She shrugged, licking her fingers. ‘I know the tree that these grow on and I’m going right back to it when I’ve taken a few minutes in the fresh air.’ She stifled a sigh at the thought. Her idea of a job without stress didn’t include a boss that acted like a premenstrual pitbull.
After wiping her hands, she offered him the napkin, then the bottle of water. Then they watched the gulls, beady black eyes fixed on tourists to mug for food, as the waves glittered and shushed on to the beach below.
Ten minutes, she promised herself. Ten minutes to chill, to refill her emotional well, before returning to suffer under the black clouds that had rolled into the Teapot. Ten minutes to be aware of Martyn lounging, unspeaking, beside her.
At the end of that time, she climbed reluctantly to her feet. ‘Better get back to it.’
He didn’t move. Or look at her. ‘Shall I pick you up for your class?’
She hesitated. ‘I could get the bus.’
‘No need. Tell Ru.’
I thought that all I wanted was to get a message from you but, now you finally decide to talk . . . Babe, I said I’m sorry. Don’t you care how I’m hurting? When are you coming back? This is crazy. Maybe you’ve gone crazy. It can’t be the end. I won’t let it be. I don’t believe you’re quitting, Honor, because you just never quit.
Honor stared at Stef’s words, wondering why she didn’t feel worse for him. Maybe it was the distance. She thought about Connecticut and found it unexpectedly hard to remember living in their apartment with the view of Main Street, because Stef liked to be in the middle of town where they both worked and he could get around the bars and clubs on foot, rather than living out on the lake, as she’d wanted. She tried to walk her mind through the furniture they’d picked out — the chaise with a broken leg from when Stef tried to prove he could still back flip, the rug with the red wine stain after his birthday party, his end of the sofa splashed with beer from when he got excited during ball games.
Yes, she had no trouble picturing Stef on his end of the sofa.
And, yup, she was in the frame, too — bringing home most of the bacon and picking up the groceries on the way, running the household and battling to undo the Stef effect to make the apartment look nice. A reasonable housekeeper. Not a bad wife — Stef had never stopped reaching for her in bed.
Her response was where her imagination got uncooperative. For there to be want there had to be trust.
Instead, she thought about the big clapboard house she grew up in, pale blue with sparkling white trim, the sloping lawns bounded by field stone walls, the heavy colonial furniture, Karen hosting dinner parties or barbeques, Garvin working on one end of the long kitchen table. The house that her dad bought forKaren, which Karen had made a home for Zach and Jessie. And for Honor — not so much, though she’d tried.
This English bungalow would probably fit into her father’s spacious lounge. The sitting room was bijou — frankly? She’d had bigger closets — but she felt more at home here, looking out to the ocean, than she had in any other place. She counted up on her fingers. Not even six weeks since she had moved into Eastingdean and she connected as well with Ru, Robina, Sophie and Martyn’s thoroughly English lives as with anyone back home. Even compartmentalising her inopportune crush on Martyn, she cared whether Clarissa’s Zumba class folded. She cared whether Robina would have got over her snit by tomorrow or if she was making life unbearable for Ru. She even cared that Kirsty looked like a walking horror movie.
She clicked on reply.Life is peaceful, here. I’m tired of your chaos. I said everything I had to say back in May.And then,It’s better this way.
Send.
* * *
After that, Honor was glad of the chance to relieve her frustrations in the self-defence class, practising snapping kicks to the front or the side of knees and slamming the palm of a curled hand into vulnerable noses.
As last week, Martyn perched on the stage at the end of the room, but Honor tried to put him out of her mind as she concentrated on joking Ru out of his doldrums. Ru managed the occasional smile but, at the end of the class when she suggested, ‘Want to come home for coffee and soup?’ he gave her a startled look, grabbed his backpack from the side of the room and shot into the men’s room, casting back, ‘Can’t. Staying in Brighton.’
He sprinted out two minutes later, transformed by shirt, trousers and proper shoes, a strong smell of deodorant and hishair over his eyes like a windblown dog, making for the door. He had to pause as Martyn intercepted him, jingling his car keys, but Ru, muttering something as he pointed to his watch, just wriggled past.
Honor grabbed her jacket and crossed to where Martyn was frowning after Ru. ‘Where’s he flying off to?’
‘I think he said Spangles.’
She felt a spasm of alarm. ‘Spangles? Does he mean Ali Spangles? The nightclub?’
Slowly, Martyn nodded. ‘I’m rather afraid he might.’
Honor started off in pursuit down the corridor to the stairs. ‘But he’s way too young to get into a nightclub, isn’t he? And I’ve been to Ali Spangles — it’s a dive.’
Out in the street, there was no sign of Ru. Kemptown was a grid, providing any number of corners for Ru to have disappeared around. Honor felt her heart hurry uneasily, in a way that had nothing to do with the exertions of the class. ‘Ali Spangles is a dive,’ she repeated, frowning up and down the street.
‘I’m surprised you know.’ Martyn regarded her curiously.
‘A guy took me there when I was pretty much fresh off the plane,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t stay long.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I don’t know what Ru’s up to but I’m going to go after him. That kid can get himself in a fix way too easily.’
‘You won’t get in dressed like that.’
Impatiently, she glanced down at her sweatpants. ‘Right. If you could drop me straight home, I’ll change and get a cab over there. I don’t know what Ru’s doing because he surely can’t get into a nightclub, but I don’t have a happy feeling about this.’
