Page 25 of Love in Tune

Operation snog-Hal’s-face-off is over. I hate him.

Honey slammed her way around the shop with her mobile in her hand, stabbing her fingers at the screen as she group-texted Nell and Tash.

She’d woken up as angry as when she’d gone to sleep, angrier, if possible.

The morning had dawned as grey as her mood, and she’d seriously considered kicking his door as she’d left the house bundled up in her boots and raincoat.

What was this to him? A game, something he did to entertain himself?

What kind of man did that make him? He might be sexy as sin but she was mad as hell with him.

He’d given her a bad case of sexual frustration, and it infuriated her to death that he seemed to be the only cure for her ailment.

Her phone pinged in her hand, and Tash’s name popped up.

Project Piano-Man is back on then?

Honey huffed and texted her straight back. No. No piano men, and no revolting hot neighbours. No men full stop. I’m done.

After a few moments, her phone pinged again.

So you’re saying we need to look for a lady pianist instead …?

Honey laughed under her breath, despite her bad mood. Trust Tash to have a smart answer for everything.

‘Honey dear, can you help me with this? It’s heavy.’ Glancing up, Honey shoved her phone into her pocket and took off across the shop towards the doors.

‘Lucille, what are you doing?’ She took the heavy box from Lucille’s arms. ‘You should have called me to pick this up, it weighs a ton.’ Honey staggered to the counter with the taped-up brown box in her arms. ‘Where’s it come from, anyway?

There weren’t any deliveries outside when I arrived ten minutes ago. ’

‘You must have missed it, it was right there,’ Lucille said, putting the glasses on from the golden chain around her neck and peering at it. The neatly sealed box didn’t offer up clues in the way of labels or addressees.

Honey shrugged. ‘Must be a donation. The door was open though, they could have brought it in.’ She reached for the envelope opener in the drawer beneath the counter, and just as she was about to slit it open, Lucille put a hand on her arm.

‘What if it’s alive?’ Lucille said. ‘A mother donated her teenage son’s pet snake to a charity shop once, I read it in the newspaper.’

‘No air holes,’ Honey said, surveying the box. Lucille looked at it sniffily.

‘Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying.’

Honey slid the blade beneath the tape and ripped it open, unfolding the flaps of the box for them both to peer inside.

After a few seconds Honey started to laugh.

Lucille reached inside and pulled out one of the many pairs of handcuffs, all fluffy and in every shade of the rainbow.

The accompanying unsigned note simply said that they were a gift for the residents to use in further protests and wished them every success with their campaign to save the home.

‘How bizarre,’ Honey murmured. ‘There must be thirty pairs in here.’

Mimi and Billy wandered in at that moment and gazed into the box alongside Lucille.

‘Ooh I say, darling!’ Billy said, rubbing his hands together with glee. ‘That’s a rather racy way to start the morning. I’ll take four please,’ he waggled his eyebrows at Honey. ‘No eating the keys this time please, Honeysuckle. We don’t want Mimi being left in a compromising position.’

‘They’re not for sale,’ Honey said. ‘They just arrived from a mystery donor to support the campaign.’

‘Very timely,’ Mimi said. ‘We decided amongst us in the home last night that one of us should be chained to the railings at all times. Or until it goes dark, in any case.’

‘Every day?’ Honey said, surprised. It was a big ask of people with a median age of eighty-six.

Mimi, Lucille and Billy nodded staunchly.

‘Sort of like a prisoner’s hunger strike, if you will,’ Billy said. ‘Except Patrick’s going to supply us with a packed lunch.’

‘So nothing like a hunger strike at all, really then,’ Honey laughed. ‘I think it’s a great idea. The press could really latch on to something like that.’

‘It was my idea,’ Mimi preened. ‘So I’ll go first. Honey, call Old Don’s son at the paper and get them down here.’

Billy picked up a neon green pair of handcuffs and dangled them in the air. ‘Can I do the honours, my love?’

Mimi nodded. ‘Not with those though. I’ll have some red ones to match my cardigan, thank you very much, Billy Hebden.’ She spun on her low heel, winked at Honey, and then marched outside to be chained up.

Lucille shook her head as she watched her sister leave, her arms folded over her chest.

‘She’s always been the same. Had to be first at everything,’ she said quietly. ‘First at the dinner table when we were children. First to leave home.’ She paused, frowning. ‘First to be born.’

Honey noticed the chagrin behind Lucille’s words, more noticeable on Lucille because she was usually content to fall in line behind her more fiery sister.

‘But she wasn’t, was she?’ Lucille mused, almost to herself. ‘Mimi wasn’t the first-born. Ernie was.’

So that was what this was about. Honey nodded slowly. ‘Have you decided what to do about the letter?’

Lucille sighed. ‘Mimi has decided that there’s no point in us meeting him.’

‘And you?’ Honey said, taking care to stay neutral.

‘He’s my brother, Honey.’ Lucille’s rouged lips bunched tightly together, sending pucker marks zinging all around her face. ‘I’m going to meet him next week, and Mimi can’t stop me because she doesn’t know about it.’

Honey’s mouth dropped into a silent ‘o’, sensing trouble brewing on the horizon.

Mimi and Lucille barely disagreed about anything, mostly because Mimi made the decisions and Lucille kept the peace.

It was highly unusual for them to have such differing opinions on something so important, and a sense of anxiety settled over Honey at her own unwitting duplicity now that she knew of Lucille’s plan.

‘I really think it might be best if you told Mimi,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sure she’ll come around to the idea.’

‘Oh no she won’t,’ Lucille said. ‘She’s as stubborn as an ox, and besides …’ she wrapped her arms around her middle, hugging her secret to herself, ‘I want this just for me for a while.’

Honey looked at Lucille’s wistful and unusually defiant blue eyes. As tactics went, she couldn’t help but feel it was a dangerous way to proceed.

‘Why don’t I go and make us a cuppa,’ she said, leaving Lucille with her secret and her faraway smile, a deepening feeling of unease in the pit of her stomach.

The tap on Honey’s door later that evening didn’t come as a complete surprise. Never one to wait unduly for gossip, Tash deposited a bottle of red on the kitchen counter and shimmied out of her jacket, eyeing Honey speculatively.

‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Out with it.’

Honey shrugged as she carried two wine glasses to the coffee table and sagged down into the corner of the sofa. ‘There isn’t much to tell. I threw myself at him and he blew me off.’

‘There has to be more to the story than that.’ Tash poured the wine and handed a glass to Honey, then curled herself into the other end of the sofa, bookends. ‘Did you just knock on his door and demand to be kissed?’

‘No, of course I didn’t,’ Honey said with exaggerated patience.

‘I … well, I wasn’t even going over there at all, because it was an incredibly stupid plan that was never going to work.

’ She sipped her wine, glad of its deep, blackcurranty comfort.

‘And then I realised I hadn’t given him the electric razor I’d bought for him from work, so I popped over anyway. Not to kiss him. Just to deliver it.’

‘You bought him a razor? You know that’s random, right?’

‘He needed one,’ Honey said. ‘He was veering dangerously close to Grizzly Adams territory.’

Tash waved a hand for her to move the story on from the shaver. ‘So then what happened?’

Honey huffed. ‘I knocked on his door and lost my temper when he ignored me, then he opened his door and lost his temper too. Yelled at me that his name was Benedict Hallam and he used to have a life before he met me.’

Tash frowned, and then her eyes opened wide and round.

‘Shit! Hon. Benedict Hallam is your nutso neighbour?’

‘Do you know him?’ Honey said. His name had seemed familiar to her when he’d said it, but she’d spent the time since concentrating too hard on loving him or hating him to dwell on why.

‘You do too,’ Tash said, sliding her glass onto the table. ‘Benedict Hallam, the hotshot celebrity chef?’ Tash frowned, obviously thinking. ‘He had a posh restaurant in London … and oh God, that’s it! He had an accident … he was an adrenalin junkie … a snowboarding injury I think?’

Honey nodded slowly. It all sounded vaguely familiar, but she was less of a fan of the celeb magazines than Tash.

‘Is he over there right now?’ Tash said, instantly animated. ‘Can I go and meet him?’

‘No way, Tash! You’re not talking to him, and he wouldn’t answer the door anyway. He’d hurl abuse. He’s the most ignorant man you’ve ever met. I’m not even kidding.’

‘From what I remember of him from the papers he’s sex on a stick,’ Tash said.

Honey took a bigger gulp of her wine than she’d planned. ‘He’s alright, I suppose.’

Tash shot her a meaningful look. ‘He’s sex on a stick and you know it.’

‘Fine. Whatever. He’s sex on a stick,’ Honey grumbled, knowing there was little point in arguing the point because Tash was right. ‘But he’s miserable as sin, and he led me on and then threw me out.’

Tash refilled their glasses, frowning again. ‘So going back to your story. You shouted, he shouted, and then what?’

‘And then he flipped into sexy mode and asked me to shave his beard off for him.’

‘Fuuuck,’ Tash sighed. ‘I love him.’

‘And then he pulled me onto his lap, unbuttoned my dress and kissed the life out of me.’

Tash licked her lips, her eyes sparkling.

‘I know you’re going to say this is bad of me but I read in a magazine that blind men are better in bed.

More thoughtful and skilled with their hands because they’re not rendered stupid by the sight of a naked woman.

In the absence of a pianist, he might just be the perfect candidate to help you get over your little problem.

’ Tash’s mischief-filled eyes shot to Honey’s crotch.

‘That’s just the thing, Tash. There’s something about him that I just can’t put my finger on, he only has to touch me and I turn into a jelly-kneed idiot. He’s rude to me, like proper obnoxious, and then he kisses me and I melt.’

Tash nodded slowly. ‘So he stripped you, kissed you, and then what?’

‘And then he let me practically beg him to do me before he decided he’d had enough and told me to get dressed and go home.’

Tash grimaced. ‘Classic clit-tease.’

Honey glanced up doubtfully.

‘Male equivalent of a prick tease,’ Tash supplied, reaching for her glass off the table.

Honey half laughed, wishing she’d known the phrase the other night.

‘He didn’t give you any explanation for breaking it off?’

Honey shook her head. ‘Just that I’d thank him in the morning. Which I absolutely sodding didn’t, by the way.’

‘Harsh, babe,’ Tash said in sympathy, and then blew out heavily. ‘Total horndog though. Christ.’

‘You’re supposed to be on my side, remember?’

‘I am. I am.’ Tash swirled the wine around in her glass. ‘It was a shitty thing to do to you. My advice?’

Honey nodded. All advice gratefully accepted, even Tash’s.

‘You either have to go over there and demand he finish what he started, or stop mooning over him and move on.’

‘I’m not mooning.’

‘When you told Nell and me about him, you were definitely mooning.’

‘I’ve never mooned in my life.’

Tash shot her a whatever look. ‘I recommend the first option, just so you know. You have a hot celeb chef holed up next door. Make use of him. Get him to cook you dinner and then do some more of that magic knee-melting thing he does to you.’

‘Umm … he rejected me last night, remember?’

‘Oh, Honey.’ It was Tash’s turn to adopt the exaggerated patience. ‘You’re a woman. He’s a man. You’re both lonely. He was probably just having an off day or something. Try again.’

‘My head says no. He drives me crazy. Honestly Tash, I don’t even like him half the time.

’ Honey sliced her flat hand across her throat.

‘From here up, I think stop mooning. But then from here down …’ she skimmed her eyes towards the ceiling and then knocked back the contents of her wine glass, ‘I want him in a way I’ve never wanted anyone else. ’