Love & Freedom

by Sue Moorcroft

  ‘Not that much,’ was Peggy’s defence, ‘because she’s not completely American.’ But she chuckled and wrapped up the pretty inkwell for Honor. It stood on a windowsill in Martyn’s bedroom, collecting rainbows from the sunlight.

  They ran together a couple of times, although he still took most morning runs on his own, harder, faster and further than Honor could manage.

  They made love. A lot. In his bed, on the floor, on the sofa, in the pool of sunlight that came through the French doors in his room – also harder, faster and further than Honor had before. But she kept up with that OK. He made her feel so hot she thought she might melt.

  Sometimes they then scrunched up together in the big corner bath, soaping each others’ bodies and exchanging stories from their lives.

  What they didn’t do was face up to reality.

  Honor knew she had to – and soon. Using Martyn’s computer because she’d left hers when she’d packed so haphazardly at the bungalow, she’d just received an email from Jessamine. Is Stef still there? Are you OK? I miss you. Dad’s worried – he’s about ready to get on a plane to England.

  She responded, Tell Dad not to worry. I’ll be back for a while, soon, and I’m guessing if I go home then Stef will surely follow.

  She gave a huge sigh. Martyn sat down on the sofa beside her, swooped her up and arranged her on his lap, kissing her cheekbones. ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Oh, you know. My sister emailed. My dad’s worried. And I know I have to go home soon and deal with stuff.’ She let her head settle back into the crook of his neck. ‘I’m getting my head around it.’

  His warm arms tightened as if he didn’t want her to go, even as he said, ‘I suppose so.’

  She fiddled with the laptop, shinily black, running her fingers around the keys. ‘I want to see Ru before I go. I know he was freaked by what I told him and I need to know he’s going to be OK in the end.’

  ‘Text him.’

  ‘Hm.’ She drew more patterns. ‘It’s Thursday but I don’t feel like going to self-defence class. And I’m kind of hoping that Ru doesn’t need it any more.’

  ‘So invite him for fish and chips. I’m sure he’ll take that bait.’

  ‘OK.’ Still snuggled on his lap, she took out her phone. Join us for fish n chips tonight? Martyn’s, at 7.

  In only a few minutes she received, OK.

  She was ultra-relieved when Ru arrived at seven, easing himself into the room with just one familiar smile, half-seen behind his hair. Honor gave him a quick hug. It was like hugging a plank that wouldn’t get its hands out of its pockets but he didn’t actually resist.

  ‘I’m starving,’ was all he said. ‘Shall I go and get the chips?’ And Honor realised that he didn’t want or didn’t need to talk about what she’d told him. He just wanted everything to be OK.

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you the money.’

  Afterwards, they arranged themselves around the sofas, too full to do more than sit for a while. Ru reached for Martyn’s laptop. ‘Can I do my Facebook and stuff?’

  ‘Of course.’ Martyn had begun flicking through the movie channels on TV. He pulled Honor’s legs over his.

  Honor watched Ru, his mouth half-open as he focused on the screen. ‘So, how are things with Robina?’

  Ru shrugged. ‘’Bout the same.’ He tapped briskly. ‘I didn’t tell her.’ It was the first indication he’d given that Honor’s confession had ever happened.

  ‘Probably best. Has she said whether she’s found that form she wants me to sign?’

  His eyes were still glued to the computer. ‘What form?’

  ‘She called me and told me I had to sign some form for the British tax authorities.’

  Ru frowned.

  ‘Then she couldn’t find it and slammed around, quite obviously not wanting me there and blaming me for the fact that I had to be.’

  Ru’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘So I left her to her snit. She didn’t mention it to you, at all?’ Honor persisted, nudging him with her foot to break the spell that had glued his eyes to the laptop.

  Ru put his head on one side. ‘Martyn? Are you gay?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’ Martyn winked at Honor. ‘I don’t even think I’m confused or curious. Why?’

  Ru read from the screen. ‘Your Facebook status update says that you are. And that you’re grooming me for …’ he squinted, ‘“delicious discoveries”. And you’re going to change your name to Mary.’

  Slowly, the grin faded from Martyn’s face. ‘I hope you’re joking.’

  Turning the laptop around, Ru passed it over.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Martyn exploded. ‘What the hell is going on?’ He tapped rapidly at the keys. ‘A whole series of status updates has been posted about my supposed interest in adolescents “of either persuasion”. And – holy fuck – slagging off clients I’ve worked for and saying they haven’t paid me or they test their products on puppies!’

  ‘You’ve been fraped,’ Ru observed.

  ‘What’s frape?’

  ‘Facebook rape – frape,’ Ru clarified. ‘You must have left your accounts open on your machine and someone decided to post a lot of stuff pretending it’s you. It happens.’

  Martyn frowned at him. ‘But I’ve never done that.’ Grimly, he returned to the computer. Then he sat back. Stared at Ru. ‘The Facebook and Twitter passwords have been changed.’

  Honor swallowed. She opened her mouth but Martyn’s phone began to ring and he pulled it out of his pocket, glancing at the screen. ‘Hi, Ace?’

  Ace responded at such a volume that no speaker phone was needed for Honor to hear, ‘Martyn, what the fuck is going on? When I try and open the Agency website it clicks me through to a website called www.allmodelsrperverts.com, full of porno images of you and some of my other clients!’ He paused, and his voice dropped a decibel or two. ‘They’re Photoshopped images, of course, sticking your head on to an image of some porn star’s body – hard porn at that. The agency’s Facebook and Twitter pages are full of supposed confessions from you about your perversions.’

  Martyn’s knuckles were white. ‘My Facebook and Twitter pages have been messed with, too.’

  ‘How have you let it happen?’

  ‘It hasn’t come from me,’ Martyn rapped. ‘Did you think I’d found a “destroy your career” button on my laptop? Some bastard has hacked everything.’ His fingers were busy on the keys as he talked. ‘Shit, it looks like he’s hacked into every single site I maintain. Leave it with me, Ace and I’ll sort it.’

  He threw down the phone and stared, white-faced, at the screen.

  Honor forced herself to speak. ‘It’s Stef,’ she croaked.

  Martyn didn’t look at her. ‘Fits with what you’ve told me. Bastard.’ He breathed hard. ‘The only missing part of the puzzle is how he got my passwords.’

  And he looked at Ru.

  ‘No!’ Honor, exhaled her outrage, jerking upright.

  Ru looked startled and then affronted. ‘I didn’t give them to him! Fuck off.’

  Shaking with rage, Martyn turned the laptop towards Ru, showing him the naked figures cavorting across the screen under crude headings. ‘You’re the only other person who’s had access to the passwords. Did you give my notebook to him? Did he pay you? Or is this some sick way of getting back at Honor, and you timed it to happen whilst you were here, so you could watch the fun?’

  ‘The book’s right there.’ Ru pointed to the slim black book, lying in its normal place on the footstool.

  ‘Martyn, I’m sure it wasn’t Ru,’ Honor began, hotly. ‘How could you think it was? Stef must have got in here and–’

  ‘Don’t talk such bollocks, my front door is next thing to Fort Knox. It’s too convenient that your new-found baby brother knew where to find my passwords and your ex-husband has used them to try and destroy both my careers in one swipe.’

  Ru jumped up, looking much more child than adolescent. In a few quick strides he was at the front door and go
ne.

  Honor stared at Martyn. ‘I’m so sorry. This is all because of me.’

  All his attention was fixed on his computer. ‘No, it’s my fault. I know that married women always fuck everything up.’

  ‘I’ll go see him and make him change it all back.’

  ‘He won’t just be waiting there to be discovered–’ he began. But Honor snatched up her bag and followed Ru out of the door, clanging down the metal stairs, swinging around at the bottom and setting off at a dead run for the bungalow.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  She was too late. Of course. She hadn’t held out much hope; Stef was too neat in the execution of his pranks not to have left himself time to jump ship.

  In the silent bungalow, Honor strode past the sitting room, strewn with magazines and empty beer cans, and the kitchen with its sink full of dirty dishes and a bulging bin of cartons. In the bedroom, the bed was unmade. On the pillow was a note. See you in Hamilton Drives, babe.

  It blurred before her eyes. Her instinct was to phone a cab and set off in pursuit.

  But she knew she would be too late.

  The damage was done. Damage to Martyn and his careers. Because of her. He had been right about her all along.

  Stolidly, she rang American Airlines and was able to switch the round trip part of her ticket to a flight at eight thirty in the morning. The internet got her a room overnight close to London Heathrow and a further phone call got her a taxi to get her there, leaving in one hour.

  Eyes boiling, she switched off the UK cell phone.

  Then she straightened up the little bungalow, washing the dishes, throwing out the cans and cartons, packing the things she’d left when she had run to Martyn’s, and was standing in the drive when the taxi arrived.

  In the cab, she closed her eyes, unable to bear to see the last of Marine Drive, the ocean or her route down to the Undercliff Walk. She’d hate to glimpse somebody she knew – Frog scowling, one of the Mayfair sisters looking curious, Peggy wistful at the departure of a lucrative customer.

  Taking out her US phone, she checked with the driver that it was OK to plug it into the car cigarette lighter, then switched on. She checked her watch. At home, the working day would be ending. All at once, she longed to be back in the thickly wooded hills around Hamilton Drives, Connecticut, where families would be taking picnics out to the lake to cool down after the hot August day; clapboard houses, the white wooden church where she and Stef had had a pretty June wedding, field stone walls, familiar traffic systems where everybody drove on the right side of the road. She clicked on Jessamine in her phone book, waiting out the silences and clicks until the ring tone sounded in her ear.

  ‘Honor?’ Jessamine answered with that peculiar mix of delight, irritation and worry that family members reserve for other family members who don’t call often enough.

  Honor coaxed her voice to emerge on the light side of neutral. ‘Hi, Jessie! Guess what? My flight gets into JFK at eleven-twenty tomorrow morning, local. I’ll get the airport shuttle to New Milton. It would be great if you could meet me.’

  Jessamine didn’t hesitate. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Honor forced a laugh, swaying with the car as it breasted a rise and swung hard left at the same time. ‘Why should anything be wrong?’ She felt slightly sick. Maybe it was the fish and chips that she’d eaten too enthusiastically. Or motion sickness.

  Or she was just sick with sorrow. She forced her eyes wide open so she wouldn’t see visions on the insides of her lids, of Martyn, beyond angry as his careers disintegrated, Ru haunted and sad. And suddenly her in-breath turned to rags and the out-breath was a sob and once she started she couldn’t stop and she could hear her sister’s voice, across the miles, crooning in her ear, ‘Don’t cry, Honor! I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for whatever has made you so unhappy. Come home. You come home right away.’

  And she cried harder than ever, because that’s exactly what she was going to do.

  Martyn worked grimly through the tedious processes of hacking out the hacker.

  If it had been just his own web presences compromised he would have gone straight after Honor. But with the agency and other agency clients involved …

  It took him about ten seconds to realise that both Twitter and Facebook were all-too-wearily-familiar with compromised accounts and that one only had to reset passwords and delete the crap to right the whole thing.

  The endless posts were sexually imaginative, defamatory and eye-watering in turn – or sometimes all at once – but in an amazingly short time he had returned normality and sanity to the social networking pages, the agency’s and his own, and plastered apologies and explanations all over the place.

  Ace rang again. ‘Martyn, DownJo are going out of the stratosphere! Twitter and Facebook are alive with stories about child labour being used in the manufacture of their products.’

  ‘Yes, I get it, Ace!’ Martyn almost shouted. ‘I’ve put up explanations – for God’s sake, get Tweeting those links. Tell DownJo to do the same. And leave me alone to fix the mess.’ As he worked, he was savagely aware that he had – again – hurt Honor, her white, shocked face swimming in front of his eyes. Drumming his fingers as he waited for emails full of security questions and long involved password replacements, he promised himself that the moment he’d gone through the excruciating ‘compromised security process’ with his web host and returned all of the sites to normal, he would abase himself with grovelling apologies.

  His host company advertised on their site that they would respond to security problems within an hour and that certainly was when they began their co-operation.

  But he couldn’t believe how long it all took. Ace rang every twenty minutes demanding progress reports, driving Martyn nearly demented. Then the host’s helpdesk rang him and that kept him tied to the machine, glancing at his watch, but at least reduced Ace to a ‘call waiting’ beep that he could ignore.

  He tried to ring Honor but got only her voicemail.

  He stabbed at keys and clicked on links, fielded phone calls, personally reassuring an irate executive officer from le Dur, dragged away from an evening out, agreeing to record an explanation to go on the le Dur website and on YouTube, swearing continuously under his breath, feeling as if his head was going to explode with information frustration overload, fingers fumbling. Waited for new emails with fresh instructions. Rang Honor again, heart thundering. Where the hell was she?

  Finally, finally, his hosts used their back-up files to restore all sites to the previously unsullied glory and he sagged in relief. He already had the laptop half-thrown down, ready to race off to the bungalow to begin his search for her when realisation hit him that if Stef had all his passwords for websites and social networking, it followed that he would have the password for Martyn’s email account, too, and would be able to gain possession of all the new passwords mailed over the past few hours and repeat the whole appalling process. He snatched the machine out of mid-air and raced through the re-resetting of all his passwords – beginning with his email – and then clicked furiously through each site.

  He groaned with relief. No further meltdown.

  Then, to his fury, he saw an email drop into his inbox from Stefan Sontag. The subject line was: Nothing’s foolproof.

  The bottom dropped out of his stomach. His brain screamed virus! at him. But he couldn’t make himself delete the email unread. Slowly, he clicked on it.

  In case you’re wondering, pretty boy, I climbed up to your French doors in the roof. You ought to keep them locked. Your security’s hardly foolproof – not for this talented fool. Then followed images of the relevant pages of his password book, including one of Stef holding the book and beaming to demonstrate how the pages had simply been held up in front of the laptop’s own webcam. Easy enough, then, for Stef to email them to himself.

  Tomorrow – he looked at his watch: today – he would take his machine into his computer whizz in Brighton and get it checked out for viruses. But he was at the
limits of his patience, endurance and talent and until then the machine could stay off.

  He texted Ace to tell him all the dials should now be set to zero, texted Ru: Really sorry, I know it wasn’t you, I just lost my temper. Then rang Honor and, again, got her voicemail.

  Ru replied: Yeh OK cd c u were freaked. Martyn squinted at his watch. Past four in the morning? He checked with the clocks in the kitchen, incredulous when they said the same. And felt worse than ever that his text had probably woken Ru up.

  But the time didn’t stop him pulling on his shoes and setting off for the bungalow, knowing that he’d hardly be welcome when he got there. But he must get to Honor. He knew Stef wouldn’t still be at the bungalow. If Honor had found him, she would have phoned Martyn. So she was hiding out from him. And he couldn’t blame her. And he hated himself for making her feel like that.

  Breathing much faster than the exertion demanded, he made the distance in two minutes, scarcely noticing the palest blue-and-apricot dawn and the steely sea. His feet slowed as he reached the drive. There were no lights on in the bungalow and, unlike the houses either side, no closed curtains. Taking the stairs in three giant strides, he pressed on the bell and pounded on the door.

  Nothing stirred.

  He tried Honor’s phone again. It has not been possible to connect your call …