‘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 restaurantsall 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 co ming 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 gargoylesglaring from the architecture. Her dad 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 wastwanging. His employers wouldn’t be pleased if they knew he was moonlighting at finding people jobs.
