Page 13 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘The new one, on the outskirts of Malton, Annie said. She’s always asleep when he leaves.’
‘Then one of us should join the gym and be there at the same time. We can find out if he actually does go and, if he does, what he gets up to while he’s there,’ I said triumphantly.
There was a resounding lack of people volunteering to get to the gym before seven in the morning.
‘Well, I can’t do it,’ Margot said. ‘I have to be preparing for work at that time.’
‘I don’t do mornings,’ Wren said sharply. ‘Seriously. I don’t. If you want someone to follow him home from work or find out where he goes in the evenings, I’m your woman, but mornings – nope.’
‘We could really do with someone in the gym and someone watching outside too,’ I said carefully, slightly upset at the turn things were taking. ‘In case he gets away from whoever’s inside.’
Fraser sighed. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m the token fat bastard. I’ll pretend to join the gym; everyone will believe that. Besides, I could stand to do some proper exercise.’ Then he glared at us, his ears shining like beacons. ‘But someone has to sub me the joining fee, I’m broke.’
‘I don’t mind sitting outside, doing the following to and from the gym,’ I said. There was no way I could afford to cover his fees, but I didn’t mind being incognito in a car. ‘As long as Eddie doesn’t hang around; I have to be at work for nine. But I’ll need someone with me, in case we have to follow him, because he might head off somewhere on foot and then I’d have to park the car.’
‘I can come with you.’ Flynn grinned. ‘It’s not that busy round here in the early morning; I think I can spare the time.’
‘And I’m going to need a lift,’ Fraser said. ‘I haven’t got a car,’ he added, unsurprisingly.
‘Right. So, tomorrow morning, Flynn and I will pick you up at six thirty, Fraser,’ I said, far more decisively than I felt. ‘We’ll drop you off at the gym. We can sit outside and pretend to be…’
‘We could snog,’ Flynn said cheerily. ‘Pretend to be a couple, you know.’
I glared at him. ‘For an hour? No thank you. I’ll bring a flask of coffee.’
‘Oh, yes, or that.’
‘Do I get a snog?’ Fraser asked hopefully.
‘No. Whatyouget is an hour on an elliptical trainer, keeping an eye on Eddie.’ Margot was glaring now too. ‘I’ll pay for a month’s trial for you.’ She had her phone in her hand and the gym website open. ‘That’s the shortest periodyou can join for, unfortunately. And if Eddie makes a break for it, you’ll have to make your own way home because these two’ – she waved a hand at Flynn and me – ‘will be following him.’
‘I’m going to need my bus fare too then.’
Margot rolled her eyes. ‘Fraser, do you have any independence at all? I mean, what do youdowith yourself? Why haven’t you got transport? Why haven’t you got a job?’
Fraser hunched himself down as though he wanted to become invisible. ‘I has to help Mum,’ he said.
‘No, you don’t. I know your mother; she’s the last woman on earth to need any of the kind of help that you could provide,’ Margot snapped.
‘Yeah, but she’s got my sister’s kids to look after now, with my sister being, well, you know. Mum don’t hold it against you, by the way, she says you did everything you could, but they’d got her holding the stuff on camera, so…’
Wren and I tried very hard not to let our eyes meet. I could see her bending her head and I was also considering the wooden tabletop as though I were performing some kind of tree ring analysis. Beside me, Flynn’s eyebrows were so high that his glasses had dislodged.
‘And the kids can be proper little tw—buggers,’ Fraser went on. ‘Sometimes Mum needs an extra pair of hands and someone who can really shout. So I helps her out. I gets benefits, cos of the dyslexia,’ he finished.
Nobody knew what to say. Finally Margot came out with, ‘I’m very glad that your mother is managing, and I’m only sorry that your sister got such a protracted sentence.’
‘You did your best,’ Fraser said, equably, clearly not having the faintest idea what a ‘protracted sentence’ might be, while the rest of us kept our faces very, very neutral and tried not to breathe.
‘So, you live at home with your mum?’ Wren said at last, as though this were a dinner party conversation.
‘Yeah. Like I said, I wanted a girlfriend but I don’t know any girls. I tried a few online, but they all told me to fu—to go away.’
The solid silence descended again.
‘You must know some females, surely?’ Wren persisted. I tried to kick her under the table but missed and hit Margot’s bag. It felt as though she had bricks in there. ‘Didn’t you stay in touch with any of your schoolfriends?’
Fraser shrugged so deeply that it looked as though today’s T-shirt – theStar Warsone again – was trying to eat him. ‘Didn’t go to school much,’ he muttered. ‘Dyslexia an’ all. And I never meetsanyone.’
