The Piano Man Project (37 page)

‘It’s not you who needs to apologise,’ she said. ‘It’s me. I was a silly old fool not to see you sooner.’

Mimi hated the fact that time obviously wasn’t on Ernie’s side. What had she been thinking of? She was thoroughly ashamed of herself.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you both yesterday on the news,’ he smiled. ‘You first, Lucille, and then of course you, Mimi. I’d have known you anywhere.’

‘You both look like our mother,’ Lucille said.

Ernie’s face turned wistful. ‘I’ve never looked like anyone else before.’

‘Two peas in a pod,’ Lucille smiled, pouring them all more tea.

‘I came to give you something,’ Ernie said, looking around for Carol, who’d tactfully taken a seat across the other side of the conservatory with a magazine. She caught his eye and crossed to hand him a file from a bag on the back of his chair. Once she’d faded away again, he pushed the file into Lucille’s hands.

‘What is it?’ she asked, looking down at the beige file and wishing she had her glasses with her.

‘It’s my savings. I want you two to have them.’

‘Ernie, no,’ Mimi said, agonised. ‘Please, we don’t want your money. Let’s just all have another cup of tea, and we’ll meet up again. We can do it every week, can’t we, Lucille?’

She turned to her sister for back-up, and Lucille nodded.

‘Of course we can.’

Ernie sighed. ‘I’ve known I had two sisters for many, many years. Dozens of birthdays and Christmases without being able to give you anything. This is for all of those years.’

‘You have nothing to make up for,’ Lucille rushed. ‘If only we’d known about you, Ernie, things would have been so different.’

‘It’s no one’s fault, don’t upset yourself,’ he said, squeezing her fingers gently. ‘We’re here now, and I won’t take no for an answer about the money.’

‘How about we say we’ll talk about it another time?’ Mimi tried, but he shook his head.

‘I’ve already been to the bank this morning.’

Lucille knew that the fact that Ernie was out of the house at all was a rare thing. He must really feel strongly to have visited the bank too.

‘What’s going on, Ernie?’

His eyes lit with mischief that made him look more like Mimi than ever.

‘I beat Mick Jagger.’

Both of his sisters frowned.

‘And Jamie Oliver.’

Lucille looked down at the folder, not getting it.

Ernie nodded towards it, his expression proud.

‘There’s enough in there to buy this place twice over.’

Mimi and Lucille gasped.

‘How on earth …?’ Mimi managed.

Ernie looked as gleeful as a dying man can look.

‘I play poker online,’ he whispered his secret with wide, laughing eyes. ‘Against young hotshots in Vegas, all from the comfort of my own living room.’

‘No,’ Lucille laughed, shocked. ‘I can’t believe it, how exciting!’

‘Lord, don’t tell Billy you can do things like that,’ Mimi muttered, shaking her head in amazement.

‘I want you to buy this place with my winnings,’ Ernie said. ‘I want to buy the roof over my sisters’ heads.’

Both Lucille and Mimi were rendered temporarily speechless by emotion.

‘You’re the best big brother I’ve ever had,’ Lucille said, wiping a tear from her cheek with the hankie Ernie produced.

‘
We’ve
ever had,’ Mimi corrected.

‘That’s settled then.’ Ernie nodded, pleased. ‘I never did like The Rolling Stones.’

It came as a shock to Honey to realise that life carried on regardless and she was still expected to take her part in it. Where was the ‘stop the world, I want to get off’ button when you needed it?

The shop still needed to be opened. Tash and Nell still needed to be her best friends and make a fuss, feeding her up even though food was just stuff she found hard to swallow. The sun still came up, the buses still ran, and amazingly enough, her legs still worked and words seemed to come out of her mouth in roughly the right order. How could that be, without Hal?

News of his expected return to the London restaurant scene scattered the papers, and there was talk of sightings of him in gossip columns. A vague shot that might have been any man in a beanie hat and dark glasses emerged, an immaculate Imogen clinging to his arm. Honey pored over it all, trying to piece together the stranger in the public eye with the man she’d had all to herself for a few precious weeks.

‘She looks a class-A bitch,’ Tash said, twisting the magazine around her way on the coffee shop table and squinting at it. ‘Is it even him?’

Honey flipped it shut and shook her head. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘His loss.’

Honey looked listlessly out of the window at the rain. It wasn’t Hal’s loss. It was hers. She’d lost her peace of mind, along with her stupid, feckless heart. Romance movies and novels hadn’t prepared her for the fact that the hero sometimes royally screws up the happy ending. Or maybe it was just that Hal was never her happy ending to have. Either way, she was never going to the cinema again, unless it was to watch a psycho thriller where they all died in the end and no one expected to waltz happily into the sunset.

‘Did you give Christian my number? He called me yesterday,’ Honey said.

Tash licked hot chocolate froth from her spoon.

‘Good. Straight back on the bike, it’s the only way.’

‘I told him the truth.’

‘Which is that you’ve been pissed on from a great height by an almighty cock and yes, you’d love to go on a date with him because he’s handsome and kind. That’s what you told him, right?’

Honey looked at Tash levelly across the table. ‘You know that isn’t what I said.’

‘It’s been a week and he hasn’t been in touch, Honey. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back.’

She wasn’t quite ready for Tash’s tough love approach.

‘A week. Seven days. It’s not enough, Tash. I need more time.’

Tash rolled her eyes. ‘God made the world in seven days. You probably haven’t even made your bloody bed.’

‘It’s an unfair comparison,’ Honey muttered.

‘Yeah. You’re real. And you’re here, and this is your life.’ Tash opened the magazine and jabbed her finger at the picture. ‘And he’s there, and that’s his life.’

She closed the magazine, dropped it in a nearby bin, and stood up.

‘Come on. Let’s go get drunk.’

‘I can’t believe you guys are my new bosses,’ Honey smiled weakly at Lucille as she placed a china cup and saucer down on the counter. ‘Will you be making many big changes?’

‘Well,’ Lucille said, her blue eyes dancing around the shop. ‘I thought we might move the books over into the other corner.’

Honey smiled and sipped her tea. ‘I think I can live with that.’

They looked up as Billy strolled over to the counter, a black shirt in his hand. He held it against himself and looked at them for approval.

‘Is it a bit dark for you?’ Honey ventured, glancing down at Billy’s mustard-yellow drainpipes.

‘I thought I’d try something dark and mysterious to woo Mimi,’ he said, striking a pose. ‘Will it work?’

Honey did that thing with her face formerly known as smiling and hoped it fooled her friends.

‘Ring it up then,’ he said, squinting at the price tag. ‘She’s worth two quid.’

Honey folded the shirt and slid it into a carrier for Billy, who added it to another already in his hand.

‘Buy her flowers.’

‘Irises are her favourites,’ Lucille said, arranging necklaces artfully on the bust stand.

‘And chocolates too,’ Honey added. ‘Mimi loves chocolates.’

Billy grinned and pretended to make notes on his hand.

‘Noted, ladies. I shall retire to my chamber to make plans.’

He bowed low with a courtly flourish of his hand and tipped his imaginary hat on the way out.

As it happened, Billy didn’t retire to his chamber. Looking furtive, he sidled around the back of the home and down the path to the tree line at the bottom of the garden, and then through them to the big old shed in the corner. It had long since been his unofficial lair, and over the years he’d added various cast-out bits and bobs to make it a comfortable place to hide out. A couple of old reclining armchairs lifted from a bunch put outside because they didn’t meet new fire regulations. A sideboard he’d resurrected from the dead, and a much-prized radio that had kept him company on many an afternoon. For all his gregarious nature, Billy sometimes craved a couple of hours’ peace and quiet, and here in the old potting shed was where he found it.

Pushing the door open, he stepped inside and put the morning paper down on the sideboard.

‘At ease, Hal. It’s only me.’

Honey heaved her tired body over the threshold of the house later that evening, slamming the door against the rain and looking towards Hal’s front door rather than her own. Some habits were hard to break.

‘Hal?’ she called out his name even though she knew perfectly well that he wasn’t there. Still bundled up in her coat and scarf, Honey walked to his door and laid a hand on it.

‘It’s been a long, grey day out there today, Hal,’ she said, world weary. Was it really any different because he wasn’t on the other side of the door? She’d become well accustomed to one-sided conversations, and so well acquainted with the floor outside his flat that it was a wonder there wasn’t a groove shaped like her backside worn into the Minton tiles.

Sliding down into her spot, she wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them, shivering. She hadn’t felt properly warm since the day he’d left; there was a chill in her bones that had nothing to do with the weather.

‘Can you believe Ernie bought the home in the end?’ she said, letting her weight sag against his door.

‘I’m so glad for Lucille and Mimi. Well, for all of the residents of course, but them especially. I don’t think Lucille has said a sentence that didn’t include Ernie’s name ever since.’ The tiniest of smiles touched her lips at the thought of Mimi and Lucille as the new bosses of the home. She was pretty sure her job was safe for as long as she wanted it, although Mimi and Lucille had already floated other possibilities too.

‘They asked me today if I’d think about taking over Christopher’s old job,’ she said, imagining what Hal would have thought had he really been sitting on the other side of the door. Something involving quite a lot of swear words, no doubt.

‘I missed you today,’ she whispered. ‘I missed you this morning when I opened my eyes. I missed you on the bus to work, and again on the way home just now. When will it stop, Hal?’

The worst thing was that she wasn’t even sure she wanted it to stop, because that would mean she was moving on, and the idea of moving from him hurt like a shard of glass lodged in her heart. She closed her eyes and laid her head against the door, ignoring the tear that seeped through her lashes and slid down her cheek.

A noise, a rustling.
Honey dashed her hands hurriedly over her cheeks, her heart a swooping skylark behind her ribs and then a stone falling into her boots when she realised the sounds were outside on the street rather than behind Hal’s door. Voices easily recognised as Nell and Tash’s floated around the hall, snippets of concerned conversation as they knocked on the door and called out her name. Honey didn’t reply. She didn’t have the energy.

‘Hang on,’ she heard Nell say. ‘I think I’ve still got a key.’

‘Why have you got a key and I haven’t?’

‘Maybe because she trusts me not to throw wild parties in her flat when she goes away?’ Nell said, and a few seconds later she must have found the key, because they pushed the door open.

‘Bloody rain,’ Tash grumbled, fighting with her brolly, and then jumped back when she spotted Honey huddled by Hal’s door.

‘Shit, Hon, you nearly gave me a sodding heart attack!’

Nell moved across the lamplit lobby and dropped onto her haunches beside Honey, concern all over her pretty face.

‘What are you doing out here, babes?’ She smoothed her hand over Honey’s hair.

Honey shook her head, and shrugged her shoulders, fresh tears gathering in her eyes.

‘Talking to Hal,’ she said.

Nell glanced up quickly at Tash, who frowned and moved around to sit beside Honey on the floor.

‘He’s not in there, Hon. You know that, right?’

Honey nodded. ‘He hardly ever used to answer me anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s not that different now. I just …’ She halted mid-sentence to swallow the painful lump in her throat. ‘I just feel close to him here.’

Nell slid her slender frame in on Honey’s other side.

‘Then we’ll sit with you for a while. If that’s okay?’

Tash rustled in her huge suede bag and produced a bottle of wine.

‘We were kind of planning on drinking this out of glasses like normal people, but hey, the floor works for me.’ She unscrewed the cap and took a drink, then passed the bottle along the row.

Honey accepted the cool bottle with a deep sigh and tipped it to her lips. Would it be wrong to drink the lot in the hope of oblivion?

‘What am I going to do?’ she said, and Nell rubbed her arm.

‘You’re going to do exactly what you always do. Get up. Go to work. Keep breathing. It’s all you can do, Honey, and then one day you’ll go to bed and realise you didn’t think about him at all.’

‘I think about him all the time,’ Honey whispered, taking a second drink and then passing the bottle to Nell. ‘Everything reminds me of him. He’s everything I’d say I don’t want in a man, and yet I love him so much that I feel as if someone has scooped my heart out and put it back in the wrong way round,’ she said, her little girl lost voice echoing around the quiet lobby. ‘It hurts, right here.’ She put her hand over her heart, and leaned her head on Tash’s shoulder. ‘In fact, it hurts everywhere. I ache so much that my bones feel too heavy to get out of the bed in the morning.’

‘I’d like to smash that handsome face of his in,’ Tash muttered viciously. ‘He might be a hotshot celebrity, but he doesn’t deserve your tears.’

‘I mustn’t have known him at all,’ Honey said, trying to understand how the solitary man who’d lived here could be a man who courted celebrity, who’d returned to his life again.

What had this interlude been to him? A holiday from reality, and she his holiday romance? She knew better than to expect him to write. He’d disappeared from her life as quickly as he’d appeared; gone in a blink, only this time he’d taken her heart with him.