Page 96 of Love in Tune

‘Yes he can,’ Billy said quietly. ‘He’s not a child, Honey. He’s a man. Let him be one.’

She sagged against the doorframe. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

Billy looked down and shook his head sadly.

‘He had a lot on his mind,’ he offered.

Honey dashed the back of her hand over her cheeks.

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘How did he seem to you?’

Billy paused. ‘Like he needed space?’

‘From what?’ Honey said, stricken. ‘From me?’

In that moment she reminded Billy of an evacuated child, a lonely little girl suddenly bereft without the person she loved best. It fair broke his heart that her day should end like this.

It was well after midnight when the last of the protesters-turned-partygoers packed up and left, and Honey dropped down on the cool grass and wrapped her arms around her knees. People had been kind and taken all of their rubbish home with them, aside from a few lonely strands of tinsel glittering in the moonlight. Running her fingers over the grass, she found a discarded daisy chain, its flowers closed up and yellowing without the benefit of sunshine on its petals. Picking it up, she slipped it carefully in her pocket, and then accepted Tash’s outstretched hand to pull her up.

‘Dust yourself down, Supergirl,’ Tash said, leading her away from the home by the hand. ‘Come on. I’ll take you home.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Someone was banging on her head. They had to be, because it was loud and it hurt. Honey roused from her bed on the sofa, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes and groggy with the need for more sleep. She’d slumped down as soon as she’d walked through the door last night, not even bothering to take off her shoes. The fact that she was now barefoot and had a pillow and a blanket told her that Tash had stuck around long enough to see her off to sleep. The world needed more Tashes, unless of course she was the person banging on the front door, because whoever that was clearly had no respect.

‘Stop banging, I’m coming,’ she yelled, standing up and rubbing her hands through her hair in a vague attempt to straighten herself up. Not that it mattered, because she had no intention of going anywhere today, not unless she ran out of wine or the house burned down. Maybe not tomorrow either, or even the next day. Honey had officially shut up shop, pulled the shutters down on life and declared herself gone fishing. She was exhausted, and she couldn’t rely on her legs to hold her up or her brain to string a sentence together that didn’t include the word Hal.

‘Hal!’

Honey frowned. The hammering hadn’t stopped, but now she was finally awake she realised that it wasn’t her own door being assaulted, it was Hal’s, and from the sound of it the assailant was female.

‘I know you’re in there, Hal. Damien gave me your address.’

Honey inched along the hallway, drawn like a cobra from its wicker basket by a snake charmer.

‘Please, Hal. Open the door.’

Whoever was out there didn’t sound as if they were going to take no for an answer. They obviously hadn’t counted on Hal’s belligerent, stubborn-as-a-mule attitude. She cricked open her door, hoping to sneak a look at Hal’s visitor before they realised she was there.

Wow. They were good shoes. Honey started at the bottom and worked her way up, letting go of her shoe envy to take in the skinny hips in dark skinny jeans, and the slick, buttery leather jacket that clung to the woman’s slender body as if it had been peeled directly from a newborn calf and moulded around her. Gleaming, honey-blonde hair hung poker straight to her shoulder blades, swishing violently as she rapped her knuckles on the door yet again.

‘For God’s sake, Hal,’ she called out. ‘I know you can hear me. Half the street probably can.’

‘He won’t answer it,’ Honey said, surprising herself as much as Hal’s visitor.

The stranger swung around, and for a couple of seconds the two women took each other in. As glossy from the front as she’d been from the back, everything about her screamed money. She looked like a woman made to sip champagne on the deck of a footballer’s yacht, utterly out of place in Honey’s hallway.

The cool look in her grey eyes seemed to assess Honey, and then recognition dawned.

‘Aren’t you that woman from the TV yesterday?’

Honey shrugged.

‘Hal won’t answer his door. He never does.’

‘Maybe not to you,’ the woman said, folding her arms over her small-but-perfectly-formed chest. ‘But he will for me. He’s probably sleeping.’

‘Or drunk,’ Honey muttered.

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