Gently, she slid her hand out.
Courtesy of the street lamps that marched up the hill, she could read his expression. The wanting. The determination. The certainty that Honor belonged with him and he might have some grovelling to do, but everything was going to be OK.
It hurt to snuff that certainty out. She was as gentle as could be — but she still said it. ‘You turning up here today was a shock, but it has made things easier for me because I can tell you to your face what I decided this week.
‘I want to get a divorce.’
Chapter Thirty-One
The sound of the doorbell, early in the morning, at first made her heart leap. But reality took over.
It wouldn’t be Martyn.
She’d called and texted him the night before but he’d evidently been observing voicemail silence.
Talking — yelling, crying — things out with Stef had taken into the early hours, leaving both her head and heart thumping. It was only when it sank in to him that she really wasn’t going to let him into the bungalow and they’d spend the night shivering on the lounger outside, if necessary, that he’d admitted to having already taken a room at the Fig Leaf, ‘In case things didn’t work out right away.’ Tossing and turning for what was left of the night, she’d strained for the ringing of her cell phone or even theturr-reeof an incoming text message, wrestling with the temptation to run up the road and bang on Martyn’s door. But when a girl had left both voice and text messages and a guy didn’t respond . . . he probably wasn’t ready to see her in the middle of the night.
When the doorbell sounded again before she could even get to the mirror to check out how bad the bags under eyes were, she paused. Impatience. Stef?
So she opened the front door cautiously. Then flung it wide, with a glad smile. ‘Ru!’
His hair curtained one side of his face but the half she could see showed the hint of a smile. ‘I’ve got the money Mum owes you.’ He exhibited a folded brown envelope, obviously much recycled,Honorscribbled above other crossings out.
Pulling at his arm, she dragged him into the kitchen, almost forcing him to take a seat at the table. ‘How about breakfast? You like eggs?’
His eyebrow lifted. ‘Yeah, great. Thanks.’
She poured him orange juice and broke eggs into a jug, whizzing through the meal preparation in case he suddenly tried to get away. In ten minutes, rafts of toast and creamy hillocks of egg were on the table. ‘When you didn’t turn up for the self-defence class I made up my mind that your mom — mum — had forbidden you to see me.’
He cut a corner from his toast and snow-ploughed a froth of eggs up on to it. ‘She has.’ He popped the forkful into his mouth.
Honor’s heart sank. ‘Oh.’
He shrugged as he chewed and swallowed. ‘But Soppy put your wages out, ready to post through your door, so I decided to do it for her.’ His half a face smiled again. ‘They’re always on at me to be helpful.’
Relaxing, beginning on her own breakfast and realising how long it was since she’d eaten properly, Honor grinned. ‘I don’t want you to get in trouble with Robina, though.’
His cheeks bulged around too much food for one teenager’s mouth and he shrugged again, wrinkling his nose, too, which she assumed to convey that he didn’t mind being in trouble with his mother. Or that it was a situation too familiar to cause anxiety.
He didn’t slow down until there was nothing but crumbs and a sheen of grease left on his plate. Then he swigged back his orange juice and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Mum’s mega pissed at you for getting it together with Martyn. I warned you how she’d get.’
‘I know.’ She lost her appetite for the rest of her scrambled eggs, dropping her fork untidily on the plate. She wasn’t that certain whether ‘together’ and ‘Martyn’ were destined to end up in many of her sentences. She propped her chin on her fist. ‘I hate it that I can’t hang out with you any more.’
He shook back his hair and for a moment she saw his whole face and its set expression. ‘We can hang out,’ he said, gruffly, sliding his chair back. ‘Unless Mum puts a bad spell on you orsticks pins in an Honor doll or something. Better get back.’ With a quick grin, he loped across the hall and out of the front door before Honor could even begin to compute the effect if she told him that Robina was her mother. Too.
* * *
Martyn opened his front door to find Ru hovering, hands in pockets, brown eyes fixed on him uncertainly.
Inside, Martyn heaved a sigh gusty enough to blow Ru right back where he came from. But he didn’t allow his frustrations to make it to his face, just stepped back and let Ru in. ‘I thought you’d be working in the Teapot.’
‘Yeah, soon.’ Ru made no attempt to go further than the foyer. ‘Um . . .’
Martyn waited.
Ru shuffled. Then spurted, ‘Will it still be OK for me to do stuff on the computer for you? Only, I really want to. You know.’ Ru gave a great, exaggerated shrug, making the time-honouredit’s a woman thingface. ‘Now Mum knows about you and Honor.’
Martyn was stirred by curiosity. ‘What happened, exactly? Honor was obviously upset and I didn’t ask for details.’ In fact, it hadn’t even been near the top of histhings that have gone badly wronglist.
