The Piano Man Project (30 page)

‘Fucking Damien.’

Hal spoke at last, and the despair in his voice made Honey’s heart ache for him.

‘He sounds nice,’ Honey ventured, wondering how such a plain adjective could be applied to any relative of Hal’s. It certainly wasn’t a word that ever came to mind about the man himself.

Hal laughed harshly.

‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with her letter?’

Honey knew exactly what Hal meant. They were in the most awkward of positions. Half an hour back they were having sex, and now she needed to read him a letter from his ex-girlfriend. Was it a love letter? A Dear John letter, maybe?

Either way, it was going to be the most personal of letters, and she was the last person on earth who should read it to him. But then she was also the only person on earth who could, so they found themselves on uncharted territory.

‘I’ll read it to you.’ The words left Honey’s mouth before she’d had time to consider the implications. Purposely so, because if she let herself think about it, she wouldn’t have the courage to read it.

‘No fucking way,’ Hal said. ‘No fucking way.’

‘Who else is going to read it to you?’

‘No one. No one is going to read it, because I am not remotely fucking interested in anything she has to say.’

The fact that the letter had raised such anger in him told Honey otherwise. He was interested alright, and so was she, in a peverse, nigglingly self-destructive kind of way. She was emotionally invested, and she found that she needed to know how invested Imogen was too.

‘Hal, let me do this. It might be important. It must be, for your brother to go to the trouble of sending it.’

‘He’s doing it to get Imogen off his back. He said so himself. Nothing more, nothing less.’

‘Please, Hal. Let’s just get it over with, okay?’

He sighed heavily, and Honey accepted his lack of complaint as agreement. Reluctant and begrudging, but agreement nonetheless.

The small white envelope looked innocent enough, yet Honey still opened it as if it might contain a nail bomb. One that was definitely going to cause damage to the two people closest to the impact.

The paper crinkled in her fingers as she opened it out. More swooping cerise writing, pretty and feminine, probably a reflection of the woman who had written it. All of a sudden, she regretted pushing him to let her read it. Once inside her head, these words would stay with her forever.

‘You really don’t have to do this,’ he said, practically a whisper.

‘I know that,’ Honey said. ‘It’s okay. Just give me a moment.’

She sucked in a deep breath. She would do this.

she read, trying to keep her voice level and free of emotion, because these were not her emotions to feel.

Honey paused for a second, already hating the familiar tone. She wasn’t his cleaner; she wasn’t even sure if she was his friend. Was ‘neighbour with benefits’ an actual term?

Honey paused, winded by the details, the intimacy, and Hal dropped his head in his hands, hiding his expression from her.

Honey put her hand over her mouth as she read the last words, almost as if she wished she could push them all back in again and not even tell him that he’d received any mail that morning.

‘“Despite everything”,’ Hal muttered darkly, repeating Imogen’s sign-off. ‘She means
I still love you despite the fact that you can’t see anymore
. She always fucking blamed me, right from the moment I opened my eyes in the hospital.’

Honey was well and truly out of her depth. She couldn’t offer any real advice because she’d never even met the woman, but from the letter Imogen sounded like a petulant teenager who’d cobbled together a desperate plan to hold on to the fantasy lifestyle she’d mapped out for herself on Hal’s coattails.

‘Tea?’ she said inadequately, reaching for his cup.

Hal shook his head and huffed. ‘I need a proper drink.’

He’d long since drunk her out of her leftover Christmas spirit supplies. ‘There’s some wine left?’

‘Just fold the letter up and put it away,’ Hal said, ignoring her offer of wine and visibly pulling himself together. ‘Where’s my shirt? I should go.’

‘Hal, please. You don’t have to leave so quickly,’ Honey said, picking up his shirt from the floor and handing it to him.

‘I think we both know that I do,’ he said sourly, shrugging his shirt over his shoulders and pushing his arms roughly into the sleeves.

‘It’s okay. Honestly, it is,’ Honey said, feeling everything but okay.

‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ he said, sounding bone weary. ‘Of course it isn’t. Okay is the last thing this is. It’s fucked up and you know it. I shouldn’t be here.’

Honey cast around for the right thing to say. He was right. It was fucked up and crazy, but what did he mean by he shouldn’t be here? Was he already regretting tonight? Was he still in love with his ex-girlfriend? It was a huge, tangled mess, the kind of mess that Honey had no clue how to clean up. She watched him prepare to leave, feeling his emotional detachment and wishing she could turn the clock back.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly.

‘What do you have to be sorry for?’

She shrugged, agonised. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Then don’t be sorry,’ Hal said, monotone and low. ‘For what it is worth, I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry that I’ve dragged you into my shit.’

‘Don’t say you’re sorry either,’ she said urgently, laying her hand on his bicep and massaging because she needed to touch him, to offer him some sort of physical comfort in the absence of a hug. Hal was not a man given to hugging. She was grateful that he didn’t shrug her hand off. He let her touch him briefly, and then he laid his hand over hers to still the movement.

‘I’m monumentally fucking sorry that you’ve been dragged so far into my shit that you’ll never get clean again. Trust me Honey, no one spends time around me and comes out of it wearing rose-tinted glasses anymore.’

For a few seconds he bumped his fingers over her knuckles, like a mountain rescue worker warming up someone they’d found wandering on a remote moor.

‘Look,’ he sighed. ‘The fact is that you’re a nice girl, and I’m not a very nice man. I emotionally manipulated you into asking me over here tonight, played the only card I had, the poor lonely drunk on his birthday. I’m not proud of it, and if I do it again, slam the door in my stupid, sorry face, okay?’

‘What if I want you to?’ Honey couldn’t hide the thick sound of tears in her throat. ‘What if I like you best of all in those moments when, for whatever reason, you let me in?’

He was fully dressed now and in the jumpy, agitated state of a cheating husband keen to flee the bed of his lover. It left her at a loss, not knowing how to feel or react. Too many emotions knocked around in her chest, fighting for sovereignty. She was angry; with him for leaving, with herself for being needy enough to want him to stay, with Imogen for writing the letter and laying out a bridge for Hal to cross or not cross. She was wistful; already missing the skyrocket feeling of being in his arms. And she was hurting; for herself, yes, but she was also hurting for him. Hal cut a lonesome figure as he stood.

‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ He shrugged apologetically.

And with that, anger won out, because it offered her the most protection from his awkward discomfort.

‘How about you say what you’re really thinking, Hal? Or shall I save you the bother? You’re grateful and all that for dinner and a birthday fumble on the sofa, but now you’ve had a better offer so you’ll be on your way.’

Her outburst earned her nothing but his silence. He seemed about to say something, and then he said nothing at all and walked out of her flat, closing the door softly behind him.

Hal lay flat on his back, welcoming the numbness afforded to him by the whisky he’d drunk straight from the bottle as soon as he’d crossed his own threshold. He’d always known that life would catch up with him sooner or later, but he hadn’t counted on it crashing back in and flattening Honey as well as himself. Bloody Imogen. She’d been his everything, and her letter had caused him all kinds of pain. How could she do this now? How could she come back and lay out their future in a few simple words.
Hire a chef
. Did she even know him at all? Didn’t she understand how excruciating it would be for him to own a restaurant and not run his own kitchen? She’d clearly assumed him incapable of taking it on himself, and maybe he was, but was that her decision to make? He didn’t want to trade on his past reputation for the sake of hanging on to a lifestyle that no longer had any meaning to him. Life in general had precious little meaning, but these last few days he’d allowed a few chinks of light into the darkness. He’d found moments of hope teaching Skinny Steve in the kitchens at the home, he’d found moments of laughter listening to Honey regale her haphazard life through his door, and tonight on Honey’s sofa he’d felt like a whole man again for the first time in a long time. And then, the letter. Listening to the woman he’d just had sex with read a letter from the woman he’d planned to marry had screwed him up on just about every level. He hated himself for letting Honey read it to him. It had been selfish and unkind, yet he’d allowed it to happen because he’d been desperate to hear it. His needs over hers. An orgasm in exchange for a clerical favour. It hadn’t been a fair deal.