Love & Freedom (29 page)

The cake table still looked empty, by Robina’s standards, so, cursing, remembering a recipe from Jess’s time at girl scouts, Honor mixed up apple and cream cheese with chopped Snickers bars and dolloped the mixture into more cupcake cases and cooked them.

When she emerged from her mad bake-in, hot and bothered and muttering, she realised that Ru had filled the potato oven and opened the tearoom and he and Aletta were serving, everything under control. ‘You guys are so great.’ She opened the back door and fanned herself, gulping iced water, then called Ru into the kitchen to tackle the washing up whilst she whizzed through the mini clean-down necessary after her efforts. Just in time for the “elevenses” trade to morph seamlessly into the lunchtime trade.

By three in the afternoon, she was flagging. With Martyn in France, she’d gone to bed early on Saturday evening. But then he’d called from his hotel room and what began as a quick goodnight became, ‘So, what are you wearing?’ and ended up as phone sex. Fabulous, but it didn’t fulfil the same function as sleep.

But the teagarden was busy and she was making a couple of pints of fruit slush by throwing fat red strawberries into the blender with ice cubes.

‘Honor!’ Aletta scuttled in from the garden, eyes wide in alarm.

‘What’s up?’ Startled to see Aletta moving at more than a serene amble, Honor twisted the blender jug from its base and halted.

‘Those
 
… those
 
…’ Aletta’s English deserted her. ‘Big boys! And they push Ru–’

Throwing open the counter flap, Honor raced outside to find Frog and his Tadpoles gathered in a threatening knot around Ru, whilst customers exchanged looks of alarm and drew away.

Ru stood, unmoving, his hands by his sides, eyes on Frog. His hair was pulled off his face by his reversed ball cap and it made him look vulnerable. But he was clearly composed as he said, ‘No. Not without the money up front.’

‘
No
, freak?’ Frog sneered, his back to Honor, his jeans hanging low to reveal the swirling black pattern on his boxer shorts and his shoulders menacingly broad in a tight black T-shirt. ‘“No” isn’t the right answer. Get your arse indoors and get me a drink. I know your freaky mummy isn’t here to cast her scary spells on me.’

Honor knew that she should give Ru a chance to sort this out on his own. This is what the classes had prepared him for, given him the confidence to face. If she charged in then she was undoing all the good that Hughie the instructor had done.

Ru smiled into Frog’s face. ‘No.’

Delicately, as if preparing to enjoy himself, Frog put his fingertips on Ru’s chest. And shoved.

As he was forced to step back, Ru’s gaze dropped to the ‘button’ at the base of Frog’s throat, his smile stretching into a big grin of anticipation as his right hand drew back.

And suddenly, Honor didn’t want him to make that jab that would stop Frog in his tracks and even throw him, coughing, to his knees.

She didn’t want him to drop to Frog’s level, to get the badass reputation she’d once wanted for him, or maybe even get pleasure from the violence, get a taste for it. She’d watched Stef stand up for an underdog and enjoy it; she’d had a hard time calming him down afterwards and preventing him from turning all vigilante. Being a badass could be bad.

Even for the badass.

With a squeak, she leapt forward, yanked out the elastic waist of Frog’s boxer shorts and tipped in the contents of the blender jug. ‘Watch your ass, buddy.’

Frog screamed, spinning around to face her, gyrating and glaring, plunging his hands into his pants. ‘You fuckin’ Yankee!’

‘Good one!’ Ru began to howl with laughter.

The Tadpoles started to snort, shoulders shaking.

Customers joined in as Frog jiggled and danced and ice rained out of the leg of his jeans, until the teagarden was swept with gales of laughter.

When he had finally pawed what he could from his underwear, ice and crushed strawberries lay glistening on the ground. He glared ferociously at Honor. Honor glared right back, swinging the jug gently.

Slowly, laughter was replaced by silence.

‘That,’ said Frog, with perilous dignity, ‘was fuckin’ ’orrible.’ But his lips twitched as he looked down at a damp patch spreading over the crotch of his jeans. Gingerly, he wiggled his hips, reigniting some giggles. His mouth actually curled up at one corner. Without his habitual teeth-gritted snarl, he was nearly good looking.

Then Honor stepped forward and enfolded him in a great big hug, somehow recognising that, beneath the façade of adulthood, the heart beating was still that of a child. ‘Please stop bothering Ru because we don’t want to have to hurt you. If you want to earn a drink and a cake by doing half-an-hour’s washing up, there’s plenty.’ She stepped back to gauge his reaction.

Frog’s jaw was suitably dropped and the tips of his ears had gone red. ‘Earn?’ he repeated.

‘Sure.’ Encouraged, she linked her arm in his and turned him towards the tearoom. ‘We’re real shorthanded so you’d be doing me a favour. You wash up this load that’s waiting and it’ll be worth a drink and a big cake. What do you say?’

Frog paused. Then said, gruffly, to the Tadpoles, ‘Catch you later.’

In the kitchen, he surveyed the stainless steel sink full of steaming water, a stack of plates ready beside it. ‘Two cakes,’ he stipulated.

She sighed. ‘Well, OK. Just this one time. Because I have to make more strawberry slush.’

He looked at her and laughed. ‘OK, Yankee Doodle, how much do I have to do to get a cheesy potato?’

‘A lot.’ She gave him an apron and began to rinse more strawberries in the other bowl of the sink. Then, seeing that Ru had come into the kitchen to stare, ‘And you have to get along with Ru while you’re here. Rufus, Toby is going to be helping us this afternoon, as we’re shorthanded.’

‘Frog,’ said Ru.

‘Freak,’ said Frog.

‘Whatever. Just play nice.’ Honor switched on the blender.

After showering out a head full of hair wax that, in his view, had been totally unnecessary on a windless day, but the hair stylist had ‘wanted definition’, Martyn emerged from the all-white hotel bathroom with an all-white towel hooked around his hips, and checked his phone. He’d become a compulsive checker on this trip, greeting every text with a skip of anticipation in case it was from Honor.

But this one was from Ru. He read and reread it, half-convinced that Ru must be suffering from hallucinations. Electing to go straight to source, he dialled Honor. ‘Ru tells me that you beat Frog up, again.’

Her laugh was little more than a breath down the line, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. ‘I didn’t! It was a satisfactorily non-violent intervention. I suddenly didn’t want Ru to prove that violence breeds violence.’ She yawned.

His eyes ran over the text again. ‘So you tipped ice down Frog’s boxers? And then hugged him? Are you bonkers?’

She yawned. ‘I guess you had to be there.’

Laughter bubbled up from his chest. ‘I can’t tell you how much I wish I had been. You’re something else, Freedom Lefevre.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

Honor, not due at the Teapot until ten, was drifting in an agreeable somnolence of half-dreamed dreams when her cell phone rang. She scrabbled it somehow to her ear and groaned, ‘Yeah?’ discouragingly.

Ru sounded diffident. ‘Mum and Soppy only got home about six this morning and they’re in bed, wrecked. Shall we open up? Or stay closed?’

Honor kind of wanted to snap, ‘Stay closed!’ But, sometimes, her conscience just insisted that she live up to the name her father gave her. And she hadn’t slaved and contrived for the last three days to keep the Teapot running just to have Robina come home and mock all her efforts by leaving it shut. The tearoom was meant to be open. So she would make somebody open it. She swore. ‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes.’ She was beginning to totally appreciate why waitresses wore their hair in tight knots or braids. It wasn’t hygiene. It was so no one could tell they had unwashed, unbrushed, unstyled hair because they had
no
time for all that.

She banged into the Teapot like a child in a snit, where Ru was already scrubbing potatoes. ‘Come on,’ she snapped. ‘Let’s get your fu– your mother up.’

Ru, who hadn’t put his hat on yet as the Teapot wasn’t open for business, grinned through his curtain of hair. ‘You won’t wake her.’

‘You just watch me.’

‘Love to.’ Ru let her in the door in the side of the building. Honor stormed up the two flights of stairs to the bedrooms. ‘Which is your mother’s? This one?’ And burst into the room.

She paused to let her eyes adjust to the gloom.

A giant yellow caterpillar lay on a double mattress and the curtains swayed lazily in the breeze from the open window. ‘Robina.’ Honor addressed the sheeted caterpillar, politely. ‘You need to get up and open the tearoom. You need to bake the cakes.’

The caterpillar lay still.

Honor cranked it up a notch. ‘Robina,
you need to get up and open the tearoom. You need to bake the cakes!
’

Still, the caterpillar didn’t move.

Honor grabbed one edge of the sheet, braced her foot against
the mattress and yanked. ‘ROBINAYOUNEED
TOGETUP
ANDOPENTHETEAROOM!YOUNEEDTO
BAKETHE FUCKINGCAKES!’

The sheet ripped. Robina lay, exposed and blinking through a storm of hair. ‘No,’ she moaned.

‘YES!’ roared Honor. She seized Robina’s hands and dragged her from the mattress and, with superhuman strength, to her feet. ‘Yes,’ she repeated, quietly. ‘You do. Oh, good, you’re already dressed; we needn’t waste time with fresh clothes. Yesterday’s will be fine. Put on your shoes.’

Kirsty had appeared in the doorway beside a grinning Ru. She looked like a scarecrow in pyjama bottoms and a wrap-over robe, and laughed like a growly dog. ‘I never thought I’d live to see that.’

‘And how are you?’ Honor asked her, not releasing Robina’s hands as she led the older woman to the bathroom like a geriatric. ‘Do you have everything you need?’

‘Thank you for asking.’ Kirsty smiled, thinly. ‘It’s refreshing. But I’m OK.’

Sophie was easier to rouse and Honor presided grimly over face washing, teeth cleaning and the pulling back of hair before dragging the pair downstairs to at least get the cakes baked before she allowed them back to bed to pass out. ‘And, Sophie, don’t forget to put Ru on the payroll. He has worked his butt off all weekend while you guys have been mainlining alcohol.’

‘Payroll?’ Sophie blinked.

‘Yeah, remember? Robina promised that Ru would get paid the same rate as Aletta. I’ll write down for you how many hours we’ve each done, to make sure you get it right. OK?’

‘OK.’ Sophie smiled, gently, humouringly.

Although Sophie and Robina were in the kitchen in body, their minds were quite obviously still afloat in the ether. ‘I should have left the place shut and you two in bed,’ Honor told them, disgusted, when she hadn’t been able even to take a break to shove down a scone to fill her empty stomach because she had to act like a sheepdog to keep the orders moving.

Robina’s eyes cracked a touch wider open. ‘But the Teapot has to open. Or we don’t make any money.’

Honor planted her fists on her hips. ‘So you just assumed that I’d open up for you? And Aletta would give up her day off?’

‘I thought that’s what we arranged,’ she fibbed, weakly. ‘I’ll pay you a bonus.’

‘Yeah, damn right!’

But not even Honor’s energy could keep Robina and Sophie on their feet indefinitely and she returned from clearing tables at two o’clock to discover only Ru in the kitchen, busy at a steaming sink. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve slunk off!’ Honor exploded.

‘OK.’

Honor waited. Then, ‘They’ve slunk off, right?’

‘Yeah, out the back door.’ Ru shrugged philosophically and smiled. ‘But they were crap really, weren’t they?’

Even if she had to laugh and give Ru’s skinny shoulder a mock punch, Honor was aggravated to find it was once more nearly six by the time she was free to go home, past the shops of Starboard Walk – with a longing glance up at Martyn’s front door, uncompromisingly shut – turning her face to the sea breeze, half surprised to realise that, once again, it had been a pretty day.

Here they were in the last few of days in July and she was working through the days, making her too tired to enjoy the long, light evenings. Was this really what she’d come to England for? She didn’t think so.

She awarded herself a long soak in the bathtub, scraped around the kitchen and ended up with an unsatisfactory meal of pasta with cheese sauce – she hadn’t had time to shop over the last few days – and, finally, flopped on the couch with a book on the history of Sussex, one she’d bought in Arundel with glee but had hardly snatched a glance at.

Across the room, her laptop waited like an accusation.

She tried to concentrate on the book and the chapter on the Sussex smuggling trade illustrated with atmospheric monochrome line drawings of shifty looking men with ragged shirts, cuddling casks of brandy like stolen babies.

She texted Martyn:
Hey, how’s it going?
But then remembered him telling her of tonight’s late evening shoot at the Louvre with its spectacular backdrop of fountains and reflections; the glass pyramid twinkling with golden light.