The Piano Man Project (26 page)

‘Well I never, I missed that. My brother was blinded as a boy,’ he said, his gaze distant. ‘Can’t have been more than fourteen. Nasty business.’

‘Is he still alive?’ Honey spoke without thinking. Billy had never mentioned a brother.

‘Died about ten years back. If you think I’m trouble, you should have met our Len. Or Leonard, as my mother would have preferred.’ Billy’s face broke into a wide grin. ‘Leonard and William. Billy and Len. He was always getting me into bother.’ Billy’s eyes sparkled with nostalgic wickedness. ‘Quite the ladies’ man, he was, too.’

‘Unlike you,’ Honey laughed. ‘But no, I’m not off to see the chef.’ She glanced up at the clock. Three o’clock. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour so you can go over to Old Don’s party.’

‘Good girl,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘You know me, never one to miss a good knees-up.’

It was well after seven by the time Honey and Hal sat beside each other on the bus home.

‘I haven’t caught a bus since I was sixteen,’ he’d said when they’d boarded the bus that morning, and he looked no less outlandish and uncomfortable on the return journey.

‘Of course you haven’t.’

She completely believed him. People on the bus mostly blended in. Not Hal. Even aiming hard for anonymity he seemed to stand out, or maybe she was just hyper-aware of him. She was just glad it was after the rush hour and the bus was relatively quiet.

‘Can you drive?’ he asked.

‘Technically, yes,’ she said, ‘although I haven’t really driven much since I passed my test.’

Hal turned his face towards the window while he considered her words. Before the accident, driving had been one of his pleasures. Cars. Motorbikes. The faster the better. Honey’s easy-come, easy-go attitude to being able to slide behind the wheel any time she liked filled him with hot fury out of nowhere.

‘You’d really rather ride the fucking bus? You prefer to be rubbed up against by rancid teenagers and avoid making eye contact with the local nutter than be in a car, be in control of everything yourself?’

The need to feel the power of an engine under his hands again took his breath away, along with his ability to be tactful. He tried to shut it down, to tune it out, but it wouldn’t let go. He could feel it throbbing inside him like an angry animal’s heartbeat. He missed it so, so much; it was visceral. Who he was, who he’d been right down to his bones. Benedict Hallam. Adrenalin junkie. It was one of the reasons he’d shut his life down to four walls since the accident, because being out here just rammed home all the things he’d never do again. The addictive smell of the petrol fumes, the throaty rumble of an exhaust. He couldn’t be that man anymore, and the plain truth was he didn’t know how to be anyone else. He’d been left with all of the bad stuff and none of the good, and he wasn’t sure there was enough of him left to build a new man from. Worse still, he didn’t even know if he wanted to try.

‘You did great today,’ Honey said, breaking into his bleak train of thought.

‘I sat on a stool and told someone what to do. I’d hardly call it earth shattering.’

Honey laughed softly. ‘You really have no idea. Hal, without you there today Steve would have walked. Thirty-odd residents would have gone hungry, and a war veteran wouldn’t have celebrated his birthday. You can think of it as just sitting on the stool if you like, but the way I see it you saved the day.’

‘Move over Nicolas-fucking-Cage,’ Hal muttered.

‘Do you have to swear in every single sentence?’ she snapped. ‘There are other words, you know.’

‘I’d say I’ll read the dictionary, but I’m goddamn fucking blind,’ he shot back, and folded his arms over his chest in fury.

Honey watched the cars trundle past the darkening windows. ‘I like Nicolas Cage.’

‘Yeah well, real life isn’t like the movies, Honey. The hero doesn’t always get to save the day. He doesn’t always get to keep his eyesight, or his driving licence, or his livelihood, or his fiancée.’

She was silent for the rest of the bus ride home, and on the walk to the house too, besides providing enough basic information to save him from falling down the kerb. He hated the way she’d withdrawn her company long before they went their separate ways in the lobby.

‘It’s pretty mean to give a blind man the silent treatment.’

Honey snorted down her nose. ‘You have the nerve to call me on giving the silent treatment? You’re the bloody king of it.’

‘That’s quite some fall, from Nicolas Cage to the king of silent treatments,’ he said, trying to coax her back into civility again.

‘I’m going inside,’ she said, tonelessly. ‘Thanks for your help today.’

She sounded like a teacher thanking a PTA parent. Polite, and professionally distant. It grated on him. He slotted his key into the latch as he heard her door close, and then took it out again.

‘What did I do?’ he shouted, walking back to her door. ‘One minute I’m a hero, the next you’re in a temper. What is this?’

She opened her door. ‘You never mentioned your fiancée.’

Her voice was calm and heavy with the questions she didn’t ask.

‘So?’

‘So you should have.’

‘Am I missing something here? I used to have a fiancée. Now I don’t. And that’s a problem for you, because?’

‘Why did you split up?’

‘Fuck, Honey, what is this, the Spanish Inquisition?’

‘It’s a simple question.’

He ran his hands over his hair. ‘Fine.’ Squaring his shoulders and closing his arms over his chest, he spoke again. ‘Fine. We were getting married. Next summer, if you must have all the details.’

‘And now you’re not?’

‘She didn’t want to marry a blind man.’

Hal heard Honey’s swift intake of breath and felt guilty for painting Imogen on a par with Cruella De Vil. The truth had been far more gradual and not at all one-sided. The accident had been the catalyst, the inciting incident, definitely, but the aftermath had been the reason they’d separated. Hal had been a man left without many choices, and Imogen had become a woman who’d had to make the toughest one.

He didn’t blame her. Oh, he had. He’d railed against her, just as he’d railed against everyone else in his life. His friends, his family … all of them. They couldn’t possibly understand what he was going through, and it reached the point where their well-meant kindnesses felt patronising, Imogen’s most of all. She’d tried to accommodate the changes that forced their way through their life together, the broom that swept away the flash, materialistic lifestyle and left the brass tacks of a broken man behind. It wasn’t her fault; she’d fallen for one person, one life, and overnight she’d been presented with someone completely different. It was debatable whether she’d left him or he’d left her in the end; it had become bitterly apparent that they weren’t going to make it.

‘Hal … I’m sorry,’ Honey said. ‘I shouldn’t have pried.’

‘So why did you? What does it matter?’

She was near enough for him to hear her shallow breathing and smell the familiar scent of her shampoo.

‘Honestly? I don’t even know.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter at all, Hal. It’s just that sometimes I feel as if we know each other, and then I realise that we don’t really know each other at all.’

The forlorn note in her voice resonated with him.

‘Can I come in for coffee?’

She was too close not to touch. He stroked his fingers against the smoothness of her hair.

She didn’t reply to his question, just leaned her head against his hand a little.

‘It’s getting late,’ she said finally; softly. ‘I don’t think coffee’s a good idea.’

He knew he could push the point; that she’d probably change her mind if he asked her to, and in that moment, he wanted Honey to change her mind pretty badly. He didn’t want to think about driving fast cars anymore or how he should have been marrying Imogen next summer. He wanted to block it all out by pushing Honey down onto her mattress and losing himself in her curves. Her breathing wasn’t steady, and he could feel the warmth of her body a footstep away from him. Swallowing hard, he dipped his head, and he felt her slide her face sideways into his hand, moving away from his kiss just a fraction too slowly, letting his lips touch hers for the briefest hint before they settled on her cheek.

‘Goodnight Hal,’ she murmured close to his ear, letting him linger for a second before easing back. Accepting her decision with a sigh, he brushed his thumb longingly along the softness of her mouth and then turned away.

Honey cradled a mug of coffee in her hands, the heat from the steam warming her face in the dark lounge. Curled into the end of the sofa, she sat in the quiet room and tried to make some sense of the jumbled day.

She’d woken troubled, and Hal had turned her troubles into triumphs. Then the campaign to save the home had almost been derailed by Mimi and Lucille’s public disagreement. She’d taken steps to repair the damage over the course of the afternoon; she could only hope it was going to be enough.

And then there was Tash and Nell trying to push her towards some guy who sounded like Elvis, which was too random to even worry about amongst the bigger stuff she was trying to process. Like the fact Hal should have been getting married. He’d loved someone enough to ask them to marry him, and quite recently too. Was he still in love with her, whoever she was? Was that why he’d shut himself away? Was that why he pushed her away? But then, he hadn’t pushed her away this evening, had he?

If she’d have allowed him in, it wouldn’t have been for coffee. They’d have made for the bedroom, not the kitchen, and it would have no doubt been all of the things she’d hoped for the last time she’d invited him over her threshold. Turning him down tonight had been her heart’s decision, not her head’s. Her heart had said don’t. Don’t let him in. He’s too dark, too hard. He’s broken, and he’ll break you too.

Somehow, he’d cured her of her girl guide complex, her need to step in and make everything better.

Somehow he’d gone from being the man she thought she needed to the one man she couldn’t let close.

With the new day came new resolutions. She’d concentrate her efforts on the things that were within her control, and on the things that were the most pressing. Principally that meant getting the campaign back on track, and secondly it meant telling Tash and Nell in no uncertain terms that there would be no date with Elvis, nor anybody else. She’d allowed herself to get so whipped up by this ridiculous search for the elusive piano man that she’d tried to strong-arm Hal into sleeping with her – now that she knew about his own romantic woes she felt pretty shoddy about that. She’d tossed, she’d turned, and finally she’d wrestled him into the right box overnight. Hal was her neighbour, and hopefully he was her friend. Yes, there was a physical spark between them, but one that was best left to dwindle and fizzle out, all things considered.

Knocking on his door ready for work half an hour later, she was resolute.

‘Morning, Hal,’ she said, chipper when he opened his door, already wearing his sexy fisherman garb.

‘Honeysuckle,’ he said, cordially.

‘Ready to go?’ she asked gaily, although he clearly was.

Hal followed her down the steps onto the pavement. ‘Why are you being weird? Is it because of last night?’ he said, cutting straight to the chase. ‘Because for what it’s worth, you were totally right. The last place I’d have wanted to wake up this morning was in your bed.’

Honey stopped walking abruptly. ‘Well, that’s charming.’

‘I’m not a charming man, Honey. I’m an honest one. It was the right decision for both of us. Thank you for making it.’

The bus approached from the other end of the road and they took their places on the early morning commute, precluding any further discussion on the matter.

Mimi hobbled into the shop at around half past ten, supported by Billy and trailed by a lacklustre Lucille. A fragile truce had been settled on between the sisters over an unexpectedly excellent breakfast of Eggs Benedict and homemade blueberry muffins.

‘Mimi has acknowledged that she can, at times, be somewhat bossy,’ Billy said, in clear earshot of his beloved.

‘And Lucille has accepted that it might have been better not to tell porky pies,’ he added, earning himself a baleful look from the lady herself.

‘Good,’ Honey said. ‘Because there’s something I need to talk to you all about.’

Having ascertained that the shop was empty of customers, they all gathered around the counter.

‘I’ve been thinking about the protests,’ Honey said.

Lucille’s shoulders slumped. ‘I can’t believe it’s my fault that we’ve had to stop. I feel terrible.’

Mimi looked as if she might be about to agree, so Honey forged onwards. ‘That’s just what I wanted to talk to you about. Are you all free next Sunday?’

Billy’s eyes twinkled with mischief. ‘Tell us more, Honeysuckle. Tell us more.’

Hal couldn’t believe how much he loved being back in a kitchen again. He was an all-or-nothing sort of man, and he’d slammed the shutters down on cooking anything beyond toast since the accident.

As a chef he’d been avant garde, a kitchen alchemist; faced with the possibility of being average, he’d chosen instead to be nothing at all. His knives had been wrapped and stored away, and even the almost-physical ache in his fingers to cook had finally started to subside. But still, at night he dreamed of food. He’d become adept at closing down his thoughts during the day, but when he slept his brain ran amok.

Complicated dishes, beautiful creations, symphonies of ingredients that would make the toughest critic weep. He dreamed of people he used to know interspersed in his here and now, of Honey dining in his restaurant, of Imogen laughing at how the mighty had fallen to running the kitchen of an OAP home. He battled against sleep because he didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night with damp cheeks and a racing heart, and because he’d have to handle those hideous in-between moments just after waking before he remembered that the nightmare was real. Brand new pain every time.

It really was sheer hard work being Benedict Hallam. The gap between his two lives was too big a leap for any sane man to take. It would take a man with balls of steel to jump that chasm.