‘I’ll keep moving while you stretch.’ He pivoted on the top step and jogged down.
Right. Stretches. Although she ran regularly, back home, she’d never really bothered with the stretching part; she just began slowly and let her muscles warm that way. But, hey, if he took running that seriously … She bent slowly, rolling her spine up and down three times, then completed a few lunges and twists. A couple of hamstring stretches against the brick wall and she was done.
‘OK. Let’s hit the beach.’ She trotted down the steps behind him.
He set off to the nearest set of pedestrian lights, running slowly on the spot until the traffic stopped, then leading the way over the road and down the first set of concrete steps, all the way down to the Undercliff Walk.
‘Whoo! This is great,’ she called, falling into an easy stride beside him between the stony beach and the rising chalk cliffs, sucking in the salt air. The sun kissed every ripple in the ocean and the traffic noise from the road above was whipped away by the wind. The day was fresh and new, and loping gently at her side was a man who, she was ready to admit to herself, could make her heart rate gallop without a running shoe in sight.
‘Ready to pick it up?’ Martyn accelerated smoothly and his long legs began to carry him effortlessly and rapidly away from her.
‘No way!’ She laughed, the tightness of her legs making her wish she’d warmed up more thoroughly. ‘You’re a hell of a lot taller – than – I – am.’ Her breathing became disobedient and she slowed to let it kick back into rhythm.
He circled to let her catch up. ‘Sorry, Pocketsize Woman.’ He didn’t look sorry. His eyes glittered with fun as he began to skip. ‘Come on! You must be able to keep up with me now.’
‘It would be easier to keep up with a kangaroo!’ Her breathing went all to hell again as she began to laugh at the expressions on the faces of passersby as he bounced along at a pace that still had her running pretty hard. But she found her flow after the first half-mile and when Martyn gave up skipping and settled back down to run she began to enjoy the rhythmic pat-pat-pat of their feet on the concrete. The sun, the dancing sea and the fluttering breeze combined to inflate a balloon of happiness in her chest, a glad-to-be-alive, glad-to-be-here-and-not-dealing-with-all-the-crap-in-Connecticut feeling.
Martyn’s respiratory rate still seemed about half that of hers but she was running fluidly, taking time out to watch the waves running up over those millions and millions of little round stones, and it didn’t seem long before they reached the slope up to Rottingdean, the White Horse Hotel peering down from the top.
Martyn made for the steep steps curving up beside the slope, past the wall studded with big pebbles, just like the walls of the cute little houses she’d learned were called flint cottages. Gritting her teeth against the aches in her thighs and knots in her calves, Honor ran up behind him. At the top he turned and jogged back down past the cushions of wildflowers that studded the corners of each step. Heart rate and breathing getting jerky, Honor followed. Up, down; up, down. Her legs began to burn. Then he jumped down on to the beach and began to run back the way they’d come, but on the stones.
‘You’re kidding me,’ Honor said under her breath. She pounded back across the concrete while he ran a couple of hundred yards on the incredibly shifting surface. Her legs got heavier. Unappreciative now of the dancing ocean, the beach and even the way that the undulating crest to the white cliffs brought the road above into view, buses looking like toys, her breath rasped and she tried to tug up her sweatshirt’s long sleeves.
Her attention was diverted when Martyn jumped fluidly back up on to the concrete, reached over his shoulders with both hands and, without breaking stride, pulled his top off, baring his upper body to the sun. He cantered on, his top bunched in his hand.
‘That’s a cheat,’ she gasped.
He turned his head and grinned. ‘I don’t mind if you take yours off.’
She snorted, which interrupted her breathing again and made him laugh, and wished she’d worn a running bra, so that she could have. And then she let herself drop just a half-step behind so that she could watch him as he loped easily along.
She had to blink.
None of the gym-freak’s overdevelopment marred his body, but every tautly defined muscle was visible beneath his skin. So many muscles, all rolling in perfect harmony. He was a running sculpture, a perfect specimen. Jessamine, who wallowed in lovely romantic novels, would have called him a force of nature; Honor thought him more a work of art.
But even being in the presence of live art couldn’t take Honor’s mind off the way her legs were turning to string. She gave a silent groan as Martyn turned for the steep steps up the cliff to the road. She would have preferred one of the slopes on the last lap towards home. But, whooping in great lungfuls of air, she made it up.
She nearly cried when he turned and skipped down again. Womanfully, she gave chase, refusing to let him see how unfit she’d let herself get. Maybe hitting thirty should have been a clue that she needed to step up her running and her dance classes, but her hours at VPV Finance had got longer and longer as she’d battled the shrinking of her client list. Not normally good at knowing when to quit, that’s when she’d asked Vic if he wanted her to be the staff member he had to ‘lose’ in that financial year.
And Vic had said yes so fast, Honor had been crushed. But she’d hung on to negotiate a generous severance package in lieu of notice. And, right there, was when she’d decided: Get away, Honor.
Pounding around a corner, she followed Martyn up a ramp into an underpass, their footsteps echoing blam blam blam. Over a path and car park and suddenly they were into a lush green park, a valley between ribs in the landscape. The residences of Saltdean rose in tiers like spectators at a football match.
She salvaged enough breath to call, ‘Wow!’
People trekked through the park towards them, following the paved way on the floor of the valley, carrying backpacks or lunch boxes. Surely Martyn must slow up? Or risk scattering people like bowling pins. Her legs thanked him in advance.
But, ‘This way,’ he threw over his shoulder. And, to her horror, he set off up the slope on the right of the valley.
Once more, she thought she might cry.
And then she thought she might quit.
But she set off after him, knees throbbing, thighs aching, breath burning. Then he turned at the top and she saw that he was going to zig-zag the whole damned way along the sloping side of the grassy park. Her legs gave. Which pretty much meant the rest of her had to give, too.
Gasping for breath, she flopped to her knees and twisted on to her back, wafting the waist of her sweatshirt to let in blessed cool air, legs trembling like jello. Jelly. She was in England and this English rat bastard had driven her to this, so they must be trembling like jelly.
He returned, laughter finally making him breathe hard. ‘I thought you were never going to give up. You ran way farther than I thought you could.’ He took both her hands, pulling. ‘You have to cool down and stretch or you’re going to be too stiff to move.’
She whimpered. ‘Stiff is OK. Stiff is good.’ But she let him drag her up and they jogged slowly down the grassy slope, towards a skateboard park and along flat ground. They slowed and slowed until at last they were walking. He shrugged back into his sweatshirt and linked his arm through hers. ‘Five minutes walking, stretches, then I’ll buy you a smoothie.’
She groaned at the delicious prospect of something thick and cold easing her throat. But the burn did leave her calves as she walked and even her knees firmed up. The stretches he made her do were more comprehensive than the ones she’d sketched at the bungalow but, at last, he let her lie down on the slope in the dappled shade of a tree whilst he went to the kiosk beside the play park.
Pressing an orange-and-passion-fruit smoothie into her hand, he dropped down beside her. ‘I really shouldn’t have let you run like that. I knew within about thirty seconds of leaving your place that you we
re unfit. I just wondered how long it would be before you admitted it.’
‘I hate you,’ she managed, taking tiny sips and trying to hold the liquid at the back of her throat to ease the burn. ‘Every time I found a rhythm, you ran me up steps or up a hill.’
He sucked his straw, his breathing almost even already. His hair blew back from his face and a morning shadow hollowed his cheeks. ‘Works on the glutes.’
Her chest was still heaving. ‘That’s how you got that butt, huh? I guess mine could use the work.’
A spark ignited in his eyes. ‘I think I would have noticed.’
She changed the subject. ‘How are your sisters?’
‘Zoë and Clarissa? They’re the ones you’ve met. I have Nicola and Beverley, too.’
‘Four sisters! Poor you. Any brothers?’
‘Nope. Mum just had girls until–’ He drank instead of completing his sentence, the dull orange liquid sinking slowly in the bottle.
‘So you were raised in a houseful of women?’
He laughed. ‘It made me strong. They were all so bloody bossy I had to stand up for myself.’
‘I thought Zoë was a little … decisive, when you called her for me but Clarissa …! She takes “decisive” to a whole new level. Was your mom the same way?’
He grinned between sips. Then sighed. ‘I might as well tell you, as it might help you not to put your foot in it with your landlady. And there’s always somebody in Eastingdean ready to rake up ancient history because the Mayfairs are official gossip fodder. Thing is, those I call my sisters – well, none of them are.’
Honor levered herself on to her elbow. ‘Were you fostered?’
He shook his head. ‘It sounds really Catherine Cookson, but Clarissa’s my natural mother. She had me when she was sixteen so the other three are really my aunts and the person I’ve always called “Mum” was my grandmother. “Dad” was actually my grandfather.’
Honor hid her surprise. ‘I’ve heard about that situation. I guess that the arrangement made things … easier on Clarissa.’
‘Expect so. I tagged on to the end of the family and Clarissa carried on with her life, her education and her youth. It saved me being a complete embarrassment.’
Honor sensed he was waiting for her reaction. ‘Your Mum-Gran was pretty generous.’ She tried to say the English ‘Mum’ naturally but it sounded totally fake.
His eyes softened. ‘She was wonderful. She and Dad are gone now and I miss them. They didn’t want Clarissa to suffer for a moment’s wildness, the kind other girls got away with.’ He paused. ‘I remember the day that Mum explained it all to me. It was a hell of a shock – but then nothing seemed to change. Maybe there had been some idea that Clarissa would take me over at some unspecified future date, perhaps when she was in a settled relationship. But she didn’t get married until I was at uni.’
‘A new guy wouldn’t have wanted you, anyway. The new partner always wants a clean slate and their family to be all perfect and symmetrical.’ Honor rolled back down on the grass and watched a puff of white cloud sailing over the washed blue sky.
Sinking on to his stomach and elbows brought his face level with hers, making her aware of his proximity in a way that undid the cooling accomplished by the smoothie. ‘Maybe. Clarissa did eventually decide she wanted me, long before she married Duncan. But I liked living with comfy Mum rather than spiky Clarissa and so Clarissa was hurt.’
‘Fighting over you! Lucky guy.’
He laughed. His eyes were fixed on hers. ‘It didn’t feel lucky. First I was Clarissa’s “mistake”, but then, when her friends began to settle down and have babies, she looked around for me as if I was a handbag she’d put away until it came back into fashion.’
His hair hung around his face in quills. It was just long enough, Honor decided. Long enough to be sexy and cool and swing almost in his eyes, not so long as to be surfer-dude. It lay just so. Women would kill for hair like that but guys didn’t even seem to notice their amazing good fortune. His eyes, apart from being dark, were full of intelligence and wry humour. And interest. It burned in his eyes and intrigued her. ‘So what did she come out of college as?’
‘A schoolteacher in drama and dance. But she didn’t have the understanding disposition for the schoolteacher bit, so now she gives dance classes privately. You know, the kind of thing adults do in the evening and at weekends and kids do after school.’
‘I certainly do know. I was one of those kids mad on tap and ballet, graduating on to street dancing. Maybe I’ll take a class with her.’
He closed one eye against the sun, as if he were winking. ‘Dancing would build up your stamina. And Clarissa would love it.
‘I get on with her OK, now,’ he went on. ‘Except for her incessant complaints about my life. When I dropped out of uni, we could hardly be in the same room because I asked Mum if I could live with her while I got on my feet and Clarissa wanted me to finish my degree and pick up a graduate’s salary. We had some shocking arguments.’
Honor remembered the explosions Clarissa had mentioned.
‘Clarissa said that Mum shouldn’t let me live there for nothing,’ he went on, ‘with my head in the clouds. Mum said, “I let you live your own life and make your own choices. And you lived that life for some time before you chose to take any notice of Martyn. Now he’s going to make his own choices and take opportunities and make mistakes, too.” So Clarissa had to accept it.
‘She’s still circling “good jobs” in the paper for me, though. And, because I help her out by designing flyers for her dance classes and keeping up her website in my spare time – of which I have plenty, as she never hesitates to remind me – she drops heavy hints about the benefits of working a forty-hour-week in design.’
‘And Clarissa never had any other kids?’
‘No. It would probably have been different if she had. Maybe she would have found a way to start calling me her son instead of her brother. But she’s born and bred in Eastingdean and, having once agreed to the rewriting of the family history, it was hard to make the change.’ His smile twisted.
She snorted. ‘I know about small towns. Back home in Hamilton Drives, one half of the town is never happy unless it’s picking busily over the lives of the other half. How about your dad? Is he around?’
‘My natural father, he was a tourist. Nothing romantic about Clarissa’s story, just teenagers letting testosterone get ahead of what little sense they had.’ His grin flashed.
‘Aren’t you curious about your natural father?’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose I have been. I’m a giant next to Clarissa, and much darker, so it was no surprise when she told me that I look just like him.’
And kind of understandable that, if he’d had towering calendar-guy looks like Martyn’s, the absent tourist father might have found Clarissa a pushover. ‘Didn’t her parents track him down and make him pay child maintenance? Or even marry her?’
‘All Clarissa knew about him was that he was called John and came from Leicester.’
‘Oh.’ She began bending and stretching her legs, feeling stiffness setting in already. ‘That would make it tough for you to find him.’
‘I never felt the need. He doesn’t know about me. I just think of him as a sperm donor.’ Then he smiled, his teeth even and white. ‘I’ve churned out my entire life story. Sorry. Incredibly boring.’
‘I appreciate being put in the picture.’ She sat up and turned her face to the sun. Lying down next to him, so close, was making her feel skippy inside.
A sprinkling of mothers let tiny children play on the climbing frames below, perhaps on their way back from dropping the older kids at school. But then she noticed a woman with long black curls and a multi-coloured crocheted poncho shading her eyes and gazing up at Martyn and Honor. ‘Friend of yours?’
Martyn turned to look and the woman waved enthusiastically. ‘Shit, it’s Robina.’ He turned away, embarrassment curling his face.
Honor stared at the woman,
who was hovering as if considering climbing up to join them. ‘That’s an unusual name.’ She paused, waiting for him to fill the silence, give her information about Robina. And, when he didn’t, ‘She seems to know you.’
He cupped the side of his face as if to prevent the image of wildly waving Robina burning itself on to his retinas. ‘Sorry, but can we ignore her? She can be a giant pain and it’s the best way. Honestly.’
‘What kind of giant pain?’ Honor itched to respond to someone so obviously available for communication. ‘Will she come up here to talk?’
He groaned. ‘Hope not! She wants to be in my life. She wants to be my life! She owns a tearoom, the Eastingdean Teapot, and I used to go in there, but I stopped because … You know how it is, when someone likes you too much.’
Intrigued and astounded, Honor turned to look at him and the slot of tension that had appeared between his eyes. ‘How does someone like you “too much”?’
His hand remained a barrier between his eyes and Robina, who had stopped waving now and was just watching. ‘She sits with you uninvited when you visit her tearoom, makes you special cakes, writes you poetry, gives you presents, calls at your flat or lurks around bushes watching your flat, she follows you on Twitter and makes you a page on Facebook, she walks through the park when she knows you’ll be out for your morning run, she hangs out wherever she thinks you might turn up.’ He sighed. ‘I can hardly cross the road to the pub any more, because she’ll be waiting to try and burrow into me, like a parasite.’
‘Wow. I find that bizarre.’ As Honor watched, the woman turned away, hair flying behind her. The disappointment in her slumped shoulders tugged at Honor’s vulnerable heart. ‘You mean she’s like a stalker?’ She knew she sounded incredulous but … well, it was pretty incredible.
‘Just like one.’ He risked a glance and visibly relaxed when he saw Robina stumping away. ‘Zoë told me that you were over here to trace your family?’
Honor could sympathise with his obvious desire to change the subject but her curiosity kept her watching Robina. ‘It’s not the only reason but, sure, I might look for my roots, while I’m here. My mom’s English. She left me when I was a baby. I’ve always wondered about her.’ She paused. The woman was passing from sight now, skirting the back of the cream art deco building with the swimming pools in front, which Honor had seen from the road before – Saltdean Lido. Honor moved her gaze back to Martyn. ‘Obsessed about her, my family would say. So, yeah, I could try and talk to her. My dad was over here on vacation from law school when they met at the Reading Rock Festival, and he let himself be enchanted by her, a wild child of rock music, champion of personal freedom – completely unlike him. Nowadays he practises law and is buttoned up in a major way. But back in the day, apparently, he was so enchanted that when the wild child told him she’d missed a period, they went through a Druid handfasting ceremony at the Autumnal Equinox, on Primrose Hill. And he took the wild child back to the States in time for him to begin his final year at law school.’ She shook her head. ‘And that was when all the trouble started.’
Love & Freedom (Choc Lit) Page 4
