Page 35 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
We sat, while the spring sunshine sloped its way up the road towards the pub, pausing only to glance in at our windows. ‘I don’t think you’re an idiot,’ I said quietly.
‘Back then, it genuinely never occurred to me that someone might try to use me for money,’ he went on, but at least he was talking to me now, rather than the floorboards. ‘Dad’s always been a wealthy man, so it’s my normal. It just doesn’t feature in my thinking.’
I wondered what he thought about me, with the fishy staircase to my flat and the three crowded rooms. My hand fell away from his.
‘So, I needed to know that you weren’t looking for an easy road to money,’ Flynn went on. Then, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to insinuate that you ever would. But Tamar did a bit of a number on me, I’m afraid. It’s made me – nervous.’
‘That’s why you didn’t have a Valentine’s date?’ My words came out a bit tight. ‘Because you think everyone’s in it for your money?’
‘Or access to Dad. You’d be amazed how many people want an introduction as soon as they find out who I am.’ Flynn’s eyes dropped away from mine and he slumped forward, cupping his face in his hands. ‘I just want to beme,’ he said, a little indistinctly.
‘But you’re not above using your dad to threaten bully boys?’ I tried to lighten him up a bit. The implications of all this were beginning to dawn on me but I couldn’t look at them now. Flynn was anxious, that much was obvious, and I didn’t want long silences to fill with his doubts.
‘He deserved it. And, by the way, I meant every word of it. IfDexter shows his face around here again, I shall be on the phone to someveryunpleasant people, who could teach him a thing or two about throwing weight around.’ He gave me a slightly watery grin. ‘I’ve got cameras, you know. Dad won’t set up any kind of enterprise without the full security gear in place. I told him it was ridiculous in a place this size, where you have to worry more about a wandering bullock than terrorism, but it looks as though he may have had a point.’
I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. The whole thing was utterly absurd. Flynn, lovely dark Flynn with his desire to clean everything he saw and his way with a hundred and one cocktails, was actually the son of a business mogul. It was ridiculous. Although, thinking about it, I had been very incurious about the whole ‘dad made this place over to me’ and ‘managing a bar in Melbourne’. They were hardly the sort of thing that the local farming fraternity could throw into conversation.
Maybe it was me who was the idiot here.
‘Dad gave me the third degree,’ Flynn went on, getting up to arrange glasses behind the bar. ‘After Tamar. I thought it was a bit late, and I could have done with all that before Oz, but never mind, he gave me all the warnings eventually. Make sure a girl wants me for who I am, not what I’m going to inherit. Make sure she’s not got some firm plans in place for how to spend anything she gets from me. Make sure she’s – well, make sure she’snice.’
I stayed sitting on my chair, behind the table. It felt good and solid, because the world had gone unreal again.
‘And you are, I think,’ Flynn went on, reshelving some flutes up on the high shelf – we didn’t have a lot of champagne drinking going on in here. ‘You’ve had a rough time. A roughlife.’
‘I don’t need rescuing, Flynn,’ I said carefully. I didn’t want to put him off totally, but I didn’t want to feel like a soggy kitten in a snowstorm. ‘I’ll be fine when I get my feet backunder me. I’ve got somewhere to live and a job – thanks again for that, by the way – and I will get by. Oh, and the feet thing wasn’t a pun, I only meant, once I get a new front door and some full-time work.’ I waggled a foot under the table. Thick socks padded the worst of the injuries and they were healing.
‘I don’t want to save you.’ He was keeping his back to me, as though he knew that my pride had been wounded and wanted to look as though this was a casual chat. ‘I really don’t. I like you a lot, Fee.’ Now he turned around and his expression was urgent and somehow very focused. ‘You’re lovely. You bumbled into the club, mostly I think because you were too drunk to go anywhere else, and you’re helping people through things. You haven’t asked for any help yourself. Oh, and I’ve already had a new door fitted on your place, so you don’t need to worry about that.’
‘I’m not helping anyone, am I?’ This was puzzling. Was he sure he’d got the right person?
‘You don’t take any shit from Margot; she actually listens to you. You’re kind to Fraser, who’s a plonker, and you’re driving us around keeping an eye on Eddie. You’re kind to me. You included me in the club, and you didn’t have to.’
I thought back to that first meeting. The dark man behind the bar who’d caught my eye, listening in. ‘I couldn’t not. You practically had us bugged.’
‘But you could have just treated me like the bloke who served the drinks. And you didn’t.’ A glass slipped from his hand and broke with a punctuating tinkle on the floor. ‘Bugger. You’re a nice person, Fee. And that’s what I need: someone real, someone nice. Someone good.’
‘Someone who isn’t haunted by a six-foot skinhead who wants to beat up anyone who talks to them?’
‘He won’t be back. The cameras would give me a head’s up – we’ve got facial recognition programmed in, he’d be spottedbefore he got within ten metres and the bells would go off. One phone call and he’s toast. Dad plays golf with the chief constable,’ Flynn added, smoothly.
‘I thought that was just something people said in detective dramas. Do chief constables really play golf?’
Flynn shrugged, throwing his hands wide. ‘This one does. And I’m pretty certain that your Dexter’s feet wouldn’t touch the ground if he tried anything round here.’
‘Wow.’ The sense of unreality was back. ‘Facial recognition?’
‘Oh, we’ve got all the tech. Dad insists.’ Flynn vanished behind the bar and sounds of dedicated sweeping reached me. ‘He’s a bit of a fan of all the new stuff. You should see his house, the whole place runs itself from his phone. I think his housekeeper gets a bit annoyed, mind you. It must be surreal, going into rooms to turn things on and off only to find they’re doing it themselves in front of you.’ He popped back up again and grinned broadly. ‘You’ll love it. I’ll take you up there soon, he’ll want to meet you.’
‘To vet me,’ I said. ‘I’d better be able to walk properly by then.’
‘Ah, you’re his type. Down to earth, sensible. He’s always telling me to find a sensible girl, someone who isn’t afraid she’ll break a nail if she makes a sandwich.’
There was nothing I could say. Nothing. Although I did entertain a brief moment of imagining how my brother would react on finding that his sister was with the son of a multimillionaire and being glad I’d blocked his phone number years ago. Mum and Dad would try to guilt me into keeping him in the style to which he would very much like to become accustomed, and that was not going to happen.
‘You go back up, get yourself fit for tomorrow morning,’ Flynn said cheerily, as though he was unaware that he’d just rewrittenmy future.
‘No, it’s all right. I need to occupy my mind,’ I said. ‘This has been a bit of a shock, and I ought to get myself a bit more mobile anyway.’
