The Piano Man Project (24 page)

‘Oh no,’ he muttered, making Honey look up from stacking the plates.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s Old Don’s birthday tomorrow. There’s a party at three o’clock.’

‘A party?’ Honey repeated, her tired brain hurting with the effort of more frantic thinking. ‘As in a party that needs party food? Like sandwiches, and sausage rolls and things?’

‘And a birthday cake,’ Steve mouthed, the look of a hunted deer back in his eyes.

‘Can you bake?’ Honey asked, already knowing the answer before he shook his head. She was no Mary Berry either, despite having watched every series of
The Great British Bake Off
. She freely admitted to having taken more notice of Paul Hollywood’s baby blues than the technicalities of baking, an oversight she now bitterly regretted.

‘Shit.’ She dropped onto the nearest stool. ‘We’re sunk.’

Steve looked like a defeated featherweight boxer, all slumped shoulders and downturned, dejected lips.

‘I’ve had enough of all this,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m sorry, Honey. I know this is bad of me, but I quit. I can’t do this.’

‘What? No!’ Honey stood up and grabbed the lapels of the tracksuit top he’d just dragged up his arms. ‘Steve, you can’t do that to me! Or to them.’ She jerked her head towards the dining room. ‘Please, we’ll sort something out. I’ll buy a cake from the supermarket. We’ll get another chef in soon, I promise.’

‘Honey, we need one here first thing in the morning, and it’s not gonna happen.’ He shrugged. ‘They pay me minimum wage for this. It’s too much shit for too little pay.’

Honey’s mind raced, and then she made a rash and desperate offer. ‘What if I promise you that there will be a chef here tomorrow? Someone to take over and teach you again, like Patrick did?’

Fragile hope lit his teenage grey eyes, making Honey feel like the Child Catcher trying to lure him to stay with lollipops.

‘You promise?’ he said.

She nodded, closing her eyes briefly and hoping like hell that she’d be able to come good.

‘I promise. Just be here on time in the morning, okay?’

Skinny Steve shot her a small smile and left her alone in the kitchen looking longingly at the cooking sherry.

Hal heard Honey come in later that afternoon and listened to her footsteps as she stopped outside his door.

‘Hal,’ she called out. The fact that she called out at all surprised him, and her non-confrontational tone of voice surprised him even more. He’d seriously started to doubt that she’d ever decide that she wasn’t furious with him any longer.

‘Hal!’

She called his name again. It was hard to judge her mood; she sounded stressed, kind of worked up.

‘What is it?’ he said, trying for middle of the road, conversational.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.

There was something in the words she didn’t say that told him more than the words she did. He sensed her weariness, and that she didn’t really want to be at his door about to say whatever it was she was going to.

‘I’m listening,’ he said.

It sounded as if she was pacing outside his door.

‘I need your help,’ she said.

He really hoped that it wasn’t the same favour she’d asked for the week before.

‘Honey, I don’t think we should go there again,’ he said, trying to be gentle.

‘Get over yourself,’ she huffed. ‘This is about work.’

‘Work?’ he said, genuinely perplexed. ‘Your work?’

She was moving again, and then he heard her come to rest outside his door and slide down the wall. She really did sound all in.

‘Yeah,’ she sighed. ‘You know I told you about Patrick, the chef who hit the boss and then resigned? Well his replacement turned out to be incapable of cooking anything that didn’t include at least eight million chillies; the residents were in danger of internal combustion. Anyway, I tried to talk to him about it and he threw a wobbler and stropped off back to Mexico on an afternoon flight.’

‘Wow. He really didn’t like you,’ Hal said, impressed.

‘I didn’t like him much either. Anyway, that left me and Skinny Steve scrabbling to make dinner, which actually wasn’t so bad.’ She paused for breath. ‘Sausage and mash, seeing as you asked.’

‘I didn’t ask.’

‘I’m pretending you did, I like to kid myself that you’re a nice person. Anyway, it wasn’t terrible, but oh my God, Hal, I can’t keep this up! You know how bad I am in the kitchen and Steve has the imagination of a goldfish on a bad day. I think I’ll have a sodding heart attack if I have to do this for much longer, poor Lucille and Mimi are having to hold the fort at the shop and it’s too much to ask of them at their age. And then, to top it all, it’s Old Don’s birthday tomorrow and we have to throw him a bloody party. His family is coming and everything. I need a cake! How do I make a cake?’ She sounded terrified. ‘And what else can we feed them? Steve’s threatening to walk out and I don’t blame him, and I kind of promised him that I’d make sure there was a proper chef there in the morning to supervise him, and Hal, the only chef I know in the world is you.’

She gasped in a strangled breath, and he sank to the floor on the other side of the door with his head in his hands. He’d sensed where the conversation was leading and he already knew he couldn’t do it. It was unfair of her to ask it of him.

‘I can’t, Honey. I just can’t.’

‘Hal, please,’ she rushed in again, words tumbling out of her mouth too fast. ‘I know it’s short notice and you don’t much like leaving the house, but I’ll get you there and back safely, you’d literally have to just sit in the kitchen and tell Steve what to do. I know I said that he’s got no imagination but he’s really good at following instructions, honestly, he is.’

The pang of desperation in her voice sliced through him. He had to make a choice between his own fears and hers, and however big hers were, his won.

‘I can tell you what you need to do, Honey,’ he said, trying to compromise. ‘I can give you lists, and instructions. I can do all of that. Go grab paper and a pen now if you like. I’ll wait.’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t need lists, Hal, I need you. If I walk in there without a chef tomorrow none of those old people are going to get breakfast. Nor lunch, or dinner! And Old Don won’t get a party and he’s a sodding war veteran!’

Her voice grew high pitched and thick with frustrated tears. ‘Even the protesters won’t get fed!’

He wanted to help her more than he could even put into words. She made it sound so easy, as if he’d be churlish to refuse. It probably seemed easy to her; she didn’t view the world the way he’d been forced to since the accident. She couldn’t possibly, and he didn’t have the words to make her understand, so instead he used ones that were tactless and deliberately unkind to make sure she knew that he absolutely meant it.

‘It’s not my fucking problem, Honeysuckle. I’m not your go-to man to fix all your problems. Last week, sexual frustration. This week, you want my professional skills. What’s it going to be next week? Just don’t come to me if you ever need a spider catching, because I’m not the man you fucking need.’

He expected vitriol, and he got silence, and then she said just one quiet word, which turned out to be much, much worse.

‘Coward.’

Moments, and then minutes, and then he heard her haul herself up off the floor. He felt her dejection, and he heard her door close, and he loathed himself more than ever. Of all the things he’d never been, it was a coward.

Not my fucking problem
, he’d said.

I’m not the man you fucking need
, he’d said.

Honey lay in bed that night and cried big fat tears. Tears because she was tired. Tears because there was so much responsibility on her shoulders that she didn’t know how much longer she could stay standing upright. And tears because of all the things that had upset her lately, Hal’s words tonight had hurt her most of all.

Honey’s phone buzzed, waking her up too early the next morning, which was a bummer given that she’d barely slept. Squinting at the phone, she read Tash’s message.

Piano man number 3 identified. You cannot say no. He is to die for and you’re meeting him for lunch on Saturday at the pub.

Honey groaned and closed her eyes again. Tash was just going to have to cancel the date, because the piano man project was dead in the water. If Honey never had another date again, it’d still be too soon to re-address the subject of romance.

She really didn’t want to get out of bed, because it signalled the start of another long day of trying to juggle more balls than a Covent Garden street performer and she’d never been the best at catch. Concentrating on her breathing in the fetal position worked for a couple of minutes; it soothed her body, if not her mind. Her mind refused to be soothed. Too many thoughts about whether salmon sandwiches posed a choking hazard to octogenarians and whether the Smartie-covered caterpillar cake she’d noticed in the supermarket last week would cut the mustard. Not that one would be anywhere near big enough; she’d need at least six or more. Was there a collective name for a group of caterpillars? A hive of caterpillars? A clutch of caterpillars? All these thoughts and more chased each other wildly around inside Honey’s skull until she crawled, caterpillar-like, out of bed and under the shower.

‘I’m not a coward.’

Hal’s stark words reached Honey as she closed the door to her flat a little later. She paused.

‘I’m sorry if my choice of words offended you,’ she said, even though she kind of was and kind of wasn’t. On the one hand she could see that by allowing himself to hide away Hal was taking the easy option, but then on the other hand, he was probably the bravest man she’d ever met.

She heard the mechanism of his lock move, and a second later his door swung slowly open. Hal stood there, looking exactly the same as ever, except for one thing. He was wearing a coat.

‘Hal, oh my God!’ Honey moved swiftly to his door and instinctively reached up and kissed his cheek.

‘How do you know I’m not just going for a morning stroll?’ he said, making light of the decision he’d wrestled with all night.

‘I doubt you’ve ever strolled in your life,’ Honey said, and then faltered. ‘So how do we do this?’

‘Do what?’ he said.

‘Do you have a cane?’

Hal made a sound that sounded horribly huffish. ‘No, I do not.’

‘Don’t you need one?’

‘So they say.’

Honey could only agree with them, whoever
they
were. She scanned the hallway for potential pitfalls and her eyes alighted on the umbrella stand, and more specifically her Orla Kiely full-length brolly, a gift from Nell for Christmas the year before. Making a grab for it, she pushed it into Hal’s hands.

‘Use this?’

He ran his hands along it, feeling the curve of the handle. ‘Is it raining?’

Honey knew that he knew perfectly well that it wasn’t raining. ‘I was only trying to help.’

‘By giving me an umbrella that is too short and no doubt hideously garish in order to draw attention to the fact I can’t see a fucking thing?’

Honey rammed the brolly back into the stand. ‘It’s very tasteful, actually. Nell gave it to me and she doesn’t have a tasteless bone in her body.’

‘If you really want to help, just stand next to me once we’re outside. Hold my arm casually as if we actually like each other and tell me if there are steps or kerbs. Can you do that?’

‘I’m not an idiot, Hal,’ she said, but lightly, because she really didn’t want him to change his mind.

‘You do idiotic things quite often,’ he said, pulling his door closed. Honey didn’t miss the way his chest rose and fell heavily beneath his navy woollen pea coat.

‘I’ve never seen you in a coat before,’ she said, to keep the conversation going. ‘It’s quite, er, sexy fisherman.’

‘“Sexy fisherman”?’ Hal sounded incredulous.

Honey opened the front door. ‘Two steps down to the pavement, quite shallow,’ she said, stepping down ahead of Hal. ‘Yes, you know. Captain Birdseye and all that.’ She held his elbow lightly and scanned the quiet, early morning street. ‘We’re walking left down towards the bus stop, there’s no one else around.’

‘Just don’t ask me to run for the bus,’ he said. ‘Captain fucking Birdseye?’

Honey realised what she’d said wrong, too late as usual.

‘Crap. Sorry.’

‘I’m more offended by the fact that he was a fat man in his sixties than by his name.’

Honey heard the thread of humour and the louder thread of tension in Hal’s voice. She sensed that the best thing she could do for him right now was keep up the inane chatter. If there was one thing Honey was good at, it was inane chat. A half smile touched her lips as they stood together at the bus stop wrapped up in warm coats, making catering plans for Old Don’s birthday party. He was coming to help her. He was really coming.

‘Skinny Steve, meet Hal. He’s a chef.’

Honey had installed Hal on a stool in the kitchen, and practically floated two inches off the floor with pride when Steve arrived for work half an hour later.

Skinny Steve almost genuflected.

‘You did it,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t think you would, but you did.’

For a brief moment Honey understood how it felt to be Santa Claus. ‘I promised, didn’t I?’

Steve nodded and stuck his hand out towards Hal.

Honey shook her head emphatically and Steve lowered his unshaken hand again uncertainly.

‘Hi Steve,’ Hal said. ‘Honey tells me you’re the sous chef around here.’

Steve frowned. ‘Why’d you tell him I can cook soup?’ he shot at Honey out the side of his mouth.

Honey coughed. ‘Would you excuse us for just one second please, Hal?’ she said, and yanked Steve into the dining room.

‘Skinny Steve,’ she said, and sucked in a deep breath. ‘That man in there is one of the country’s top chefs. He had an accident and he can’t see anymore, but he’s here to help, so don’t blow it, okay?’

‘You still shouldn’t have said I can cook soup, Honey,’ Steve frowned. ‘What if he tells me to do it today?’

‘He didn’t say soup,’ she hissed. ‘He said
sous
. It’s French, Steve, for … for super chef,’ she lied. ‘Yes. I told him you’re a super chef and he’s really looking forward to teaching you, so get your act together and just do as he tells you, okay?’