Page 14 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘You met us,’ Margot joined in now, breezily.
‘Yeah, well, my mate Scousie…’
‘Scousie the Lousie?’ Margot asked, in a rather pointed way, I thought.
‘Nah, Scousie’s already his nickname – he’s really called Gerald – well, he’s my mate, andhesaid that joining a disappointed valentines’ thing would be like shooting fish in a barrel. He said it would be full of women desperate for a bloke and I’d be in with a shout.’
More silence. This one was painful.
‘You can report back to your friend, Scousie’ – Margot spoke so slowly and clearly that she sounded like an elocution lesson – ‘thatnowoman is desperate for a man.’
I thought about Dexter. I thought about meeting him at a friend’s party, how he and his mates had gate-crashed and I’d thought it was funny and brave and when he’d homed in on me and started drinking out of my glass, I’d admired his effrontery. I’d thought it was a sign that he was a man who knew what he wanted and went after it. I didn’t realise that it wasa sign that he was a man who knew desperation when he saw it. I didn’t say any of this to Margot or Fraser, of course. It had been a lesson hard learned and I still wasn’t entirely certain that I’d taken it quite to heart.
‘On the other hand’ – Wren broke the awkwardness – ‘it must have taken quite a lot of courage to turn up here.’
We all stared at her.
‘I knowIwas nervous, coming to the first meeting, not knowing who I might meet or what it might all be about. And I’m used to – well, having to meet lots of different people, being a journalist and everything. So it must have been worse for you, Fraser.’ She took a mouthful of her drink. ‘I think you were very brave to turn up, whatever your reasons for coming.’
Now we were all gaping, but I could see the activity behind the eyes. My own mind was racing. I’d exceeded nineteen to the dozen and was rapidly approaching ninety to the dozen.Brave. Walking into a meeting of new people, not knowing what might happen. Not knowing whether they might laugh or sneer or dismiss me as not disappointed enough. I found myself sitting up straighter.I’d been brave. For the first time in my life, I’d been brave. I’d been the Fee that I wanted to be.
I ignored the fact that alcohol had had quite a lot to do with that bravery. Fraser was displaying a paint-chart worth of colours: his ears were red, his cheeks were practically purple and his neck had gone an odd shade of yellowish-green. The silence was now broken by the sound of everyone gulping their drinks much too fast.
‘Well, anyway,’ Flynn glanced over at the door, where two men in suits had come in and were pointing around at tables, clearly trying to decide where to sit, ‘I’d better go back to the bar. I’ll come over tomorrow at six thirty, Fee?’
I looked down at my half-finished wine and let the newlyacknowledged feeling of courage trickle through me. ‘I’ll be ready. Scribble me down your address, Fraser, so I can pick you up.’ I looked around until Wren tore off a page of her notepad.
‘Er, I can’t.’ Fraser entered more deeply into his relationship with his T-shirt. ‘But I can tell you where I live.’
As Flynn pushed his chair back over to the table where it belonged, Margot gathered her bag from under the table and Wren squeaked about how exciting this all was and not at all what she’d expected when she’d joined the club, I wrote down Fraser’s address and listened to his slightly garbled instructions as to how to find his house. None of us seemed to want to talk about Wren’s insight, but, to me, it felt as though our smiles were a little broader, our actions a little bit more assured. Especially Fraser’s, once his colour returned to normal.
‘We’ve got gnomes,’ he said. ‘Mum’s really big on gnomes, so you can’t miss us. End of the cul-de-sac, down the alleyway, and I’ll meet you out there. Don’t want to wake the arseh—I mean, everyone else in the road.’
It was only when I went up the fishy-smelling stairs to my flat that I realised I was smiling. A proper relaxed grin sat on my face, broadening as I opened the door and collapsed onto the sofa bed. It felt odd, but very, very good.
7
‘It’s down this road.’ Flynn had the maps app open on his phone.
‘It can’t be. There’s nothing here.’ I swung the wheel to turn the car out of the narrow lane.
‘They’re putting in a new Aldi,’ Fraser said from the back seat. ‘Mum loves a good Aldi.’
‘Drive a little way down,’ Flynn suggested as we sat under the breaking dawn. ‘Look, there are other cars heading that way, there must be something.’
‘What does Eddie drive?’ I asked idly, turning the car again to follow a little Fiat down the barely made-up roadway.
‘Skoda,’ said Fraser, promptly. ‘Scala. New one. What? I knows about cars and it was in one of them pictures that Wren had.’
We bumped a bit further on, until we could see a brightly lit building up ahead. It bore an astonishing resemblance to a tin-roofed barn, but had huge full-length windows down one wall, emitting the kind of glow that made it look as though a giganticUFOhad set down in a car park.
‘That’ll be it,’ Flynn said, as we stared, our retinas frying. ‘Fraser, you’re on.’
Fraser hesitated. ‘I don’t really know what to do,’ he said, holding his rolled-up towel, which contained his ‘gym kit’. ‘I’ve never been in one of them places before.’
‘Margot’s got you an induction session,’ I said, checking my messages. ‘You just have to go in and ask for Minnie, and she…’
‘Or he,’ put in Flynn, and Fraser winced.
