Love & Freedom
Authors: Sue Moorcroft
Love & Freedom
Sue Moorcroft
First published 2011 by Choc Lit Limited
Penrose House, Crawley Drive, Camberley, Surrey GU15 2AB, UK
The right of Sue Moorcroft to be identified as the Author of this Work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the
public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-906931-66-7
Printed in the UK by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, RG1 8EX
Connie Moorcroft
(Mum, thanks for not being any of the
mothers
in
this
book)
Acknowledgements
At the precise moment that I needed help from an American woman who was living in England, I met the lovely Amanda Lightstone in BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s Chat Room. Since then, she has thoroughly and patiently answered dozens of questions and corrected my American English, enabling me to have Honor, an American heroine, in this book. Thank you, Amanda! And thanks also to members of her family who provided additional information and insights.
Further grateful thanks go to:
Twitter followers who supplied information on web design and hacking. In a particularly special bit of Twitter magic, I also found Donna Sessions Waters who so generously helped me with American law, even identifying what was missing from my idea and making it whole. Valuable additional information was provided by
Lynn Spencer.
Stephen Hooper, who was my background source of information regarding the career of Martyn Mayfair. Roger Frank and Mark West, my beta readers, who don’t normally read the type of book I write but rose manfully to the task and helped make this a better book. Kevan and Suzanne Moorcroft for driving me around Connecticut; the Reverend Marion Hubbard for talking to
me about a small town in west Connecticut and mailing me an incredibly interesting book; Cynthia de Riemer for background information about US/UK English relating to property; Trevor Moorcroft for never missing an opportunity to bring my novels to the notice of his many friends and colleagues and suggesting that they buy one; Ashley
Moorcroft for the word ‘relationshippy’. And to Paul Matthews, for taking Honor’s walks and bus rides around Brighton with me and providing on-the-spot information whenever I texted with questions. I would have taken him on the rollercoaster but he had a hangover.
As always, huge thanks to the Choc Lit team, who are such a pleasure to work with.
Chapter One
‘Excuse me, you’re burning.’
The man in Honor’s dream, whoever he was, was right – her face, arm and thigh felt as if they were on fire. She’d been dreaming of falling asleep too close to a furnace. Could it be on a boat? Because she could hear seagulls, too. And feel the seasickness.
‘Quit yanking on my arm, you’re making me queasy,’ she tried to protest. But the words clung thick and sticky to her lips.
The voice grew louder. ‘Wakey, wakey. Come on, lady! You’re burning.’
Waves of nausea swelled sweatily up her body as she tried to prise up her heavy eyelids. The sun blazed into her eyes and she scrunched them shut again. ‘Please don’t,’ she whimpered.
The voice was deep, coaxing. ‘Just help me to help you inside.’
She squinted one eye open again as the dark figure of a man bending over her moved around to block the sun. ‘I think I’m sick,’ she whispered as sweat trickled between her breasts. ‘Real sick.’
‘If you weren’t before, you are now,’ the silhouette agreed, cheerfully. He had a cute English accent. She was familiar with the English way of making jokes about serious stuff but she hoped he realised that she really was sick. Desperately. Colours-melting, brain-whirring sick.
What was a great, tall Englishman doing filling her vision, anyway? She groped through her memory.
She was in England
…
The whirring in her head became the hiss of the ocean and the furnace became the sun. She was lying on a wooden lounger on a patio overlooking a road and the ocean beyond, with a stranger crouching beside her. And she felt bad.
‘Get up,’ the stranger persisted. ‘You’re being barbequed.’
‘Right.’ It halfway made sense. She made to sit up but cried out. Parts of her
had
fallen into a furnace! The patio swooshed alarmingly and she clamped a hand to her mouth.
The man jumped up and retreated. ‘Do you need a bathroom?’
She scrunched her eyes and hoped that he would understand that she meant,
Yes! Quick! I dare not nod my head or remove my hand to speak
.
‘Can you stand?’
‘Mmm
…’ Maybe. But when she attempted to drag her feet to the ground black spots danced behind her closed eyelids. She froze.
‘OK, I’ll carry you. You try and keep it all in until we reach the bathroom and I’ll try not to hurt you.’
‘Ah-ah-ah-WOOOH!’ Honor’s eyes flew open as her side burst into flames, taking her mind off her nausea. ‘Careful, for Chrissake, I’m on fire!’
‘I’ll bet. I’m trying not to touch your burns but you’ve got to get indoors.’
She shut her eyes again as the man surged to his feet beneath her with an impressive expulsion of breath, just like a weightlifter. A door opened and the furnace receded. She unscrewed her eyes, almost expecting to see long, white hospital corridors instead of a vaguely familiar house interior. ‘Have I been in a fire?’
She felt a rumble of laughter in his chest. ‘It’s not that bad. I found you asleep in the sun and it looks as if you’ve been there way too long. Even the English sun can burn you once in a while, you know.’
Fresh sweat flooded down her face. She gulped. ‘Bathroom–’
‘Got it. We’re here.’
Just in time.
‘The doctor’s just arrived.’ His voice came muffled through the bathroom door.
So the man was still here. During the misery and pain of delivering her innards to the toilet, Honor had kind of forgotten about him. She held back her hair, sweat leaking down her forehead and behind her ears. And despite flames licking her skin whenever she moved, she was shivering like a frightened puppy. ‘OK,’ she managed.
Cautiously, she inched to her feet, ran water in the basin and washed her face with the tiniest little pats, then swilled out her mouth.
Another rap at the door. ‘Hello? This is Dr Zoë Mayfair. Can you let me in?’
‘It’s not locked.’ Honor hung over the basin, breathing hard. She couldn’t straighten; her right side had been set in hot glue.
And then there was a neat woman in the tiny room with her, flushing the toilet, looking into her face, turning her cautiously to frown sympathetically at her skin. ‘Let’s see if we can get you out of here so that I can examine you. Have you stopped vomiting?’
‘For now.’
‘Martyn, the bedroom’s at the back, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, through here.’
Allowing herself to lean on the dark-jacketed arm of the doctor on one side and – gingerly – the bare arm of the man on the other, which struck almost as hot as her own miserably scarlet limb, Honor weaved to the blue bedroom with white furniture, like a doll’s house, that would be hers for the next four months and where most of her cases stood waiting to be unpacked.
Scared her skin might split, she sort of oozed down on to the edge of the bed.
Dr Mayfair was coolly efficient. ‘Right, Martyn, I don’t think we need you in here. See if you can find a jug to fill with cold water and bring a glass. She needs fluids.’ The door clicked. ‘Poor you.’ Dr Mayfair was all sympathy. ‘The first hot spell of the summer and you have to go and fall asleep in it. The sea breeze makes the sun deadly.’
‘Jetlagged, I think. I didn’t set out to sleep.’
‘No doubt you’re sore.’ Doctorly understatement, like when they said, ‘There will be a scratch,’ and then thrust a massive needle into the heart of one of your joints. ‘Your skin’s quite inflamed and you’ll be feeling dehydrated. Let’s get some fluids into you and something on that blistered skin.’
‘You bet,’ Honor murmured, watching Dr Mayfair open the door to take from manly hands a jug and glass, suddenly realising that all she wanted in the world was to feel that cold clear liquid easing down her throat.
‘Just sip,’ the doctor cautioned. ‘Or you won’t keep it down.’ She pulled up a bedroom chair and watched with a little furrow between her eyes as Honor sipped. She’d discarded her jacket around the back of the chair and her white blouse looked crisp and cool, her short mousey hair neatly bobbed, making Honor aware of her own sweat-draggled clothes and hair frizzing around her face.
Dr Mayfair turned to the fat black bag at her feet. ‘So you’re here on holiday? From America?’
Honor began to nod, but stopped when pain jabbed its fingernails into the backs of her eyes. ‘I live in Connecticut. I’ve rented this house for the summer.’
The doctor turned back, her hands full of sachets of white cream. ‘You’ve rented it from my sister, Clarissa, in fact. Martyn, who found you, is our brother. She’d sent him down to do the welcome thing and check that the place was in full working order because you caught her on the hop. She’d hardly put it on the market as a holiday rental when you booked it for four months.’ She wriggled her hands expertly into surgical gloves and snipped open the first sachet. ‘Pity you weren’t wearing sleeves because the burn’s extended behind your shoulder. Can we get the top off
…? Ah, I see, the straps loosen.’
‘This is an antibiotic cream, for mild burns. It’ll take away some of the pain, cool the inflammation and help you heal. I’m afraid you’re going to be sore but Martyn caught you before you got to the hospitalisation stage.’
‘That’s goo – ow! OW!’
‘I know.’ The doctor might be sympathetic but she wasn’t to be deflected from her aim of slathering the thick white cream over Honor’s puffy red skin. ‘Keep drinking water. Cool baths might help but don’t put any oils or salts or foams in. And stay out of the sun, obviously. You’re pale skinned and freckly so you’ll probably need to be careful for the next month. Get yourself some high-protection sun lotion or sun block – and use it so that this doesn’t happen again. You can expect to feel better in a week or so, but you’ll have skin loss. Do you have any medication for pain or inflammation?’
Wincing miserably, Honor shook her head.
‘I can leave you half-a-dozen of these – ibuprofen. Take two now, two at bedtime and two in the morning, then you’ll need to get more. Do you have any family in the area?’
‘Probably not the way you mean.’ And as the doctor hesitated, Honor added, ‘I think I do, through my English mother, around Brighton. While I’m over here I hope to look them up.’
‘Sounds interesting. Have you registered with a local doctor?’
‘I hadn’t planned on getting sick.’
Dr Mayfair smiled. ‘I presume you have your health insurance card? I suggest you do register – I’ll give you a list of the local practices in Rottingdean and Brighton. Most patients from Eastingdean and Saltdean register in Rottingdean, as it’s between here and Brighton. And you might need to see a practice nurse because you’re going to have trouble reaching around to those blisters on your shoulder. Do you think you’ll be all right alone?’