

He could blame the whisky. He could blame Honey. He could blame his brother. He could blame Imogen. He could blame all of those things and all of those people, but he didn’t. Hal blamed himself for yet another spectacular fuck up, and he was reaching the point where he couldn’t stand to make many more. That was the real reason he was here today. This seemed to be the one and only thing he was capable of doing right. Imogen’s letter had opened doors that he’d long since slammed shut, and only the simple beauty of cooking could offer him respite from deciding which doors to open and which ones to close.

‘I’ll make a start on taking the soup out,’ Steve said, heading out of the back door. ‘I’ll be back in ten.’

Hal nodded, and then turned as the door from the dining room opened. He knew who it was before she spoke. Strawberries, the slightly irregular sound of her breathing, the crackle of attraction, the complicated emotions.

‘Where’s Steve?’ she said, in lieu of a greeting.

‘Honeysuckle,’ he said cordially. ‘He’s just gone down to take soup for the protesters. Did you need him?’

As he said it, he wished he’d chosen different words. He didn’t want her to say she needed anyone else.

‘It was just about the numbers.’ She stumbled slightly on her words. ‘There’s already more than seventy people down there, more arriving all the time. We’re going to need, umm, a lot of soup.’

Hal wasn’t concerned by the numbers. He’d designed food today to specifically cater for a crowd. What concerned him more was the widening chasm between himself and Honey, and he didn’t know how to bridge it.

‘Honey, about last night …’

‘Soup! Lots of it please!’ she squeaked.

‘It doesn’t have to be like this.’

‘I think we should work on well over a hundred,’ she shot back, still hovering over by the door, ready to bolt. ‘More, even.’

‘We can make enough soup for the whole damn town if they all show up, Honey. It isn’t a problem, okay?’

He heard her swallow. ‘Good. Well, that’s good news about the soup,’ she said, trailing off. ‘I’ll get back then.’

‘Honey. Just hang on a minute, please?’ he said, even though he had no idea what he was going to do or say to make things better.

She didn’t ignore him and leave. That had to be something, right?

‘Come here.’

He needed her closer. She moved quietly, nearer, not touching him.

‘I need to say some things, Honey, and I don’t know how to say them without hurting you,’ he said, reaching out for her, aiming for her shoulder, finding the soft skin on the side of her neck, his thumb on the warm pulse between her collarbones. She’d tied her hair back.

‘Hal, do we really need to do this?’ she said.

‘Yes. Yes, we do,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to think I had a better offer than you. That isn’t what that letter was. It’s a different offer, but I don’t want to ever hear you call anyone better than you again, okay?’ A loose strand of her hair brushed his fingers and he stroked it back behind her ear, and then he just stroked her hair because he couldn’t stop himself.

‘What do you want, Hal?’ she said, and he heard the question she was really asking.
Who
do you want, Hal?

‘I don’t know,’ he said, because honesty seemed the only way to get through this. ‘I don’t fucking know. I just know that I can’t think straight until we’re okay again. I shouldn’t have leaned on you yesterday, but I can’t say I’m sorry for what happened because it was the most fucking alive I’ve felt since the accident. Being with you, it just feels …’ Hal stopped, sighed. ‘It just feels simple, Honey. It comes naturally.’

Beneath his fingers, her pulse trembled.

‘Listening to you read that letter from Imogen was like scraping nails down my own eyeballs,’ he said, hating even the memory. ‘What kind of fucked-up prick does that to a woman?’

She sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter. You needed to hear it from someone.’

‘Did I? I don’t even know, but even if I did, then not from you. Anyone but you.’

‘What difference does it really make who you heard it from, Hal? Maybe I was exactly the right person you needed to hear it from, and maybe that was exactly the right time for you to hear it. We’re kind of done, aren’t we? You gave me my orgasm, and now you get your life back. We both win.’

Except winners didn’t cry when they delivered their speech, and Honey’s voice shimmered with tears. And winners didn’t feel like they’d been punched in the heart.

‘We both know you don’t mean that,’ he said, knowing he should take his hand away from her face and cupping her cheek anyway.

‘I don’t think it even matters whether I mean it or not, because the fact is that you’re going to decide to go home in the end. You know it, and I know it. There are wedding invitations out there being printed with your name on them, and a restaurant waiting to have your name over it. Your life’s out there, waiting for you to step back into it.’

She was right. It would never be the same, but he could try to pick up the pieces and put them back together again into a similar but slightly altered picture. How had he gone from being certain that his future held no romance to being someone’s lover and practically another woman’s fiancée?

‘I don’t know if I want that life again,’ he said.

‘Well, only you can decide, Hal.’ She sounded tired. Unravelled.

‘What do you think I should do?’ he asked, even though he knew he had no right to.

He felt her shrug and breathe out shakily.

‘Whatever you can’t not do, I guess.’

It was a typically Honey kind of answer.

‘I need to get back outside,’ she said eventually, and he felt her hot tears run between his fingers on her cheek.

‘Whatever happens next, I honestly didn’t mean to hurt you,’ he said, breathing in her scent, resisting the crazy, desperate urge to kiss her better.

She laughed softly, shook her head. ‘Let’s just call it collateral damage.’

He made his way to the back door after Honey had left the kitchen, and stood there on the step for a few minutes to feel the warmth of the sun on his crawling skin. How much more collateral fucking damage was his accident going to cause before it was done with him and everyone around him?

Skinny Steve bounded back into the kitchen a few minutes later to refill his thermos with more soup.

‘This is going down a bomb out there,’ he said gleefully. ‘We’re going to need to make more.’

‘Yeah. Honey was in here just now and said as much.’

‘Honey was here?’ Disappointment rang clear through Steve’s voice, and the penny dropped. Steve had a crush on Honey. He was certain that Honey had no clue. She was totally guileless when it came to understanding the effect she had.

Steve was quiet as he assembled the vegetables for the soup on the bench for Hal to start work on. As they chopped onions side by side, he paused.

‘Did you ever see pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Hal? You know, before your accident, like?’

Hal nodded, aware from Steve’s voice that he was being taken into his confidence.

‘Sure I did.’

‘And you know that woman who played Bridget Jones? Renee something?’

‘I think I know the one, yeah. Why?’

Steve paused. ‘Because that’s what Honey’s like. Curvy like Marilyn, and always getting into trouble, like that Bridget Jones chick. She’s blonde as well, but kind of kick ass.’

‘So like Uma Thurman in
Kill Bill
too?’

‘Man, I’d like to see Honey in that yellow tracksuit,’ Steve murmured, and then coughed and seemed to gather himself. ‘Yeah, like that.’

Funnily enough, all of the women Skinny Steve had listed resonated with the image of Honey he’d built in his head. She certainly had Marilyn’s curves, he knew because he’d held them in his hands. He knew her dips and her hollows, they’d burned themselves onto his brain so clearly that he’d be able to mould her body from clay. And a penchant for getting herself into trouble? Bridget Jones was strictly amateur compared to Honey. She’d been trouble from the first time he’d met her in their hallway, which seemed like a lifetime ago now, and it followed her around like toilet paper stuck to the heel of her shoe. She was a trouble magnet.