Love & Freedom (32 page)

She stared. ‘No. I
told you
.’

Silence. Then, ‘You’re really that mad at me? Shit.’ He let out a long sigh that seemed to come right up from his boots. He glanced at the bungalow’s front door. ‘Would you mind telling me what we’re doing sitting out here in the dark and the cold when your rental’s right there?’

The bungalow was her refuge. Damned if she was going to take what she was running away from right in there with her. ‘I think you need to find yourself a room somewhere.’

‘Are you shacked up with that guy?’

‘He doesn’t live here, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Her voice shook, though she told it sternly not to.

‘I don’t know, Honor.
Is
that what I’m asking? Or am I asking you whether you and him are having sex?’ He paused. His voice hardened. ‘I guess I don’t have to ask. The way he had your ass in his hands and his tongue down your throat pretty much tells me all I need to know.’

‘Well, then.’ Honor hated hurting Stef, no matter what he’d done; marriages begun with joy shouldn’t end in pain. But it was beginning to seem as if there was no other way.

He shook his head. For the first time his voice softened and he sounded more like the Stef that Honor used to love. ‘I would never have believed that you’d cheat on me.’

She didn’t try to explain that she saw it more as leaving him than cheating on him. ‘And I would never have believed you’d become a criminal. So neither of us got what we signed up for.’

He snorted. ‘Babe! I’m not a criminal. It was a prank. You know about me and pranks. You
know
.’

Weariness settled heavy hands on her shoulders. ‘Stef, identity theft is a felony in the state of Connecticut. You used someone else’s credit card details to buy a shit load of embarrassing stuff for the guy.’

He couldn’t quite hide the laughter in his voice. ‘Exactly.
For the guy.
Billie’s boyfriend. It all went straight to his address, so how is that theft? It was a prank, not a crime – I’m not a criminal – I’m a prankinal.’

‘You know damned well–!’ Automatically, Honor prepared to explain how it was immaterial where the goods went; it was buying with Billie’s boyfriend’s credit card that was the issue. But she clamped her lips shut on the hot words. An argument was just what Stef wanted. He’d make her laugh and cajole her by saying it was just a joke. Funny. Ha ha. Everybody ought to be able to take a joke. Jokes were Stef’s way of dealing with everything. Even when she could see from his eyes that he was really hurting.

She took a breath. Let it out. Slow. Slow down, Honor. Keep calm. ‘OK, so you’re a prankinal. Here’s the thing, Stef – you’re the only person in the world that recognises the word. Your
prank
got you 180 days in county.

‘And that wasn’t nice for me. The good people of Hamilton Drives didn’t want their investments handled by the hands that had been given in marriage to an inmate. And half the town thought you’d just made a fool of yourself over Billie and the other half thought you were actually sleeping with her.’

Stef shrugged it off. ‘That didn’t happen between me and Billie.’

‘Before all this happened, whether you did or whether you didn’t would have been important.’

He frowned. ‘So it’s not important, now?’

‘Why you chose to punish Billie’s boyfriend so thoroughly has always been a mystery. The fact is that you did. I don’t know if you did what you did for Billie but, sure as hell, it wasn’t for me. I’m just the poor fool who suffered.’

He inched closer, until he could lay his hand on hers, warm and remembered. Yet no longer familiar. ‘So, you cheated on me. You had to get back at me. I think I understand that. It’s a hard thing for me to get over, but I will get over it.’ His voice was a plea, trying hard to make her see things his way. ‘Same way you’ll get over me doing jail time. I guess we’ll have to find a way to forgive each other.’

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 the
turr-ree
of 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,
Honor
scribbled 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 or sticks 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-honoured
it’s a woman thing
face. ‘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 his
things that have gone badly wrong
list.

‘Someone told her they’d seen you kissing so she sacked Honor. She really doesn’t want you guys to be together. I mean
really
. I’ve just seen Honor and she looks as if she’s been run over by a train.’

‘She’s upset,’ he repeated. And could have added:
You don’t know the half of it. Honor’s husband has shown up and – listen to this, it’s good – turns out that Robina is Honor’s mother. So you’re Honor’s brother, which explains why she took you under her wing. She didn’t tell you? I know exactly how that feels because she didn’t tell me.
And, maybe,
Did you happen to see the husband over breakfast at all
 
…?

But he couldn’t let his sparks of anger and hurt ignite the whole box of fireworks because it was Honor’s decision whether to tell Ru.

And, whoever’s fault this sticky mess was, it wasn’t Ru’s.

He managed a smile. ‘I’m working on a relaunch of a site this weekend. Come round on Sunday evening and upload all the files – if you can do that without pissing your mother off.’

‘Wicked. I just won’t tell her.’ Relief ran across Ru’s face like a flicker of sunshine. He opened the door and backed out on to the space at the top of the stairs. ‘I’ll be–’

‘
Ru!
What the
flying fuck
are you doing with him?’

Ru’s and Martyn’s gazes locked, neither looking down at the street from where the bellow of rage had come. ‘Oh, shit,’ they said, in unison.

Then Ru shoved his hands into his pockets and turned reluctantly to clump down the stairs. ‘
What?
’ he demanded, in his best belligerent-teen, mothers-are-so-crap voice.

On the ground, Robina’s eyes burned with rage as they flicked from her son to Martyn. ‘What are you doing with that bastard?’

Ru’s steps halted. ‘Don’t be lame, Mum–’

‘I said,
what are you doing with that bastard?
’

‘I’m going to help him with some stuff,’ he muttered, defensively.

‘Like hell you will!’ Robina’s voice achieved the pitch and volume of a whistling kettle.

Male solidarity wouldn’t allow Martyn to abandon Ru. Somehow, he found himself shoulder-to-shoulder with the kid, who was looking as if he could literally be blown against the wall by Robina’s screams. ‘What’s the problem, Robina?’

Robina swung on Martyn and he was shaken to see venom where he was used to seeing the fawning hot looks she’d been sending him for what seemed forever. ‘You take your American bitch and fuck off. Ru, go home.’

Martyn tried to make his voice conciliatory, because poor Ru had to live with Robina, at least for the next few years. And surely Robina’s erstwhile crush couldn’t have been buried so deeply, so quickly? ‘Robina, there’s no need for this–’

‘Touch my son again and I’ll call the police,’ she snarled.

He recoiled. ‘Don’t be ridic–’

‘I mean it.’

They glared at one another. Slowly, Robina turned and yanked Ru along by his elbow, away up The Butts in the direction of the Teapot.

Bursting with impotent wrath, Martyn hurled after Robina, ‘I’ve heard stalkers can turn on their victims!’ Then he noticed a denim-clad figure across the road, leaning on the wall outside the Fig Leaf and drinking in the whole scene. Stefan Sontag.

Martyn locked on to his gaze. ‘Want something?’

Stef grinned. ‘Not a thing.’

And then, as if his day wasn’t the pits already, Clarissa’s voice rang out from the car park. ‘Mar-tyn May-fair!’

He swung to face her. ‘
What?
’ He sounded just like Ru. He even felt like adding,
Don’t be lame!

Clarissa hesitated. A dozen expressions flitted across her face, as if she were trying each emotion out for size before wearing it. Finally, she settled for rueful disapproval. ‘From Robina’s remarks, I suppose I know now what Honor and Robina quarrelled about.’