Love & Freedom

by Sue Moorcroft

  In the fridge, she discovered milk, cheese, eggs, pineapple juice, sunflower spread, a pre-packed salad and a cooked breast of chicken. In a cupboard: tea bags, instant coffee, wholemeal bread, sugar, McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits, crackers, several tins of soup and a box of cereal.

  Best of all, on the kitchen counter along with the ibuprofen and the receipts, stood a giant container of green aloe aftersun gel – spray on. ‘What a guy,’ she marvelled. ‘Brains as well as looks.’ She unbuttoned and carefully slid down her shirt, closing her eyes as she sprayed the pulsing area that she hadn’t been able to reach with the cream. Bliss.

  Buttoning up, she picked up the receipt and saw it came attached to a note in a spiky hand.

  Honor,

  Hope what I brought will keep you going until you can shop. Clarissa says that if you need anything else, to ring her. Hope you’re OK soon.

  Martyn Mayfair.

  Having consumed a bowl of cereal and three cups of coffee, wincing whenever the steam brushed its cruel fingers across her tight red cheek, Honor was in the middle of revising the plans she’d had for the day – unpack, shop, get her laptop online, explore – and postponing most of them until she’d recovered from her sunburn, when she heard the front doorbell.

  On the doorstep was a woman wearing pink-and-blue gym clothes and an impatient expression. She did manage a smile, though. ‘Hello, I’m Clarissa, you’re renting the bungalow from me.’

  ‘Oh, hi!’ began Honor, stepping back, because it was unreasonable to keep somebody standing on the doorstep of her own house. Bungalow. Clarissa evidently needed no invitation, anyway, because by the time Honor closed the door behind her, she was already in the living room that fronted the bungalow, had dropped into a pink swivel chair and was spreading paperwork on the seat of the small cream sofa.

  She opened the conversation with a corresponding lack of ceremony. ‘Thought I’d check you’re OK. Are you OK? Martyn realised you weren’t up to signing the tenancy agreement when he found you getting sunburned, so he left it with me.’ She selected a set of papers and a pen.

  Honor lowered herself gently on to the vacant half of the sofa. ‘Sure, I’ll sign it now. I was so stupid to fall asleep in the sun and was lucky your brother found me and called the doctor. She’s your sister, right?’ The resemblance was clear. Both women were small and stocky, their hair identical shades of mouse. Maybe it was just the men in their family that got the dark, brooding movie-star looks.

  ‘Right. Zoë. If you’re sure you’re up to this?’ Clarissa held out the pen. ‘It’s exactly the agreement that I emailed to you to read over, so you just need to sign … and I’ll sign … I’ve dated it from when you moved in. That’s good, thanks.’ Then she added, ingenuously, ‘I just got the agreement off the internet, so I hope it’s OK. But you feel trustworthy, to me.’ Her smile flashed again, a glimpse of a softer side under her brisk manner.

  The daughter of a lawyer and until lately an employee in an industry in which every agreement was a shrine to proper procedure, Honor was bemused. But she just said, politely, ‘Sure, I’m good for it. Ouch!’ Extending her arm too far to pass the paperwork back, her shoulder burned as if a Band Aid had been ripped from her skin.

  Clarissa made a sympathetic face. ‘Will you be all right? I can call Zoë again–’ But she glanced at her watch as if checking she could spare the time.

  ‘I’ll be fine. I just need time to recover. Zoë fixed me up and Martyn helped me out with food and medication. It was so great of him to do that because he doesn’t look exactly–’ she searched for something to adequately encapsulate why Martyn Mayfair didn’t look like anybody’s personal shopper –‘domesticated.’

  Her choice surprised a laugh from Clarissa. ‘The only thing domesticated about Martyn is that he lives indoors. Although, I suppose, he does know how to open tins or buy food that doesn’t need much cooking.

  ‘It’s good to know he uses his time for something more useful than seeing how attractive he can make himself to women.’ And then she shrugged and softened the words. ‘Martyn’s one of the good guys, if you don’t mind his lifestyle and his occasional explosions.’ Her kid brother so dismissed, she returned to the purpose of her visit. ‘We have a small information point for visitors at the community hall so I picked up some things I thought might be useful to you – timetables for the buses and for the trains from Brighton, and a couple of maps, so you can find your way around. It’s only a few minutes’ walk to the local shops – I’ve marked them in red.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Honor was touched. ‘Between you, your family has provided almost a welcome wagon. The bus schedule will be really useful because I need to look for temp jobs and driving here is damned scary.’ Then, as Clarissa rose, ‘Wait, I need to pay Martyn for the things he bought for me.’ Making no sudden movements, she fetched her bag from the bedroom, glad she’d stopped at the airport ATM for currency.

  Clarissa hung around only long enough to take the money. ‘Thanks – but I have to go. My contact details are on your copy of the tenancy agreement. Call if you have a problem.’

  ‘Thanks again–’ Honor began. But Clarissa was already halfway out of the door. After watching through the window as her landlady ran down to her car and reversed neatly out of the gravel drive, Honor stood looking out at the patio with its white-painted concrete balustrade and the concrete steps dropping to the drive and front lawn. Built on an incline, the bungalow was the top step of a kind of giant stairway with its own garage tucked niftily beneath it; then down to the lawn, down again to the coast road with its growling traffic and the grassy cliff top beyond and, one last giant step over the cliff to the blue ocean dancing with jewels from the morning sun. She was going to like it here, she decided. She hadn’t moved home often but she knew familiarity was just a question of finding new habits to get into.

  Of letting go of the idea that Hamilton Drives, either her town-centre apartment or her dad’s blue clapboard house, was ‘home’.

  If she hadn’t let herself get burned she could have run across the road – there was a crossing right outside – and found the way down to the beach.

  But, she sighed, there were some boring necessities to take care of, even if she felt like crap and her sunburn throbbed like a dragon’s roar. Firing up her laptop on the mobile internet signal, which would do until she could get properly hooked up, she trawled through her credit card and bank accounts, clicking on change details and tapping in her new address in Marine Drive, Eastingdean, Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom, with a sense of adventure.

  Switching to a sense of guilt, she opened her email account and selected Stef, Jess, Zach and Dad from her address book for the To: line.

  Subject: A little space

  Hi,

  With everything that’s happened, recently, I’m sure you’re not too surprised that I’ve decided to take some time out, away from Hamilton Drives. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve rented a little house and I have my severance pay so I’m all set.

  She reread the last line and wondered whether to say something about being back soon. Then she shrugged – which made the dragon roar harder – and simply added:

  Lots of love

  Honor x

  And pressed ‘send’. There. That ought to reassure everyone at home in Connecticut. She wasn’t sure whether Stef had internet access in his new place but someone was bound to pass the message on.

  Chapter Three

  The job had gone well and Martyn drove home, wipers swiping. In the few days he’d been away the weather had broken and cloud rolled like a dark grey blanket over the rooftops but even the rain gusting in diagonally from the sea couldn’t spoil his mood. He’d spent some time with a scantily clad woman, which was always good.

  Queuing down the swooping road that was fast becoming a river he sang along to the radio, splashing over the speed bumps and past the Welcome to Historic Rottingdean sign, the cricket club, the pond, threading around delivery vehicles blo
cking access to the eclectic mix of shops in Rottingdean High Street. Finally, he reached the crossroads that made the seaside village a traffic nightmare and turned left on to the coast road and the climb up to Saltdean then Eastingdean.

  His black BMW X5 was taller than some vehicles but still he had to concentrate in order to negotiate the starbursts of tail lights in the gloomy downpour, so that it took him a few moments to notice the woman who appeared at the top of the steps from the undercliff and waited patiently at a pedestrian crossing.

  Once he did notice he found he couldn’t look away.

  An inability he held in common with a group of lads getting off the school bus, across the road.

  And three men walking down the hill.

  And several other drivers.

  Because she was soaked to her all-too-visible skin. And it was Clarissa’s damned tenant, again. Not a week since she’d passed out with sunstroke and here she was bringing the traffic to a halt looking like Miss Thunderstorm on a glamour calendar, her light blue top clinging to a neat little torso and bra-less breasts. Wow.

  Absolutely, completely wow.

  Hastily yanking on the brake so that he couldn’t run into the car in front, he looked some more. Very nice.

  But, he supposed, unless she was an exhibitionist – which would be interesting but seemed unlikely – she wasn’t flashing at the locals intentionally. And if her, um, assets caused a traffic accident it would be a horrible way for her to discover her mistake. Humiliation wouldn’t be in it. He pressed the button that lowered the window. ‘Hi!’ he shouted. The woman was preparing to cross the road. What was her name? ‘Honor!’ And then, more loudly, ‘Honor!’

  Finally, she looked around. Hesitated, then gave a tiny wave as she began to cross in front of him. Her hair was wound up behind her head except for the sodden strands that clung to her cheeks and she clutched something against her abdomen, a plastic carrier bag folded carefully around it. The teenage boys began a howler monkey appreciation of her unwitting display and she turned to regard them uncertainly.

  ‘Get in and I’ll run you up to the bungalow,’ he called.

  Indicating her drenched clothes, she smiled but shook her head. ‘I’ll ruin your upholstery. It’s not far and I can’t get any wetter.’

  ‘Please. Get in!’ The boys were sticking their fingers in their mouths to whistle. No doubt invitations in schoolboy street-mouth would follow. Whichever way he looked at it, getting her into his car was a good thing.

  Finally, shrugging – oh, wow again – she veered around to the passenger door and hopped up beside him, blinking the rain away. As the interior light flashed on her eyes shone green with brown streaks, like little gooseberries, as they studied him. ‘I’ve been exploring in Rottingdean and didn’t notice the storm coming up. I’m as wet as all get out and I was having such a great time, till then. Rudyard Kipling’s garden is there.’ Her enthusiasm invited him to marvel along with her.

  ‘That’s right,’ he managed. He was staring. He tried not to but it was as if her breasts were magnets and his eyes, heavy as metal, were being dragged away from her face. And his cheeks were aching with the effort of not pulling his smile into a wildly appreciative grin. Really, it was a sin to cover all that beauty up, but he was getting physically uncomfortable in his jeans and had to find a way to stop himself drinking her in because women could be quick to note the direction of a man’s stare and slow to accept responsibility for it. With an inner groan of protest, he manoeuvred out of the seatbelt and then his jacket, clearing his throat. ‘Here, put this on.’

  ‘It’ll only get wet–’

  ‘You need it more than me.’ The queue of vehicles behind him had begun to toot and honk because the BMW was blocking the road – or maybe they were objecting to him removing Honor’s body from the landscape – so he slipped back into his seatbelt and concentrated on indicating and pulling away as she snuggled into his jacket.

  ‘I don’t think the English climate likes me. This is the first day I’ve been out since getting burned and the weather let me get right into Rottingdean and then broke on me. Thank you for stopping. I wasn’t certain it was you, right off. You look a little different today, without the stubble.’

  ‘I had to shave for a job,’ he replied, trying to keep his eyes from flicking back to check that he really had been so stupid as to give her the means to hide what had been deliciously revealed.

  ‘Oh …? Nice SUV, by the way.’ She glanced around the interior, curiously. ‘I want to thank you for helping me out, Friday. If you hadn’t woken me I could have ended up in the hospital. And you were so kind, fetching my groceries. Your sister Clarissa came by and I gave her the money, which she’s keeping for you. She’s been so helpful about getting me a bus schedule and everything.’

  ‘No problem.’ Martyn drove up the hill. The road swooped down and up again before he could swing the X5 into the bungalow’s drive, halting in front of the garage. And, before she could move, ‘I’ll walk you to the door.’

  She looked surprised. ‘You must have been one hell of a boy scout.’

  He was beginning to think that himself. But, somehow, no matter how sexy and appealing she looked with fabric clinging to curves that were a gift to mankind, he didn’t want her to show him anything she wasn’t willingly letting him see. Without stopping to examine the thought, he jumped out into the needles of rain, chilly against his overheated skin, ran around the car and opened her door. She began to pull off his jacket. ‘Here–’

  He gritted his teeth against temptation and hooked the fabric back around her shoulders. ‘Not yet.’ Ignoring her puzzled frown, he ushered her up the steps and across the patio, hunching against the weather as she fumbled with the unfamiliar key. Only once she was safely in the hall did he let her hand back his jacket.

  ‘Thanks again. You are so kind. I’ll go get dry – I must look like a drowned rat.’

  His eyes flickered south and this time he couldn’t hold back his grin. If Eastingdean ever held a wet T-shirt competition she would ace it. ‘Believe me, you look fabulous.’

  Honor watched the Englishman run through the driving rain and drop out of her sight as he took the stairs, reappearing in seconds in the drive below. He had a nice vehicle for a guy without a proper job. But maybe the BMW belonged to whoever he’d been working for? She’d wanted to ask him about his work but it hadn’t felt as if he’d welcome the intrusion, so intent as he’d been on his self-imposed task of helping her, pretty much insisting that she got into his SUV and then practically stuffing her into his jacket. He seemed unable to even carry on a conversation as he’d concentrated grimly on his personal mission of delivering her to her front door. Maybe he had some kind of OCD problem – Outmoded Courtesy Disease, ho ho.

  She grinned, wiping a chill trickle of water from her neck. He had one hell of a look without the thick stubble, with that cleft chin and the suggestion of a dimple beside the corner of his mouth, so tall, and his hair cut so casually around his face. On Friday she hadn’t really been in a condition to appreciate his wow factor.

  But that guy was a ten. Maybe even an eleven. And when he smiled he went totally off the scale.

  She sighed, squelched into the bathroom and tugged the cord that turned on the light. And froze. ‘Holy crap!’ Her eyes and mouth became aghast circles as she gazed into the large bathroom mirror.

  At the saturated T-shirt that had turned transparent in the rain.

  Slowly, she put her hands over her eyes. Oh no. Martyn’s OCD had been Openly Chest Distracted.

  Chapter Four

  Luckily, she need never see Martyn Mayfair again. Nor the schoolboys on the hill or the drivers whose keen gazes she’d assumed to be cheerful English sympathy at her poor, saturated state. But who had actually been ogling her boobs.

  Because she could always jump over the cliff.

  Or move right back to Connecticut.

  But that would mean giving up on her big idea for the summer. Honor eased off her
sodden T-shirt and flung it to the floor. She had to stay. Which meant she’d probably have to face Martyn Mayfair again because his sister obviously gave him tasks connected with her rental property.

  She set the shower at a notch above lukewarm, which she could take now without setting her sunburn pulsing, stepped under the water and closed her eyes in misery.

  The fabulous smile that had half-blinded her had actually been a lascivious grin, the light in his burning dark eyes had been laughter. Savagely, she scrubbed shampoo into her hair. Tomorrow, she planned to find a temp agency. But first, she’d buy a big umbrella against the English weather that suddenly threw in a storm in the middle of a heatwave.

  Unable to resist the draw of the rolling ocean, Honor began the next day by strolling along the great concrete walkway called the Undercliff Walk to Rottingdean, a popular route, judging by the walkers, runners, mothers with buggies and owners with dogs all enjoying the return of the sun, albeit accompanied by a horizontal breeze.

  The cliffs, rising up on her right, were white. She’d never seen chalk cliffs close up before and it was like walking beside an enormous, badly cut cake – complete with falling crumbs, judging from the chunks of chalk littering the ground. The scale and grandeur took her breath away.

  To her left, over great bulwarks built as protection from the incoming tide, the beach was made of rocks, from breakwaters of great boulders to millions and trillions of pebbles, which every wave rattled like a moment of applause. As she walked, she took deep breaths of the salty wind that whipped her hair and filled her ears. It tasted like freedom.

  She loved, loved, loved England.

  She resisted the temptation to wander into Rottingdean village which, yesterday, she’d half-explored, cute and quirky and anything but rotting. Instead, she took one of the cream-and-red buses from the shelter outside the White Horse Hotel, a typically English bus with two decks stacked on top of each other. The ‘double decker’ reminded her of all those summers spent in London and, as then, she climbed the steep spiral stairs. Why would anybody travel downstairs when they could look into gardens and over roofs?