Page 15 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Or he, will get you going from there. You’ll be fine. And the place will be full of women, so you might get your chance to chat some of them up.’
Fraser muttered, ‘Huh’, but he got out of the car and began crossing the car park to the behemoth of a building, with his towel under his arm, like a child off to their first swimming lesson.
‘Do we have to do this every day?’ Flynn asked, breaking the awkward silence that resulted.
‘Until we can find out something, yes.’ I yawned. ‘So I really hope Fraser is going to be able to give us something to go on this morning. I can’t take this early start for too long.’
We jointly gazed at the nuclear-standard illuminated building in front of us. Through one of the windows, I could see a row of fixed bikes, two of which were being ridden by men with very serious faces, and a very slender girl was running on a treadmill to one side while doing something on her phone at the same time.
‘I’m going to park around the side, out of the way,’ I said, starting the engine. ‘We don’t want to be spotted, especially if we’re going to be here the whole month. People might get suspicious.’ Besides, I didn’t think I could stand to watch everyone dedicatedly getting fit, not when I was craving a Mars bar.
‘There are other cars.’ Flynn indicated the car park, which was studded with cars and bikes.
‘But not with people in. We look like parentswaiting at school pick-up, and I don’t think Fraser would get away with looking like a five-year-old on his first day.’
‘Fraser,’ Flynn said carefully, after a moment. ‘He’s a bit… He doesn’t seem to know much about women, does he? Has he asked you out yet?’
‘No!’ I fumbled behind me, found the flask of coffee that I’d made in the pre-dawn darkness and pulled it out. ‘Why would he?’
‘Because Wren is gay, Margot’s old enough to be his mother and Annie’s married.’ Flynn took the cup I handed him.
‘Wow. I’m clearly not even the best of a very weak bunch.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ Flynn looked at me. ‘You’re very eligible, even though you don’t seem to think so.’
In the resulting quiet, a distant bass beat throbbed. The girl on the treadmill was texting, one handed. Another car drew into the car park and I put my coffee down. It was a Skoda being driven by an older man. ‘I think that’s Eddie.’
Flynn and I watched as the car was reversed several times in order to place it neatly in the middle of the parking space, and a middle-aged man got out. He had a holdall with him which he swung jauntily as he crossed the car park and entered the gym, where, I noted, he was greeted by the guy on reception as though they knew one another.
‘Well, at least he was telling the truth about the gym.’ Flynn drained his plastic cup.
‘We’d better keep an eye on the door in case it’s a ruse. He might turn straight around and come out again.’
But Eddie didn’t. Flynn and I drank coffee and discovered a mutual love of obscure nineties bands, scented surface cleaners and the local supermarket, and a joint hatred of build-it-yourself furniture. All of this turned our early morning excursion into amoderately pleasant experience. Flynn wasn’t quite as cuttingly sarcastic as I’d imagined; he was at times genuinely funny. But even so, we ran out of conversation after an hour and I’d slumped down into the driver’s seat in a got-up-too-early daze, when Flynn nudged me.
‘Fraser’s coming. Quick, look as though we’ve had a miserable time, otherwise he’s going to be jealous. Blimey, he’s pink!’
Fraser was indeed trudging down the entryway of the gym, in the company of a woman who looked as though she could have lifted him with one hand. Her tan glowed, her leggings were sprayed on and her eyelashes were so long that I could almost feel the updraught from here.
Fraser looked as though he’d eaten a radioactive vindaloo. He was scarlet all the way down and blowing like a cart horse after a heavy day’s ploughing. He got into the back of the car and instantly lay down across the seat. ‘Get me out of here before she kills me,’ he said.
‘We have to wait for Eddie.’ I handed him my coffee cup, which he couldn’t take because his hand was shaking so badly. ‘We need to know where he goes from here.’
‘Eddie,’ said Fraser, with heavy emphasis from his prone position, ‘is in there going like a McLaren round the Nürburgring. Minnie says she’s never seen such good progress.’
‘And what’s Minnie like?’ I asked.
‘The Spanish Inquisition, with added torture.’ Fraser sat up slowly. ‘Bugger me sideways, my head’s spinning.’ He breathed carefully for a moment. ‘She says she’s looking forward to seeing me tomorrow,’ he said, glumly.
‘On the bright side, Eddie might be heading for his girlfriend’s house right now.’ Flynn pointed at the doors to the gym, where Eddie was bidding the young man on reception a cheery farewell. ‘So you might nothave to come back.’
‘Margot made me promise to use the full month,’ Fraser said, even more dolefully. ‘She said she wants her money’s worth.’
‘Great, does that mean I’m committed to this for the whole month too?’ I yawned, a jaw-creaker of a yawn.
‘We do need to find out what Eddie’s up to,’ Flynn pointed out. ‘And it would be extraordinarily convenient if we established it on our first day.’
‘Oh God,’ Fraser and I groaned, in a Greek chorus of misery.
