Love & Freedom (Choc Lit)

by Moorcroft, Sue

  Much of her sunburn recovery time had been spent with her guidebook, learning that the city of Brighton and Hove – ‘London-by-the-sea’ – was made up of Brighton, Hove, and over thirty other areas, including Rottingdean, Saltdean and Eastingdean on its edge. But it felt like no other city, with the waves down below the cliff as they stopped-and-started their way along the coast road.

  Then came Brighton Marina, with twinkling rows of boats and cubed apartment buildings and beyond it shone a great white structure, projecting into the waves and bearing a huge sign, Brighton Pier. Ringing the bell for the driver to stop, she scooted down the twisting metal stairs and jumped from the bus.

  Her guidebook’s glossy photographs of the pier hadn’t prepared her for its size, running out to sea like an ornately fenced runway decorated with a series of white-iced cakes and silver pepper pots and, bizarrely, a colourful, full-sized, fun fair of carousels and roller coasters perched on the end. Skittish green waves slapped and tickled the great legs. For several minutes she held back her hair in the breeze and drank in the grandeur, and the confusion of people, laughing, calling, shading their eyes, streaming in and streaming out.

  But her severance pay was going to melt like the ice cream clutched by the nearby squealing children if she didn’t earn something to help it along, and so she turned her back and took out her map.

  She was unprepared for the number of people in Brighton, surging away from the shore across the coast road under strings of lights and old-fashioned lampposts, jostling along the sidewalks – pavements, she must remember. The bustling streets of fabulous white Regency buildings, cheek-by-jowl with art-deco architecture and modern shopping centres, climbing inland from the sea, were a lot different to the sedate streets of Hamilton Drives.

  She bought a cheap, plasticky, non-contract cell phone with £20 of air time, then followed her map to the first employment agency on her list, taking only minutes to establish it as the wrong kind of agency – no fun, temp jobs there, just a condescending woman who didn’t understand why Honor wouldn’t want to use her degree or her qualifications as a financial advisor.

  After eating a sandwich and drinking English tea – hotter and stronger than she remembered – by the statue of naked children cavorting with dolphins in Brighton Square, she allowed her feet to wander into the Lanes, part of the original village of Brighton left standing when the French burned the rest down in a raid in 1514. The streets were only a few feet across and, despite the milling tourists shouting to one another and taking photos with their phones, Honor could imagine herself back in the sixteenth century, when the walls had never seen their current bright white coats and the air was redolent of horse, hawkers and whores.

  But, brought back to her twenty-first century self by her reflection in the window of a shop full of bright, stretchy dresses and glittery tops, she frowned to see that her grey T-shirt and blue jeans made her stand out in the throng of summer tourists like a pigeon in a city full of parrots.

  Twenty minutes later she emerged from the shop, not so much a parrot as a glorious bird of paradise in a short, black, stretchy dress shot with gold, a rainbow-striped shrug tied between her breasts – loosely in deference to the remains of her sunburn – and gold gladiator sandals. Her hair swung from a band of multi-coloured sequins and mini chandeliers of black iridescent beads hung from each ear.

  Jeans and T-shirt crammed into her backpack, she swung along to the next agency and in through the glass doors, talking brightly, as she approached a man with curly hair and blue eyes. ‘Hi! I’m looking for temp work. Clubs, restaurants or shops would be good. Offices and boring stuff – bad.’

  He invited her to the seat in front of his desk. ‘I’m Aaron. I can help you. We have temp jobs opening all the time.’

  ‘That’s great. I’m depending on you.’

  ‘Then I’d better not let you down.’ Responding to her flirtatiousness by giving her his full attention, he whizzed through her details, hopping his cursor about his computer screen. ‘Qualifications?’

  Honor shrugged. ‘I dropped out.’

  He looked unsure. ‘So … none?’

  ‘None.’ She dismissed her degree in History from American University, Washington DC and her Series 7, 63 and 66 licences from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. ‘But a lot of experience of waiting table.’ She’d worked in restaurants all through school, her dad wanting her to learn financial responsibility and Karen being intent on her contributing to her keep. ‘Available for work straight away, flexible hours and I have a UK passport.’

  ‘Great!’ he beamed. ‘And a UK bank account?’

  She hesitated. ‘No.’

  ‘Ah. We can’t pay you without a UK bank account.’

  Her smile faded. ‘I’ll take cash.’

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t handle it.’ His pushed his computer mouse aside.

  ‘Not even for an admin fee?’

  His blue eyes were sympathetic. ‘Just not at all, I’m afraid. We don’t hold cash in the office. I’ll leave your registration as “to be completed” and if you can get a bank account opened, just come back.’

  She’d hardly been walking for five minutes when her brand new mobile phone rang, making her jump. ‘Hello, this is Aaron – from the agency? Listen, I’m not really allowed to do this–’

  ‘Yes?’ Honor prompted, hopeful that he was going to say he knew how to get her a bank account.

  ‘But I wondered whether you’d like to be shown a couple of the clubs, here in Brighton, where the jobs don’t come through the agency. Maybe tonight?’

  She wanted a job but she hesitated over translating the social conventions from English to American. ‘Like a date?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I just thought … it can’t be any fun to be the new girl in town and I can introduce you to some of my friends …’

  ‘Casual?’ she suggested.

  He sounded relieved. ‘Absolutely.’ Then, when they’d arranged to meet near the pier, his voice dropped and he began to gabble. ‘Um, nine o’clock-see-you-there.’ The line went dead. Maybe his supervisor had come along.

  Honor was pleased to discover that the first bank she tried, the HSBC, was perfectly willing to open a UK account. It just took a whole lot of passport photocopying and a few pounds per month service charge. She left feeling that she’d ticked the tiresome tasks on today’s To Do list and could enjoy herself with a clear conscience.

  The breeze was waiting for her on the seafront, teasing free her hair as she checked carefully for traffic coming on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. Joining the stream of pedestrians chattering their way across to the pier, she passed the food kiosks under a leaded roof like a layer from a pagoda. She took her time exploring the mighty structure, the shops and the bars, gazing out at the fire-destroyed West Pier further along the beach, a sulking black skeleton, derelict and disconnected from the shore. The two piers were like a study in life and death.

  She walked between the banks of games machines in the arcade and watched carousels with their spinning cargo of laughing people. When she reached the roller coaster’s rattling roar she looked back to marvel at how far she was from the shore. It was a bizarre place for a fun fair.

  After several hours, she followed her nose and her empty stomach to a kiosk selling fish and chips. She hadn’t eaten English fish and chips since her last trip to England, a five-day break with Stef, who had decided London sucked, to Honor’s bitter disappointment, calling it ‘fat-red-bus-ugly-black-cab city’. He saw no point visiting Buckingham Palace if he couldn’t take tea with the Queen or even her fancy-assed soldiers and felt stupid outside Westminster ‘tube station’ – which he insisted on calling the subway – when he demanded, ‘So where’s Big Ben?’ and a laughing stranger pointed straight up, to where the enormous clock tower hung over them.

  Growing up, family vacations had made London a place to be consumed, inhaled, embraced, with its old bridges and gargoyles glaring from the architecture. Her da
d had shared with Honor not only a love of English history but also of the people, who seemed to know that the family name, Lefevre, was pronounced ‘Luh-fay’ and not ‘Luh-feev-uh’, as was the tendency at home. Garvin Lefevre liked the English a lot.

  Which, presumably, was how she’d ended up with an English mother.

  She sighed, trying not to miss him, watching the seagulls balancing on the wind, thinking of his email that she’d received that morning:

  Honor,

  I know you’re angry right now, but you also know that running away never solved a thing. Why don’t you come home? I’ve seen Stef and he asked me to give you a message. Here it is:

  ‘Aw, babe, gimmee a BREAK!’

  This isn’t what you are going to want to hear but I do think you ought to consider at least contacting him.

  Honor’s eyes followed a white-and-grey gull as it landed on the curlicued rail, pausing with wings outspread then folding them neatly. ‘Thing is,’ she told the gull, refusing to be spooked by its expressionless black eye and businesslike yellow beak, ‘they think that I’ll go back and do what’s right.’

  But those days were done.

  When she finally wandered back to the entrance through the fading daylight, the pier sparkling under its night-time net of lights, she’d begun to wish her arrangement to meet Aaron undone. She scarcely knew the guy and her conscience was twanging. His employers wouldn’t be pleased if they knew he was moonlighting at finding people jobs.

  Hugging herself against the increasingly frigid evening she was no longer even certain what he looked like. Very ordinary, maybe, with mousey curls. Clean shaven …

  ‘By the time I got here, I was convinced you wouldn’t show up.’

  Honor jumped. Aaron was grinning before her, saved from ordinariness by wide-open blue eyes. And quite tall. She thought suddenly of Martyn Mayfair – no, that was tall. ‘I brought some friends along.’ He introduced two couples in a rapid-fire burst of names that she couldn’t possibly remember and they gathered around with friendly smiles and began to walk, chattering about America, holidays at Disneyland, cousins in Texas.

  Honor was grateful to Aaron for providing safety in numbers. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A venue called Ali Spangles. You’ll love it,’ said a girl wearing a cute trilby hat.

  ‘It’s really cool,’ added the other.

  It seemed a long walk before they entered the club up six steps and a black passageway sprinkled with star-like lights. She tried not to mind that her sandals kind of stuck to the floor. Electronic dance music blared. With a shout of, ‘Going to dance!’ the two girls straight away thrust themselves through the crowd towards the dance floor, their men in train.

  Honor watched them go, wondering. Aaron bought her a drink but was just standing there, quiet. She made an attempt to re-establish the dialogue. ‘So – you like this club?’

  His gaze quartered the room. ‘I come a lot.’

  ‘Do you dance?’

  He glanced at her. ‘No, sorry.’

  Honor began to revise her opinion of the manners of Englishmen.

  His gaze continued its methodical path. Then his face lit up. ‘Come on, there’s the guy I want you to meet.’ He tugged her across the room as if he were a child and she his balloon bobbing behind, until he reached a squat, dark man with other men standing either side. ‘Jermaine! How’s it going, man?’

  Jermaine nodded. He looked like the local gangster, cool as hell in his black shirt and jacket and his entourage taking a respectful step back because he’d entered a conversation. ‘Good. You got some business?’

  Aaron’s hand tightened around Honor’s fingers as she began to think about freeing herself. ‘My friend here wants work waiting on tables.’

  ‘I could help with that,’ nodded Jermaine, looking at Honor.

  ‘She’s American and can’t get a bank account, so–’

  ‘I got one this afternoon,’ Honor put in.

  A frown clanged down over Jermaine’s eyes. He turned to Aaron. ‘She got one this afternoon,’ he repeated, icily. The entourage stepped closer.

  Aaron glared at Honor. ‘You never told me!’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  He put his lips against her ear. ‘Listen, Jermaine owns three clubs and employs a lot of people. Know what I mean?’

  ‘I don’t think I want to know.’ Anxiety stiffened her voice.

  Aaron’s anger faded and he snorted a laugh. ‘I don’t know what you’re imagining – but Jermaine has jobs for waitresses who would prefer to be paid in cash.’

  ‘Ah.’ Honor finally got it. ‘Without troubling the tax authorities.’

  He winked. ‘You didn’t hear that from me.’

  ‘No, not precisely.’ She tweaked her hand free, smiling politely at Jermaine. ‘Goodnight.’ And turned to wriggle back through the throng.

  Aaron caught up with her at the door. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? You made me look a bloody fool.’

  ‘I bloody guess I did.’ She knew she hadn’t popped the ‘bloody’ in the right place. Cursing in English took practice and she was upset. ‘But you offered to show me around not hawk me around. You get a nice commission off that guy?’ This time, when she stalked away, Aaron didn’t follow. She paused outside, shivering, to drag on jeans and socks under her dress, her T-shirt over it, and change into tennis shoes.

  Shoving her lovely gold gladiator sandals in her backpack, she set off to find a taxi rank, jogging gently beside the traffic along the sea front under the strings of lights, chanting under her breath, ‘Honor, you will not be so gullible. You will wise up. Just because they speak English doesn’t mean they’re not foreigners.’

  England wasn’t perfect.

  Chapter Five

  She slept badly, frustrated that she’d got herself into a fix and angry that Aaron, even if only as Jermaine’s flunkey, was apparently prepared to make a quick buck out of exploiting those without the right paperwork.

  At seven, she abandoned the quest for sleep and checked her email. Her smile at seeing a message from her sister turned to a frown when she saw the subject line: A message from Stef

  Hi Honor,

  I saw Stef’s dad, Will, and he gave me a message for you. He says, please won’t you go and talk to Stef? xxx

  Honor clicked reply.

  Hiya Jessie,

  Thanks for trying to help and please tell Will that I’m sorry – but I said everything I need to say to Stef. And Stef knows it.

  She signed out of her email account quickly, in case Jess was up late in her chaotic bedroom with her latest Lord & Taylor purchases spilling everywhere, and came up with something else Honor didn’t want to hear.

  The English weather had decided on sun this morning, falling in a tempting patch on the corner of the front patio near the house. She dragged the wooden lounger into its warmth. Such early sun wasn’t hot enough to bother her recent burns so she wasn’t risking another self-inflicted dermabrasion. Drinking coffee and eating one of the bananas bought on the rain-curtailed trip into Rottingdean, she watched the glitter of the ocean through the gaps in the early traffic.

  She was feeling pleasantly relaxed when she heard rapid footsteps and Martyn Mayfair appeared in the drive below in running gear, long strides quickly covering the ground between the gateway and the steps. She froze. Ouch! The wet T-shirt episode.

  Before she could escape, he reappeared right in front of her, almost tripping over the splayed wooden legs of the lounger. ‘Hell!’ His breath was coming just about quickly enough to show he’d been running. ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘I rented the place.’ She forced herself to speak calmly, thinking hard about not thinking about wet T-shirts.

  He smiled. ‘Sorry – I suppose I expected you to be indoors. Clarissa sent me to see if you’re over the sunburn.’

  ‘Boy. Does she always take her landlady act so seriously?’

  He shifted from leg to leg, keeping his muscles warm. ‘How
are landladies meant to act?’

  She considered. ‘Aloof.’

  ‘In Eastingdean? You must be joking. Nobody’s aloof in case they miss something interesting. So, you’re enjoying the better weather?’

  ‘Much better than the rai–’ She faltered.

  ‘Yeah, the rain. Probably best to forget about the last time it rained.’ He bounced on the thick soles of his running shoes, fiddling with his watch, and she was certain it was to hide the laughter in his dark eyes.

  But if he was prepared to pretend amnesia, then she was glad to do the same. ‘I saw a lot of runners on the Undercliff Walk, yesterday. Looks great to run by the ocean on such a lovely morning.’

  ‘It is, I do it most days. Want to run with me?’ He kept his legs moving, his denim-blue sports pants moulding and clinging to well-muscled thighs.

  She sat up, exhilarated by the idea of a run. ‘Will you wait, while I put on my running gear?’

  ‘Sunblock would be good, too. This is for you, by the way.’ He took out a small white envelope. ‘When you sent the money for the groceries, you overpaid by ten pounds.’

  ‘Oh.’ She flushed. ‘I thought I ought to include something for your trouble. Don’t you do that, here?’

  His eyes danced. ‘We don’t tip friends – but thanks. You get changed and I’ll jog around out here to keep warm.’

  She ran indoors, dropping the envelope in the kitchen. She couldn’t make him take a tip if he didn’t want it but she wished he would.

  Pulling on sweatpants and a long-sleeved sweatshirt and slathering her face and neck with sun block, she hooked on a navy-blue New York Yankees baseball cap, swinging her hair in a ponytail through the gap at the back. When she stepped outside he was jogging up the terrace steps, looking cool and breathing evenly.