Page 35 of Love in Tune

Honey carried on along the line until she was close enough to Mimi to kiss her papery cheek and whisper to her that she had the key to the handcuffs in her jeans pocket. Then, shaking inside, she stepped up onto the stone that Christopher had recently vacated.

‘I won’t help you dismiss the concerns of the residents of this home, or reduce the efforts of those brave, wonderful people to nothing. Do you think they’re out here just to wind you up? What do you see when you look at them, Christopher? A bunch of old people who you can dismiss and boss around like school kids?’ Honey glared at him.

‘Billy doesn’t have the keys to Mimi’s handcuffs. I do.’ She dug in her pocket and produced the tiny key, holding it up so it glinted in the sunshine.

Christopher saw red and swiped for it, and without thinking, Honey shoved it in the only place she could think of where Christopher couldn’t get it – her mouth. His eyes bulged as she swallowed it with a painful gulp. The crowd broke into cheers, and solidarity with the residents burned hot in Honey’s chest.

‘What do you know about all of these people, really? Take Don, here.’ She smiled encouragingly towards Don in his wheelchair, and he raised a slow, shaky hand at the crowd. ‘I’m sure Don won’t mind me telling you that he’s the home’s oldest resident. He’s lived in this place for almost twenty years. Twenty years. And what do you know of him, besides the fact that his wheelchair sometimes takes the paint off the walls in the hallway?’ Honey had heard Christopher complain on more than one occasion about the cost of redecoration because of Don’s chair.

‘Look at the medals pinned to Don’s shirt. He was a pilot in the war, a flight lieutenant, a courageous soldier who fought for his king and country.’ Don bowed his head at the gentle ripple of applause, his hand over his medals. ‘Every single one of these people has a story. Look at Mimi and Lucille,’ Honey said. ‘You dismiss them as two crazy old ladies, but you couldn’t be more wrong. They’re brilliant, vivacious women who deserve your respect and your kindness. They were both Land Girls, keeping their family farm going to provide food for their neighbours during the war, and even now they give up their time every day to help me run the charity shop.’ Honey looked from Lucille’s tearful smile to Mimi’s fierce nod, and was reminded of Mimi’s earlier words about her generation.

‘You were quite right when you said that these people have amassed over eight hundred years on this earth between them. But that’s something to be celebrated, not mocked, Christopher. Eight hundred years of experience, and of sacrifice, and of hard work. Eight hundred years of love, and of sadness, and of loss. Eight hundred beautiful years of brilliance, and I won’t let you belittle what they’re doing here today.’ Honey looked along the line of residents tied to the railings haphazardly, knowing she sounded like a soapbox politician at an election rally, but forged on regardless.

‘Yes, they might look odd. Yes, their picture will make an amusing front page for the local newspaper. But their reason for being out here tied to the railings isn’t funny at all. They’re out here because they’re scared. This place isn’t just a business, it’s their home, their safe haven, and they don’t want to leave it. And why should they have to? Why is it right that they should have to be scared at their ages? It’s not fair and it’s not right, and our town needs to stand with them and do something about it.’

Breathless, Honey finally stopped speaking, and the street erupted into cheers and clapping, and Nell stepped forward and held her hand out to help Honey down from the stone, her makeshift soapbox. She pulled her into a tight hug.

‘My God, Honey, I’m so proud of you,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘You were magnificent. I thought your boss was going to have an actual heart attack when you swallowed that key. For your own sake I’m never going to tell you where that’s been.’

Honey found she was shaking a little, a delayed reaction to having inadvertently made herself the Svengali of Hope for every resident caught up in the battle.

‘Three cheers for Honeysuckle, our very own Boudicca!’ Billy shouted, and the photographer’s flashbulbs almost blinded her when Nell turned her gently to face the expectant crowd, murmuring ‘smile’ in her ear as she stepped away.

Honey smiled tremulously, shaking inside, trying not to think ahead to the consequences of her actions. Or to wonder what Nell and Simon had done with the sex-cuff key before she’d swallowed it. She might get a tetanus shot, just in case.

‘Er, Honey dear?’ Mimi called out. ‘I think someone better call the fire brigade. I can’t get these cuffs off and my hands are going numb!’

The fire crew turned up in record time, and as one advanced towards Mimi with the bolt cutters, another questioned Honey on the nature of the issue.

‘So … you chained an elderly woman to the railings with your kinky sex cuffs and then ate the key?’

‘They’re not my kinky sex cuffs,’ Honey tried to explain for a second time.

‘That’s what they all say, love,’ he said with a cheery wink. ‘Although to be fair, these things usually happen in the bedroom, rather than in the street with little old ladies.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m a broad-minded sort of fella.’

On that, Billy ambled up.

‘Alright, chaps?’ he said, slinging an arm around Honey’s shoulders.

Honey smiled gratefully. ‘This is Billy,’ she said. ‘He was the one who chained Mimi to the railings.’

The fireman looked Billy up and down, and then slid his gaze back to Honey. ‘And then you ate the key,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘Bit of a ménage à trois, as they say.’ He looked incredibly pleased with his own sophistication.

‘Petit pois, mon amigo,’ Billy replied knowledgeably, and Honey turned her eyes to the skies.

‘Any chance you might go and crap that key out, love?’ the firefighter poised over Mimi with the bolt cutters shouted. ‘Last chance before I go in!’

Honey shook her head, mortified by the fact that a couple of journalists still lingered around, laughing openly and scribbling in their notebooks. How had she managed to go from heroine to member of a weird sex trio in the matter of an hour?

‘I’m going to go and check if Mimi’s okay now,’ she said, smoothing her hair.

As she walked away, she distinctly heard the fireman mention the words sugar daddy, and Billy say yes please, two sugars.

Honey sat on the floor outside Hal’s door that evening, her head tipped back against the wall, her jean-clad legs stretched out in front of her. He’d ignored her knock of course, aside from the obligatory curse to confirm he was alive. She hadn’t really expected more, but she’d hoped all the same, because she found that of all the people she knew, he was the only one she wanted to tell about the bizarre afternoon she’d just lived through. She’d been sitting there for almost an hour already, telling him the story, even though he wasn’t interested and most probably wasn’t listening.

‘And then the fire brigade had to be called out to cut Mimi’s cuffs off because I’d swallowed the key and they were stronger than they looked. I mean, you’d imagine they’d be pretty flimsy given that they’re designed for the bedroom, but no, not those ones. God knows where Simon got them from, they were bloody industrial! And of course Nell had scarpered by that point and Mimi gave the firemen the impression that the cuffs were mine, which, given that I’d eaten the key, wasn’t that big a stretch of the imagination really, was it?’

Honey shook her head, remembering the barely concealed laughter on the faces of the firemen.

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