Chapter Nine
Martyn liked where he lived. It didn’t sound glamorous to say that his place was over shops, but as Starboard Walk was right at the sea end of The Butts he had a fantastic view over the cliffs to the Channel. The small block had been renovated specifically to appeal to those discerning enough to patronise Belinda’s hat shop, Holistic Harmony, a nice Italian restaurant and an upmarket confectioners, the kind that sold sugared almonds in cellophane tied with curly gold ribbon.
He liked the black iron external stairway that ran down past the flint-studded walls at one end of the block and the black iron balcony that bellied out at the other, with enough room for him to sit with the occasional beer and watch the waves and the road disappearing east towards Peacehaven or west to Saltdean, Rottingdean and Brighton.
Before he let himself out on Saturday morning, he did a quick check of the car park from his bedroom. And there was Robina, hanging idly around as if looking for something. He stepped back as she looked up. Waited until, with one last look, she wandered off with that life has disappointed me look.
To give her time to get clear, he opened his laptop and spent twenty minutes on Facebook, before he set off on his favourite run along the undercliff to Rottingdean; it didn’t matter if it wasn’t early because the day didn’t threaten to be hot. An army of ragged white clouds marched before a scurrying breeze but it didn’t feel as if rain was on the way. He’d lived all his life on this cliff top, and knew.
Locking the door, he turned to run down the iron stairway only to find Clarissa on her way up. ‘Oh cra — Hello,’ he said.
She gave him A Look but didn’t comment on his unenthusiastic greeting. ‘I was hoping to catch you. Could you please call on our American friend?’
Oh. ‘If you need me to.’ He put the slightest stress on the word need .
Clarissa’s sharpened gaze told him that she hadn’t missed the emphasis. ‘Not if you’ve got a full day,’ she said, evenly.
‘Running and volleyball. Then I have to talk to Ace.’
Clarissa’s nose wrinkled. She had never met Ace Smith but disdained as an affectation his having rearranged his name from Jason, through Jace, to Ace. But if you were a Smith, you had to do something if you wanted to be memorable, in Martyn’s view.
‘So does that count as a full day?’
He debated staying where he was, towering above her, but decided it was unnecessarily combatant — exactly the trait he disliked in her — so jumped down several steps until their eyes were level. He even managed a smile. ‘How about you tell me what it is you need help with and then I’ll tell you whether I can do it?’
When she returned his smile, ten years fled her face. ‘It’s that brilliant digital thermostat thingy that Duncan put in at the bungalow. Honor “cain’t figyure it out”.’ She put on a horrible American accent that owed more to Jesse James than to Honor’s musical New England syllables. ‘It’s an uncooperative thing and you have to get it into a certain mode before the water will heat without the radiators.’ She pulled a pamphlet from her pocket. ‘I found the instructions. I’ve been asked to take on a tap class in Hove or I would have gone myself. The instructor is ill and I might be able to keep the class permanently, if I get them out of a hole, now.’
‘OK.’ He took the instruction leaflet and slid it into the pocket on the front of his sweatshirt. He supposed his path was bound to keep crossing with Honor’s, what with Clarissa being her landlady and a pain in his backside. Prickly Clarissa. She was all attitude. Why couldn’t she have explained about the class from the start instead of trying to guilt him into helping by hinting he had nothing else to do?
‘Thanks.’ She checked her watch and turned towards her white VW Beetle with pink-and-lilac heart decals streaming along the doors. She took dance classes at some funky gyms and thought it made her look cool, but the car didn’t suit her. A Hummer would better reflect her personality, capable of barging past everything in her way.
As she drove off, he performed his stretches at the foot of the iron stairway, tightening his laces whilst he held position. Then he jogged along the pavement, over the crossing, across the grass and down the steps to the broad concrete promenade at the foot of the cliffs.
Setting the stopwatch on his watch, he set off, letting his stride lengthen, running smoothly, avoiding the litter of chalky rocks at the foot of the cliff lying in wait to twist the ankles of the unwary. The rhythm of his stride was as natural to him as his heartbeat.
Uh-oh. There she was, on a bench.
Not even subtle. Bloody Robina.
He picked up his pace.
And up she hopped as she saw him coming, tossing back her hair and moving into the middle of the walk to intercept him. ‘Hi! Good to see you! I was just thinking—’
The wind whipped the rest of her words away as he powered up, tossing, ‘Excuse me,’ at her as he flew past, settling in for a hard run between Eastingdean and Rottingdean, the wind flipping his hair. People watched him. He was used to that. Weaving past buggies and children; past the underpass and on to the slipway below the White Horse Hotel, slowing, trotting up the stairs, down the slope, up the stairs, down the slope, on to the steep beach and, as the tide was out, down to the sea, careful not to turn an ankle on the pebbles. Then back the way he’d come, welcoming the wind to cool him until he turned into the underpass and around into the park to beat up and down the grassy slope, feeling his buttock muscles begin to burn and then his calves. Turn at the top, trot down, muscles relaxing. Turn, run back up.
He slowed, cooling down a level. Slowed again when he reached the tree that he and Honor had lounged beneath, its dappled shade dancing over her body. He checked his watch and ran on up the slope . . . turn . . . down. He was jogging towards the rubber courts now, where a volleyball net was being run between the posts. One of the men securing the net turned and waved. Martyn lifted his hand in return. ‘Hey, Jamie.’ Last one. Up . . . turn . . . down.
Then he trotted into the court, high-fived with Jamie, who he’d known since school, back when Jamie was thinner, shouting hellos, receiving a few good-natured insults in return. Throwing a pound coin into a box, he took a bottle of cold water out, making himself sip instead of gulp, taking up station at the back in the freezone, ready to return long serves. The blokes nearest to him, Tim and Elliot, grinned and said, ‘All right?’
And he said, ‘Yup. You?’ That was all the conversation needed.
Saturday morning volleyball was shaped by who turned up; the game seemed to organise itself. They’d played fourteen-a-side a couple of weeks ago. Nobody cared. It was fun, an opportunity to run and stretch, dodge and return the ball. Martyn had no competitiveness for sport at this level — he just enjoyed hanging out with the guys. He didn’t even know all their names and it didn’t matter.
Jamie pinged the net and shouted, ‘Everyone ready?’
Martyn’s laconic, ‘Just get on with it,’ acted like a commence-of-play whistle and the ball was punched up towards the sun.
The moment the old grey ball sailed towards Martyn he forgot all about his irritation with Clarissa and Robina. He jumped, he passed, he spun out of the way of a teammate with a shout of, ‘Yours!’ and he served with ferocious spikes. He got hot enough to yank off his sweatshirt, grinning through the resultant yowl of catcalls. He gave the impression that he was focused on nothing but the game.
But the impending visit to the bungalow floated around his mind.
He glanced up to where they’d talked together on the grassy slope. He’d done everything except stick a sign on his forehead saying Interested! He leapt high and punched the ball back over the net, where it clipped the corner of the court and squirted away before it could be returned. ‘Yesssss!’
What was it with married women not wearing wedding rings?
* * *
After five sets the game broke up with as little ceremony as it had begun. The net and ball were bundled into Jamie’s holdall and the players melted away in ones and twos. ‘See you!’
‘Yeah, next week.’
Martyn wriggled back into his top and drank the rest of his bottle of water. He felt good. The exercise had soothed him.
He strolled across the grass towards Marine Drive, the shortest route to the bungalow. The traffic, changing gear for the hill, seemed loud after the comparative calm in the park. His legs felt pleasantly worked and, for once, he walked, rather than ran, the whole way, even up the steps to the bungalow.
When Honor opened the door, she smiled her surprise. That mouth. Her smile punched right into his soul.
He dragged the — now dogeared — leaflet from his sweatshirt pocket and her smile faded. ‘Oh shoot. I guess your si — Clarissa worked on you to come. I didn’t mean to get you another errand to run. Just leave the instructions and I’m sure to be able to figure it out.’
‘It’s OK,’ he found himself saying, as if he hadn’t spent all morning fulminating about how not OK it was. ‘I told Clarissa I’d make sure the thermostat’s functioning.’ For a moment their eyes locked and held, as if they were both remembering the kiss that never was, right here against this very door. And reaching unanimous agreement to move on.
In a white shirt and black jeans, her hair rippling from a ponytail high on her head, she was more of a turn on than all the women he met who spent their days in full make-up and sexy, expensive clothes. Someone else’s wife or not, she was lithe and graceful and pretty as hell. And he still liked the shape of her mouth. The shape of all of her, in fact.
She stepped back to let him in. ‘Sure, if you really have time to be the hero, it’s in the hallway. I’m trying out for a new job at eleven so I don’t have the time to argue.’ She disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar, as he stooped to peer at the digital readout of the wall thermostat.
He could hear her rustling around. ‘So, what’s the new job?’ He gazed at a diagram labelled in three languages.
‘You’ll hate it.’
‘ I’ll hate it?’ He looked at the little white plastic thermostat.
‘I’m helping out at the Eastingdean Teapot. You know, taking orders, carrying food, bussing tables. Clearing tables.’
‘You’re joking!’ He found the reset button under the plastic box of the thermostat unit and all the figures flicked off and came on again. When he turned, through the half-open door he could see her making big eyes at the mirror whilst applying her mascara in tiny flicks. ‘Tell me you’re joking.’ He stabbed the mode button twice and heard the boiler hiss into life in the bathroom, then leaned his back against the wall and watched her some more.
‘No . . .’ The word elongated as she turned her face slightly and tickled the lashes at the corner of an eye. She studied the result, gave a little nod and put the mascara away. She squirted something at her neck and then a different something over her hair.
He tried to keep his voice calm and even. ‘You’re working for Robina? You know she’s bonkers, don’t you?’
She came out to plant herself in front of him. ‘Only about you.’
‘Does that make it any better? Bonkers is bonkers. Working with her might taint you, too.’ He turned back to the thermostat. ‘Let me show you this. It’s a lot easier once you’re let into the secret that the mode and reset buttons are hidden underneath this little flap, under the unit. So all you have to do to make changes is go to this mode and play around with the arrow buttons.’
For two seconds, her head was directly below his chin as she inspected the buttons. ‘Ah, I get it, thank you. Is every woman who has a crush on you “bonkers”?’ She took a step away but her perfume had already clonked him over the head. The hallway was too small for her to put much distance between them. He breathed the perfume in, unable to look away from her eyes; compelling, searching, flecked with gold. She should have been a lawyer — hypnotising criminals into confessing everything. Or putting their arms around her, lifting her off her feet and kissing that fascinating, fine-lipped mouth . . . ‘No. It’s just that Robina’s—’
‘—your stalker.’ Her tone was solemn but her eyes twinkled, as if now that she’d had time to consider the matter she doubted his claims. ‘Teenage crush behaviour is odd for a grown woman, I suppose. But she seems quite—’
‘—bonkers,’ he supplied.
‘I was going to say individual . I’ll make up my own mind about the rest.’ She turned towards her bedroom. ‘Are you heading home? I’m going to the Eastingdean Teapot, now. Shall I walk along with you? If that wouldn’t make me bonkers . . .’ She emerged with a jacket over her arm and two little books in her hand, one red and one blue.
‘You don’t need one passport to travel in Eastingdean,’ he observed, ‘let alone two.’
She collected her key from the hall table. ‘No, but the employer needs to see the employee’s passport for her to start work, in your country. So, I thought I’d bring both, just in case.’
‘I don’t remember seeing a US passport before.’ He tweaked the blue passport from her fingers.
She held out her hand. ‘I’ll have that back, OK?’
‘OK,’ he agreed, but flicked through the pages. ‘It’s no different to a UK passport, really.’ She probably thought her passport photo made her look stupid — women usually did think that — so he flipped to the photo page. Not too bad, really, although she looked younger and way too serious. He made to restore the passport to her waiting hand. Then paused.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Honor’s your middle name. Your first name is Freedom.’