The Piano Man Project Page 0,82

faster the better. Honey’s easy-come, easy-go attitude to being able to slide behind the wheel any time she liked filled him with hot fury out of nowhere.

‘You’d really rather ride the fucking bus? You prefer to be rubbed up against by rancid teenagers and avoid making eye contact with the local nutter than be in a car, be in control of everything yourself?’

The need to feel the power of an engine under his hands again took his breath away, along with his ability to be tactful. He tried to shut it down, to tune it out, but it wouldn’t let go. He could feel it throbbing inside him like an angry animal’s heartbeat. He missed it so, so much; it was visceral. Who he was, who he’d been right down to his bones. Benedict Hallam. Adrenalin junkie. It was one of the reasons he’d shut his life down to four walls since the accident, because being out here just rammed home all the things he’d never do again. The addictive smell of the petrol fumes, the throaty rumble of an exhaust. He couldn’t be that man anymore, and the plain truth was he didn’t know how to be anyone else. He’d been left with all of the bad stuff and none of the good, and he wasn’t sure there was enough of him left to build a new man from. Worse still, he didn’t even know if he wanted to try.

‘You did great today,’ Honey said, breaking into his bleak train of thought.

‘I sat on a stool and told someone what to do. I’d hardly call it earth shattering.’

Honey laughed softly. ‘You really have no idea. Hal, without you there today Steve would have walked. Thirty-odd residents would have gone hungry, and a war veteran wouldn’t have celebrated his birthday. You can think of it as just sitting on the stool if you like, but the way I see it you saved the day.’

‘Move over Nicolas-fucking-Cage,’ Hal muttered.

‘Do you have to swear in every single sentence?’ she snapped. ‘There are other words, you know.’

‘I’d say I’ll read the dictionary, but I’m goddamn fucking blind,’ he shot back, and folded his arms over his chest in fury.

Honey watched the cars trundle past the darkening windows. ‘I like Nicolas Cage.’

‘Yeah well, real life isn’t like the movies, Honey. The hero doesn’t always get to save the day. He doesn’t always get to keep his eyesight, or his driving licence, or his livelihood, or his fiancée.’

She was silent for the rest of the bus ride home, and on the walk to the house too, besides providing enough basic information to save him from falling down the kerb. He hated the way she’d withdrawn her company long before they went their separate ways in the lobby.

‘It’s pretty mean to give a blind man the silent treatment.’

Honey snorted down her nose. ‘You have the nerve to call me on giving the silent treatment? You’re the bloody king of it.’

‘That’s quite some fall, from Nicolas Cage to the king of silent treatments,’ he said, trying to coax her back into civility again.

‘I’m going inside,’ she said, tonelessly. ‘Thanks for your help today.’

She sounded like a teacher thanking a PTA parent. Polite, and professionally distant. It grated on him. He slotted his key into the latch as he heard her door close, and then took it out again.

‘What did I do?’ he shouted, walking back to her door. ‘One minute I’m a hero, the next you’re in a temper. What is this?’

She opened her door. ‘You never mentioned your fiancée.’

Her voice was calm and heavy with the questions she didn’t ask.

‘So?’

‘So you should have.’

‘Am I missing something here? I used to have a fiancée. Now I don’t. And that’s a problem for you, because?’

‘Why did you split up?’

‘Fuck, Honey, what is this, the Spanish Inquisition?’

‘It’s a simple question.’

He ran his hands over his hair. ‘Fine.’ Squaring his shoulders and closing his arms over his chest, he spoke again. ‘Fine. We were getting married. Next summer, if you must have all the details.’

‘And now you’re not?’

‘She didn’t want to marry a blind man.’

Hal heard Honey’s swift intake of breath and felt guilty for painting Imogen on a par with Cruella De Vil. The truth had been far more gradual and not at all one-sided. The accident had been the catalyst, the inciting incident, definitely, but the aftermath had been the reason they’d separated. Hal had been a man left without many choices, and Imogen had become a woman