Page 77 of Love in Tune

He didn’t argue. He’d always choose a cheeseboard over a cheesecake. ‘I’ll take some Stilton?’ he said, teasing her.

‘You’re welcome to a Dairylea triangle,’ she laughed lightly.

‘I’ll pass,’ he said, pushing his chair back. ‘Shall we go through to the lounge?’

He followed Honey and settled on the sofa, accepting his refilled glass with thanks.

‘I have something for you,’ Honey said, hovering close enough for him to smell the light scent of her perfume and sounding uncharacteristically shy. ‘For your birthday.’

He put his glass down carefully on the coffee table in front of him. ‘You brought me a present?’

In years gone by, he’d given and received many extravagant gifts. This year his only wish had been for his birthday to slide in and out again unmarked, so quite why he’d had a skinful and blurted it out to Honey was beyond him. The fact that she’d gone to all of this trouble and rustled up a late notice gift had actually touched Hal greatly. Although, knowing Honey, he should probably approach any gift she’d chosen with a certain degree of trepidation.

She perched beside him on the sofa and placed a package into his hands.

‘It’s not much,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know whether to wrap it or not,’ she said. ‘It’s in a box so I left it.’

He felt around the contours of the box and picked open the lid, feeling inside until his fingers closed around something cool and metal.

‘It’s a hip flask,’ she said. ‘I thought it might help you drink less whisky if it comes in a smaller bottle.’

‘There’s that girl guide again,’ he said, but without malice. ‘Thank you, Honey, for all of this. You didn’t have to.’

‘I wanted to,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s your birthday. No one should drink alone on their birthday.’

Hal placed the flask back into its box. ‘I haven’t always drunk this much,’ he said. ‘I used to be too busy.’

Taking the box from his hands, she laid it on the table.

‘I don’t think badly of you for it, Hal.’

He shook his head. ‘You should. I don’t like the man I’ve become, Honey. I don’t like the life I have now.’ He tried to choose his words to make her understand. ‘I’m not talking about the material stuff. I mean sure, I miss the trappings, but it’s not that. It’s in here.’ He tapped his fingertips on his chest like a builder testing the soundness of a wall. ‘My heart needs to race. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as I was pushing myself over my limits. Faster cars. Bigger bikes. Higher slopes. I was always restless for the next big thrill.’ He rolled his shoulders and scrubbed his hand over his stubble. ‘I don’t know who I am anymore without all that.’ He shrugged. ‘I feel like a dead man walking. Nothing makes my heart race.’

‘Maybe, in time …’ she said, tentatively. ‘There’s loads of things you could still do, when you’re ready, I mean. Tandem skydiving, even. Stuff like that.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s just I like to be the one in charge, not the passenger.’

Honey sipped her wine. ‘I bet you were a scary boss to work for.’

‘You wouldn’t have liked me.’

Would she have liked him? Aside from doctors, Honey was the first person he’d let anywhere near close enough to become a friend since the accident. She hadn’t known the man he was before. She only knew this pale, watered-down version of him.

‘Probably not,’ she said, candidly. ‘You frightened the living daylights out of me when I first met you.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’re Honeysuckle Jones, freedom fighter, bona fide Wonder Woman.’

She laughed gently. ‘Tash dressed up as Wonder Woman on New Year’s Eve last year. She had a terrible wardrobe malfunction in The Cock; Superman had to save her virtue with his cape.’

One of the things Hal had come to value most about Honey was the fact that she didn’t take life too seriously – never more so than in that moment. He loosened his shirt collar and tie as he sat back against the sofa, his arm along the back of it when she scooted back beside him.

‘Is your life always on the edge of ridiculous?’ he said, leaning his head back on the cushions.

She was silent for a moment. ‘Not always. Quite a lot more so since you moved in though.’

‘No way,’ he said. ‘It’s not my fault you’ve become a female version of Robin Hood with a band of merry pensioners, or that your crazy friends have some bizarre insistence that you can only date pianists.’

‘They did it again today,’ she said.

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