Page 69 of Love in Tune

‘Billy, do you think you could watch the shop for a little longer this afternoon? There’s someone I need to catch up with.’

‘Is it that rather dashing chef in the kitchen, young lady?’ Billy wiggled his eyebrows at her suggestively. ‘Very enigmatic, with those dark glasses.’

‘He’s blind, Billy.’

It was a rare thing for Billy to look surprised, and even rarer for him to be serious. Nevertheless, he pulled off both emotions simultaneously at Honey’s revelation.

‘Well I never, I missed that. My brother was blinded as a boy,’ he said, his gaze distant. ‘Can’t have been more than fourteen. Nasty business.’

‘Is he still alive?’ Honey spoke without thinking. Billy had never mentioned a brother.

‘Died about ten years back. If you think I’m trouble, you should have met our Len. Or Leonard, as my mother would have preferred.’ Billy’s face broke into a wide grin. ‘Leonard and William. Billy and Len. He was always getting me into bother.’ Billy’s eyes sparkled with nostalgic wickedness. ‘Quite the ladies’ man, he was, too.’

‘Unlike you,’ Honey laughed. ‘But no, I’m not off to see the chef.’ She glanced up at the clock. Three o’clock. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour so you can go over to Old Don’s party.’

‘Good girl,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘You know me, never one to miss a good knees-up.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It was well after seven by the time Honey and Hal sat beside each other on the bus home.

‘I haven’t caught a bus since I was sixteen,’ he’d said when they’d boarded the bus that morning, and he looked no less outlandish and uncomfortable on the return journey.

‘Of course you haven’t.’

She completely believed him. People on the bus mostly blended in. Not Hal. Even aiming hard for anonymity he seemed to stand out, or maybe she was just hyper-aware of him. She was just glad it was after the rush hour and the bus was relatively quiet.

‘Can you drive?’ he asked.

‘Technically, yes,’ she said, ‘although I haven’t really driven much since I passed my test.’

Hal turned his face towards the window while he considered her words. Before the accident, driving had been one of his pleasures. Cars. Motorbikes. The faster the better. Honey’s easy-come, easy-go attitude to being able to slide behind the wheel any time she liked filled him with hot fury out of nowhere.

‘You’d really rather ride the fucking bus? You prefer to be rubbed up against by rancid teenagers and avoid making eye contact with the local nutter than be in a car, be in control of everything yourself?’

The need to feel the power of an engine under his hands again took his breath away, along with his ability to be tactful. He tried to shut it down, to tune it out, but it wouldn’t let go. He could feel it throbbing inside him like an angry animal’s heartbeat. He missed it so, so much; it was visceral. Who he was, who he’d been right down to his bones. Benedict Hallam. Adrenalin junkie. It was one of the reasons he’d shut his life down to four walls since the accident, because being out here just rammed home all the things he’d never do again. The addictive smell of the petrol fumes, the throaty rumble of an exhaust. He couldn’t be that man anymore, and the plain truth was he didn’t know how to be anyone else. He’d been left with all of the bad stuff and none of the good, and he wasn’t sure there was enough of him left to build a new man from. Worse still, he didn’t even know if he wanted to try.

‘You did great today,’ Honey said, breaking into his bleak train of thought.

‘I sat on a stool and told someone what to do. I’d hardly call it earth shattering.’

Honey laughed softly. ‘You really have no idea. Hal, without you there today Steve would have walked. Thirty-odd residents would have gone hungry, and a war veteran wouldn’t have celebrated his birthday. You can think of it as just sitting on the stool if you like, but the way I see it you saved the day.’

‘Move over Nicolas-fucking-Cage,’ Hal muttered.

‘Do you have to swear in every single sentence?’ she snapped. ‘There are other words, you know.’

‘I’d say I’ll read the dictionary, but I’m goddamn fucking blind,’ he shot back, and folded his arms over his chest in fury.

Honey watched the cars trundle past the darkening windows. ‘I like Nicolas Cage.’

‘Yeah well, real life isn’t like the movies, Honey. The hero doesn’t always get to save the day. He doesn’t always get to keep his eyesight, or his driving licence, or his livelihood, or his fiancée.’

She was silent for the rest of the bus ride home, and on the walk to the house too, besides providing enough basic information to save him from falling down the kerb. He hated the way she’d withdrawn her company long before they went their separate ways in the lobby.

‘It’s pretty mean to give a blind man the silent treatment.’

Honey snorted down her nose. ‘You have the nerve to call me on giving the silent treatment? You’re the bloody king of it.’

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