Love & Freedom

by Sue Moorcroft

  Finally, her head rolled and her shoulders bunched and fell on a huge sigh. ‘I should-shouldn’t have come to you, putting you in a situation where you’ll go all English and sacrifice your principles by not sending me to find a room somewhere. I’d better go.’ Her arms slackened, as if she truly did think that she was going to disengage herself and leave.

  Yeah, right. His own arms tightened like wire. ‘Listen,’ he murmured. ‘Can you hear that?’

  She tried to swallow her tears to listen, tilting her head. ‘What?’

  He laid his cheek against her hair. ‘It’s the sound of my “principles” getting counselling. They’ve just reached the bit where they’re having to face the fact that they’re not principles, but jealousy.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I truly respect the kind of guy you are–’

  ‘I’m the kind that needs to review his loyalties. I’ve been sitting here feeling like the King of all the Dumbasses for my possessive reaction when Stef turned up. I hung my anger on the truth about Robina because it was easier than admitting that I want to rewrite your history and erase Stef from it. I’m sorry. I’ve got over myself, now, and I know we have to cope with reality, not wishes.’

  She gave a watery gasp. Her cheek was turned against his chest, her head tucked comfortably beneath his chin. ‘But I do have way too much reality. It’s pretty challenging.’ She sniffed. ‘I don’t know what to do about Stef squatting in the bungalow for free when I’m paying good rent. I don’t even know how he got in. I came home and found him sitting there with a big grin, and when I told him to leave he said, “No way, babe! I’m here so we can work things out.” And all the time I was packing he kept saying it didn’t matter how many times I left him, I should face the fact that he wasn’t just going to go away.

  ‘I had no clue about British law, whether I should call the cops or get a lawyer. I just knew I didn’t want to spend the night with him.’

  He sighed inside, seeing the inevitability of it leading to Clarissa’s involvement and her very probably blaming him. ‘I suppose Clarissa needs to know, first.’

  ‘I didn’t even think of that.’ She sounded mortified. ‘I panicked, I guess. Yes, I’ll call Clarissa.’ She fished in her pocket, as well as she could whilst still hugged close against his body, as if to make the call right there and then.

  Finally, he told his arms that they could safely slacken; that Honor was OK and he had her safe. Kissing her head, he tugged the band gently from the half of her ponytail it was still clinging to, combing out her hair with his fingers and smoothing it behind her ears, down on to her shoulders, letting it run like threads of silk against his skin. ‘Take it easy on yourself, you don’t have to do it right now. I’ll speak to her for you, tomorrow. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Not since lunch.’

  ‘You need something, then. Ru’s here.’

  ‘Ru?’ She scrubbed at her face with her cuff. ‘Oh hi, Ru,’ she called, sheepishly, peeping around Martyn to where Ru was still slouched on the sofa at the far end of the apartment.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’ Ru sounded stiff and excluded.

  ‘No, stay and eat,’ Martyn said, easily. ‘Cheer Honor up while I organise food.’ Occupying himself with plates, bread and a big tub of his favourite Marks & Spencer pasta salad, he watched Honor trudge across the carpet and drop like a stone on to the sofa beside Ru, giving him a spontaneous hug. ‘I left my husband. Turns out he didn’t want to be left. He showed up.’

  Ru’s eyes grew round. ‘You’ve got a husband? An American guy came in the Teapot and I wondered if he was anything to do with you. He was talking with Mum for ages.’

  ‘Ohhhhhh shit. That sounds bad.’ Honor dropped her head against the sofa back and gave a sigh from right inside her soul. ‘Ru. There’s something I’ve got to tell you because I want you to hear it from me. It will probably be a shock.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  While Martyn moved around in the kitchen, giving them space, Honor told him her story and Ru stared at her as if she’d just told him she was the Queen of England. She ended, ‘So. I’m your half-sister.’

  His enormous brown eyes didn’t even blink.

  ‘I guess it’s a lot to take in.’ She wanted to hug him again but while that had seemed fine two minutes ago, her confession had created a gulf. She needed his reaction to act as a bridge. Labouring under his stare, she tried to fill the silence, answering all the questions he wasn’t asking. ‘I haven’t told your mom because I’m not sure she wants to know. She didn’t show any signs of liking me even before I hooked up with Martyn. Just because she gave birth to me didn’t guarantee she would like me, I knew that, but I was still disappointed by there not seeming to be any connection at all. She’s never tried to contact me, even though it would have been easy, through Dad, who’s still living in Hamilton Drives, so that should have given me a clue but …’ No reaction.

  ‘So that made me pretty cautious about identifying myself. And as I didn’t tell her, well, it made it tough to tell you. Even though I wanted to because you and me seemed to get along real well. I guess I never counted on meeting you and … caring. I thought Stef might have told her – or you – by now but maybe he doesn’t want to give me reasons not to go back to him. Not that there’s any chance, but he’s still hoping. Or maybe he’s keeping it up his sleeve in case he needs it.’

  Ru was like one of those creatures from a wildlife programme that think immobility is the same as invisibility.

  Honor took a fresh breath, then went on talking, about how it was to be brought up by her dad and grandmother and then her stepmother, Karen, about Jessamine and Zachary, trying to explain that she’d always felt a piece of her was missing or undefined and how that would be resolved by meeting the mother that had abandoned her when she was three weeks old.

  Finally, he reacted. ‘A real mum isn’t necessarily a good mum.’ It came out as a croak.

  She laid her hand on his arm and he didn’t snatch it away. Her chest ached with sadness. ‘I’ve come to realise that.’

  He gazed at her, blinking. ‘So what’s going to happen?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  Still talking, they drifted over to the high stools, eating just because Martyn put the food in front of them. Ru came up with questions, getting it straight in his mind who knew what about whom, and why. Tasting the relationships with his tongue, just to shake his head each time and pronounce, ‘Weird.’

  Honor kept blotting her eyes and felt ready to explode over the tangle of her life. With Stef squatting in her house, Martyn sitting across from her with so much remaining to be resolved, and Ru – her brother – staring at her as if wondering if she was for real.

  After eating, he became quieter and even when Martyn tossed him the book of passwords and dictated wildly silly status updates to his Twitter and Facebook pages for Ru to type in, he managed only faint smiles.

  Then he slapped shut the laptop, muttering, ‘I better go,’ and made for the front door, pausing only to shove his feet into dirty, untied running shoes before grabbing for the doorhandle.

  Jumping up to watch his flight, Honor called, ‘Ru! Are you going to tell her?’

  Ru didn’t pause. ‘Nope. Course not.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  From halfway down the iron stairs, Honor could see that Stef was sitting in the teagarden of the Teapot, staring down the street, just waiting.

  Obviously, he knew she hadn’t spent the night at the bungalow and was smart enough to know where she’d go. Tucking Martyn’s spare key in her purse and squaring her shoulders, she padded the rest of the way down to the street. As she approached, Stef pushed out the empty chair at his table with his foot. She sat, planting her elbows on the wooden top.

  He grinned. ‘Showdown time.’

  ‘Fine. Then I’ll shoot from the hip. You know what, Stef? It’s over.’

  He chose not to hear. ‘You ready to come home to Hamilton Drives?’

  A picture sw
am into her mind of her dad’s blue clapboard house. And in it her father. ‘I’ll be going back in a while – you know, to start divorce proceedings.’

  His tousled fair hair lifted in the wind. His eyes were hard. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  ‘It is.’

  Ru came out with his baseball hat on back-to-front and a tea towel tucked around his waist. He hesitated when he saw Honor. She smiled at him. ‘OK?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Could I get a coffee?’ She realised she’d phrased it as if she was in the States and wished she’d said, ‘Coffee, please,’ like the English, to show Stef how well she fit in.

  Ru looked from Honor to Stef.

  ‘For me, too,’ snapped Stef.

  They waited, in silence, for Ru to reappear with a round tray and two tall white mugs, a milk jug and sachets of sugar. ‘Thanks, Ru.’ Honor watched him through the door into the tearoom and caught sight of Robina looking at her. Robina smiled. She wasn’t smiling at Honor; it was just the kind of smile people give when their thoughts amuse them. But Honor still smiled back.

  Stef followed the direction of her gaze. ‘You know how weird she is, don’t you? She knows everything there is to know about your Englishman.’ He said the word Englishman as if it tasted bad. ‘She knows when he runs and where to intercept him on his route, all his social networking platforms and that he does web design. I’ll bet she has a scrapbook of his ads. Doesn’t it creep you out that she feels like that about him?’

  What was creeping her out was that he was talking about this right outside Robina’s tearoom. Keeping her eye out for Robina to appear, Honor added milk and sugar to her coffee and took a sip. ‘It’s certainly an awkward situation.’ She met his gaze steadily. ‘My life seems to be filled with them, right now. I have stuff to sort out and changes to make.’

  His brows snapped down. ‘Don’t you count me as one of those changes! I’m your husband. You made vows.’

  ‘I did,’ she admitted. ‘But I made those vows to a different Stefan Sontag and I don’t think even vows are designed to allow a woman’s husband to run wild while she just has to put up with the consequences. You’ve chosen a life I don’t want a part of.’ She shivered. ‘I curled up and died of humiliation, seeing you in the dock, and when they took you away to jail I felt disgust.’

  He dropped his eyes, fiddling with a tube of sugar. ‘It can be put in the past, Honor; Martyn Mayfair and all of my pranks. I’ll mend my ways, I swear. I’ll never make you feel humiliated or disgusted again.’ Suddenly, his eyes were tawny bright. ‘Our life is still waiting for us. We can go home and get our apartment back, put our lives back how they were. Only better.’

  ‘With neither of us having a job?’

  He scrabbled for arguments. ‘OK, we’ll start over, somewhere new.’ He looked less sure of this idea. ‘You still have all your licences, you can get a job, and maybe I’ll start my own business so my record won’t count against me with an employer.’

  ‘Doing what? You never got yourself a career or a skill, Stef. And we don’t have enough money to open up a diner.’ She fumbled her way to her feet before the tears of pity came and Stef thought she was weakening. ‘I hate that I’m pouring cold water over everything you offer. But, I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen.’

  He jumped up, screeching his chair back. ‘Then I’ll just have to make it happen, won’t I?’

  Martyn returned from his run, cooled down, stretched, and showered. Honor was out, so he picked up his phone and called Clarissa.

  ‘I thought your phone didn’t make outgoing calls to mine and that’s why I always call you,’ she greeted him.

  He wasn’t in the mood to be guilted. ‘Honor’s got a problem with the bungalow. She has a squatter.’

  A pause. Clarissa sounded guarded. ‘Squatter?’

  He hesitated, alerted by her uncharacteristically mild reaction. ‘You don’t sound shocked or horrified or outraged. I thought you’d go ballistic.’

  ‘I just–’ She seemed to be choosing her words. ‘Would the squatter be Honor’s husband, by any chance?’

  His heart gave a thud. ‘How did you know?’

  She sounded uncomfortable. ‘He was there when I called. About the lawns.’

  ‘In the bungalow?’

  ‘Um … outside.’

  He let a silence grow, hoping she’d fill it. She didn’t. ‘He’s inside now,’ he prompted, helpfully.

  ‘I didn’t let him in. Or not into the house.’ Clarissa sounded defensive.

  ‘So where did you let him into?’

  ‘He said that he’d cut the grass so I let him in the garage.’

  ‘And I suppose he found a window open at the back,’ Martyn finished, grimly. ‘And now he’s in, he’s refusing to get out.’

  Clarissa sighed. ‘Then, evidently, I’ve unintentionally caused a situation. But if he’s her husband–? Martyn, it’s obvious that you’ve got a thing about Honor, it’s been written on you all summer. But she’s married. I presume there’s been some issue, for her to have come here without her husband, but he’s here now, so he wants to patch things up. Don’t get involved! You know how I feel about people who interfere in other people’s marriages.’ Her voice tightened. ‘If I gave him access to the bungalow it was inadvertent but it’s probably for the best. I’m not going to apologise if it’s stopped you getting mixed up in their problems. And I can’t quite blame him for fighting to get his wife back. In fact,’ she ended, defiantly, ‘I applaud it.’

  Martyn took a deep breath. He counted to ten. He reminded himself that Clarissa was his mother and she loved him. And that it wasn’t long since her own marriage had ended and it had caused her enormous pain. ‘But Stef could be as mad as a box of frogs. You don’t know why she left him or what he did once he got Honor alone in that bungalow. So she’s moved in with me.’ He ended the call feeling he’d been as polite as he could be, under the circumstances.

  After Honor had gone – back to her fucking fancy, male-model boyfriend, presumably, Stef sat for a while, letting the white heat fade. It had seemed like a good idea, planting himself in her rented house, but it had backfired big time. He hadn’t thought it through. Underestimated Honor’s desire to keep distance between herself and him.

  Finally, he picked up the order check that Ru had left on the table and wandered into the tearoom, pausing inside the door and letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light. Ru, enveloped in a cloud of steam, was busy at the steel sinks with his back to the kitchen. Pink-hair lady was cutting crosses in baked potatoes and piling in cheese. Conveniently, Robina was closest to the counter.

  He walked soundlessly to the open flap, leaned in and touched her sleeve. When she glanced up from balancing little silver balls on whorls of frosting, he jerked his head and stepped back, so the others couldn’t see him.

  Robina followed him out. ‘All you need to do,’ he said, ‘is ring her when I give you the word. That OK?’

  Robina smiled like a mischievous child. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me why?’

  He made a conspiratorial face. ‘Honey, that would be no fun at all.’

  Paying her for the two cups of coffee, he left, wandering along The Butts, stopping and gazing into shop windows – many of which, he thought, needed the salt cleaning off of them – and then crossed to the other side of the road and dawdled like a tourist, turning his face up to the sun, which had decided to grace Eastingdean with its presence, watching white fluffy clouds drift by.

  When he reached the Starboard Walk shops he meandered, idly, into the car park, glancing around. And then up. Around the outbuildings and the dumpsters. Then he wandered out, looked at a few more shop windows, and rambled back off to the bungalow.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Honor had been staying with Martyn for several days. Having flown from the bungalow in a snit, she found herself with an ill-considered mish mash of possessions and a feeling of camping in someone else’s space.

  When her phone
rang, displaying the number of the Eastingdean Teapot, she answered cautiously. And was shocked to hear Robina’s voice. ‘Honor? I need you to come along and sign some crap the taxman wants, to cover the time you were working here.’

  ‘OK.’ Honor made her voice neutral. ‘I’ll be along this afternoon.’

  ‘I need you to do it now.’ Grudgingly, Robina explained. ‘Certain stuff has to be in on certain days, in this country, so I need to post it quickly. And the last thing I want is the taxman taking an interest in my business because of you.’

  ‘I guess I could come now.’ Martyn was out running.

  Honor entered the cool interior of the tearoom ten minutes later with mixed feelings. Some of the time she’d loved working in the sweet atmosphere of the Teapot; some of the time she’d been frustrated, put upon and frazzled. She looked around for Ru but saw only Aletta, patiently filling bowls with tube sachets of white and brown sugar.

  Robina and Sophie were staffing the kitchen. ‘Oh, you’re here.’ Robina snapped. ‘Sit down and I’ll get the paperwork.’

  Honor sat, listening to the slamming of drawers and cupboards.

  Then Sophie half-smiled in Honor’s direction, and followed. ‘But, Robbie,’ Honor heard. ‘I don’t know which forms you mean.’

  And Robina growling, ‘Those forms! I’ve seen them; they’re here somewhere.’

  It got noisier. Robina’s voice got louder, Sophie’s more plaintive.

  After twenty minutes, Honor lost patience and called through, ‘Call me again when you’ve found them.’

  Robina snapped, ‘I need you to wait. They can’t have gone far.’

  Fifteen more minutes crept by. Sophie came out and filled orders, looking upset and puzzled. Honor got tired of waiting. Then she left. When Robina had the forms to hand, she’d return.

  Apart from that tense little scene, Honor thought she was approaching pretty close to heaven. Martyn not having a shoot until the following week and Honor being currently unemployed gave them a lot of time. He took her walking on the Downs, the rolling moors just inland of the coast – he called this being ‘up on the Downs’, which made her giggle. They spent a day on the pier – riding four times on the roller coaster, rattling around higher than every other ride, swooping over the sea, screaming as they looped the loop. Well, she screamed, he laughed and called her wussy. They swam, wandered around The Lanes and watched a gay wedding in Kemptown. Martyn even went into Pretty Old with her and shamed Peggy into gifting her a glass inkwell that had come as part of a house clearance, because, he said, he was sure that Peggy must have ripped Honor off plenty in the past, her being an American.