The Piano Man Project Page 0,120

in,’ Tash muttered viciously. ‘He might be a hotshot celebrity, but he doesn’t deserve your tears.’

‘I mustn’t have known him at all,’ Honey said, trying to understand how the solitary man who’d lived here could be a man who courted celebrity, who’d returned to his life again.

What had this interlude been to him? A holiday from reality, and she his holiday romance? She knew better than to expect him to write. He’d disappeared from her life as quickly as he’d appeared; gone in a blink, only this time he’d taken her heart with him.

‘I’m sure you did,’ Nell said, passing over the wine. ‘From what you’ve said of him, it seemed to me that he was learning who he is now right along with you.’

‘You think so?’ Honey said, ready to grasp at anything that painted Hal as anything other than a shallow, selfish heartbreaker. The wine had started to move in her blood, and she relaxed into her spot sandwiched between her two best friends in the world.

‘It might just have been the wrong time in your lives for you two to meet,’ Tash said, philosophical on her other side. ‘It happens that way sometimes. You meet your soulmate on your honeymoon, or your best friend brings home the love of her life and he’s actually the love of yours. The timing is off, but maybe in another place, another time, you’d have made it. It’s just the shitty way love goes sometimes.’

‘That doesn’t actually make me feel any better,’ Honey half laughed, knowing Tash was doing her best to help. And she had a point; maybe Hal was simply the right man at the wrong time. The thought of what might have been fair broke her heart all over again.

‘How do you ever get over that?’

‘Time,’ Nell said. ‘It sounds trite, but it’s the only thing that’s going to help. Then one day when you don’t expect it you’ll meet someone else, and they’ll put your heart back in the right way around again. You won’t always feel like this, I promise.’

They lapsed into silence, passing the wine between them.

‘When did you two get so wise, anyway?’ Honey said.

‘I’ve had my share of heartbreak,’ Tash said. ‘Although …’

‘What?’ Both Honey and Nell turned to look down the line towards Tash.

A slow, uncharacteristically shy smile spread over her face. ‘Yusef asked me to marry him last night.’

‘Wow,’ Honey smiled and squeezed Tash’s hand, and on her other side Nell grinned and said, ‘That’s huge, Tash.’

Tash laughed. ‘I know. And he is.’

‘You’ve said yes?’ Honey said, although it seemed almost moot given the glow radiating from her friend. Tash nodded.

‘In Dubai, next summer.’ She looked from Honey to Nell. ‘Bridesmaids?’

‘There’s nothing I feel less like right now,’ Honey said, smiling for Tash and crying for herself. ‘But try and keep me away.’

Nell knocked back a slug of wine, pink-cheeked.

‘I don’t know if Simon and I will make it through customs without being arrested,’ she giggled in a most un-Nell-like way. ‘Are you allowed to take a suitcase full of sex toys into Dubai?’

Tash reached across Honey and high-fived Nell.

‘Hats off, Nell. Simon has gone up in my estimation in recent weeks.’

‘Just don’t go and fall in love with your best friend’s husband,’ Honey murmured, repeating Tash’s earlier words.

‘Or someone else’s fiancé,’ a sarcastic voice said from the doorway, and Imogen stepped through the door that Tash and Nell had left ajar. ‘Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’

All three women on the floor stared up at the Amazonian blonde in silence for a few moments. Nell was trying to place her, Tash was momentarily dazzled by the arrival of someone straight from the gossip pages, and Honey was winded by the sight of the woman who could never love Hal as she did but had won the battle anyway. Looking at her now, all long legs and glossy hair, Honey knew it had never been a fair race. A thoroughbred would always romp to victory over a pony.

‘What are you doing here, Imogen?’ Honey said, sliding the empty wine bottle behind her. She didn’t want to give Imogen the opportunity to look down on them as if they were three drunks on a park bench. She heard Nell’s soft gasp of recognition beside her, and felt Tash’s fingers close firmly around hers.

‘You have exactly thirty seconds, and then I’m going to knock your veneers out, lady,’ Tash said.

Imogen looked momentarily wrong-footed.

‘Is he here?’ she said, flicking her