‘But now you’re living here you don’t count as one so she won’t rip you off. Call back into the shop if you want it.’ And she was gone. Through an uneven square window Honor watched her run across the teagarden and down the road — did everyone run, in the Mayfair family? — in wonder that Clarissa would scrounge the time, when she was so obviously busy, to get her tenant a good price on an old album. Evidently, there was kindness in her.
Leaving the Eastingdean Teapot, Honor strode back up The Butts to Pretty Old and pinged through the door. ‘Hello, dear,’ cooed Peggy, from behind the counter, quite unabashed. ‘Sorry about earlier. I thought you were American.’
Smiling sweetly, Honor said, ‘I am. And I can only pay twenty.’
‘You poor thing.’ Peggy’s smile was just as sweet. ‘Because I can only sell for fifty.’
‘OK. I’ll surf around eBay.’ Honor pivoted on her heel.
‘Forty-five, then. Just to make up for me thinking you were a tourist. Clarissa says your mum is English.’
Honor regarded Peggy, still beaming, perched behind a glassed-in counter full of medals and coins. ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m living in Eastingdean for four months. I might become a regular customer. Thirty-five.’
Peggy began to slide the album into a crinkled supermarket carrier bag. ‘Call it forty, then. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Mayfairs.’
Honor propped her hip against the counter, deliberately not taking the proffered bag. ‘Are they scary? I’ve met three Mayfairs and they’ve all been good to me. Thirty-five.’
Peggy’s creases multiplied in exasperation. ‘Thirty-five, then, just this once.’ Taking Honor’s notes, she slid them into the cash register. ‘It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the Mayfairs — it’s just that they’re involved in everything in Eastingdean. Zoë is the doctor, Nicola is the midwife, Beverley is a legal secretary. We all have to hope that they know how to keep their mouths shut.’
Accepting the bag, Honor raised her eyebrows. ‘I guess they must understand that. The Mayfairs will have as much to hide as the next person.’
Peggy cackled, her eyes disappearing completely. ‘One of the Mayfairs doesn’t hide very much.’ And she laughed until her cheeks shook.
Honor stared. Sometimes, British humour completely baffled her.
Chapter Eight
Next day, having spent the previous evening filling out endless forms at employment websites and receiving nothing in exchange but bountiful promises, Honor decided she deserved a break.
Waiting for the bus on Marine Drive, her heart gave an apprehensive hop when Martyn Mayfair popped up at the top of the beach steps on his morning run, the wind whipping his sweatshirt tight against his body. He didn’t see Honor until he was headed firmly for the nearby pedestrian crossing and would either have had to make a visible detour to avoid her or actually cut her dead. She saw him hesitate, as if considering both of those things. ‘Hi,’ she said, neutrally, to make it easy for him to say ‘Hi’ back and run on.
‘Hi,’ he returned. But instead of running on he slowed until he was jogging on the spot. ‘Going out?’
He didn’t smile, so she didn’t, either. If he was going to make it so obvious that it was only good manners that were forcing him to pass the time of day with her, she would do the same. ‘I’m taking a trip to Brighton to the Royal Pavilion. It was George the Fourth’s favourite home when he was Prince Regent.’
He cocked a sardonic brow. ‘But Queen Victoria didn’t care for it at all.’
She flushed. She was so used to Stef’s zero knowledge of English history that the hint had just slipped out. ‘I guess that sounded stupid.’
‘No. Just as if you think I am.’
‘Not at all I—’ What was stupid was this snarky exchange. It wasn’t as if she had a lot of friends in England and last time they met they’d been so much on the same wavelength, running beside the ocean and then lounging on the sweet-smelling grasscomparing unsatisfactory childhoods. Until . . . ‘Martyn,’ she began impulsively, ‘I want to talk to you about my marriage—’
‘No, don’t.’ He held up his hands like stop signs, beginning to move off, jaw set.
‘But—’
He actually let his legs stop moving. ‘Don’t sweat it. I liked you. You’re hot. But there are a lot ofsinglewomen with pretty faces and sweet bodies, sugar pants.’ And he finally smiled, as if he knew that he’d irritated her and was glad. ‘Here’s your bus. Have a nice day.’
Honor jumped aboard the platform. ‘Men who think they’re drop-dead gorgeous are such a pain in the ass.’ Without looking back to see if she’d irritated him in return, she rode along the coast road going over in her mind everything she’d read about the Pavilion so that she didn’t have to think about Martyn Mayfair at all. Sugar pants. Huh.
It seemed weird that an honest-to-God palace should be at the side of a major road, traffic roaring by, but the bus let her off right outside it. Sucked inside by the onion domes, towers, minarets and cookie-cutter windows, she took the audio tour, revelling in every opulent room of hand-painted wallpaper and gilded plasterwork, wishing she could stroke the chair in which ‘Prinny’ had lounged on the long side of the banqueting table during lavish dinners with his cohorts and consorts, a towering chandelier of crystals and dragons above their heads.
She stood for ages in the kitchen that had seen the preparation of those indulgent meals, drinking in the lantern ceiling and the long wooden counters, imagining how it must have felt to tend the automatic spit or polish the gleaming copper pans.
The Pavilion was crowded with tourists, it being summer. She was frustrated by people talking as she tried to listen and gave herself a headache cramming the big black audio setagainst her ear to shut them out as she gazed at the lovingly restored gold plaster cockleshells of the music room’s domed ceiling and listened to the story of the arsonist who had damaged so much splendour. But walking the shining palace gave her a chance to work off lingering post-run stiffness and losing herself in the past soothed her post-Martyn crankiness.
Right at the end of the tour, she noticed that the Pavilion had a function room, where a man who walked like the rear end of a horse and two women in the black dresses/white apron combination of waitresses everywhere were stacking silver-edged crockery into flat blue crates stamped Florence Events Catering. She passed by, left her visitor feedback and stowed her audio set, as politely requested, spent twenty minutes in the gift shop — she couldn’t resist a Union Jack teapot — and stepped outside.
