The Piano Man Project Page 0,114

at the bottom and worked her way up, letting go of her shoe envy to take in the skinny hips in dark skinny jeans, and the slick, buttery leather jacket that clung to the woman’s slender body as if it had been peeled directly from a newborn calf and moulded around her. Gleaming, honey-blonde hair hung poker straight to her shoulder blades, swishing violently as she rapped her knuckles on the door yet again.

‘For God’s sake, Hal,’ she called out. ‘I know you can hear me. Half the street probably can.’

‘He won’t answer it,’ Honey said, surprising herself as much as Hal’s visitor.

The stranger swung around, and for a couple of seconds the two women took each other in. As glossy from the front as she’d been from the back, everything about her screamed money. She looked like a woman made to sip champagne on the deck of a footballer’s yacht, utterly out of place in Honey’s hallway.

The cool look in her grey eyes seemed to assess Honey, and then recognition dawned.

‘Aren’t you that woman from the TV yesterday?’

Honey shrugged.

‘Hal won’t answer his door. He never does.’

‘Maybe not to you,’ the woman said, folding her arms over her small-but-perfectly-formed chest. ‘But he will for me. He’s probably sleeping.’

‘Or drunk,’ Honey muttered.

The woman narrowed her eyes.

‘Don’t you have a key to his door?’ she said, and then added, ‘for emergencies or anything?’ to unnecessarily reinforce the fact that she wouldn’t expect Honey to have a key for any other reason.

Honey shook her head. ‘Don’t you?’ she snapped back, sure by now that this must be Imogen. The brief flicker of uncertainty in Imogen’s eyes didn’t make Honey feel as contrite as it might have done on a more normal kind of day.

‘I can tell him you came by if you like,’ Honey said, leaning on the doorframe and mirroring Imogen’s cross-armed pose.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Honey lifted one shoulder, going for disinterested even though the woman in front of her had come to take Hal away. She flicked a glance at his door, wondering what was going on on the other side of it. If she knew Hal at all, he’d be passed out from too much whisky after fleeing the home last night. For once, she was glad to see his door stay closed.

‘Then you’re in for a long wait,’ Honey said, and stepped back to close her door.

‘Wait.’

Against her better judgment, Honey didn’t close the door. She was tired and ratty, but she couldn’t bring herself to be downright rude. She lifted her eyes to Imogen’s and waited for her to speak again.

‘I sent him a letter,’ she said, the uncertainty Honey had glimpsed in her eyes now apparent in her voice too. ‘Do you know if he got it?’

Honey wished she’d closed the door. She wasn’t sure she had the strength for this conversation.

‘He got it.’ She swallowed, a painful sound in the quiet lobby.

Imogen nodded.

‘How’s he been?’

Annoyance flashed hot in Honey’s brain. She had no right, not after months of not caring.

‘Up and down. He gets lonely.’

She didn’t feel any thrill of victory at Imogen’s troubled expression, and she certainly hadn’t counted on the girl bursting into tears.

‘Shit,’ Honey muttered, and pulled out some scrunched-up tissues from her dressing gown pocket and handed them over.

As Imogen patted her cheeks, Honey noted the lack of mascara streaks and silently envied her smart waterproof choice.

‘He shouldn’t be stuck here in this hole,’ Imogen gulped, and Honey suddenly lost all sympathy again. ‘Do you know who he really is? I suppose you must after yesterday.’

Honey nodded.

‘I know who he is.’

Imogen shook her head. ‘He was a different man before the accident,’ she said. ‘Smart. Sexy. The talk of the town. Wow, was he going places.’ She ripped the tissue to pieces as she remembered, dropping tiny shreds like wedding confetti on the floor. Honey glanced down and tried not to let her knees crumble at the sight of the huge rock glinting on Imogen’s left hand.

‘You should have seen him in the kitchen, he was a wizard,’ Imogen sniffed. ‘He was always the coolest guy in town.’

Honey could feel her temper running through her fingers like sand through an egg-timer.

‘He caught the bus with me yesterday,’ she said, limbering up.

Imogen yelped as if she’d been nudged in the ribs with a poker. ‘Hal caught the bus? As in the public bus?’

Honey nodded.

‘And he’s still a wizard in the kitchen. He’s been running the kitchen in the residential home for a while