Page 40 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
Gently they got Fraser, pale and wobbly, to his feet. Eddie was staring at the three of us with an expression that indicated he expected aUFOto come and beam us all up any second.
‘Er,’ he said.
‘But… who are these people?’ Laptop Lady looked as though she was on the verge of tears.
‘I think…’ Eddie said slowly, ‘that it’s my wife’s Portuguese evening class.’
Now we’d attracted the attention of everyone in the room. Someone laughed.
‘Why onearthwould your wife’s Portuguese evening class be crashing our lecture?’ This was a man sitting sideways on his chair.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ Eddie said, now looking as though theUFOcouldn’t come quickly enough. ‘It’s very strange.’
The screen at the front went blank. ‘I think,’ said Laptop Lady, still looking shaken, ‘that we’ll have a ten-minute break for coffee.’
Fraser, holding on to chair backs and tabletops, inched his way over to Flynn and me. Eddie was coming too, creeping his way between his fellow lecture attendees and the chairs as though he didn’t really want to see us at all and hoped we’d turn out to be figments of a custard tart-inspired imagination.
‘I think we might have some explaining to do,’ Flynn said, his voice low.
‘That’s all right, so has Eddie,’ I replied. ‘Are you all right, Fraser?’
Fraser shuddered and, hand-over-hand, made his way towards the door. ‘Nobody,’ he said heavily, ‘should be surprised by gangrene after a fry-up.’
The crowd trickled out, some throwing us puzzled looks asthey went, until it was only Flynn, Eddie and me in the room, with Fraser in the doorway taking deep breaths. We all looked at one another, nobody knowing quite where to start.
At last Eddie spoke. ‘Did Annie put you up to this? Does she know?’
‘She thinks you’re having an affair,’ I said. ‘And no, she doesn’t know we’re here.’
‘Anaffair?’ Eddie sat down suddenly on one of the plastic chairs. ‘Good Lord. Really?’
‘We’re not really a Portuguese evening class,’ Flynn said. ‘We’re the Monday Night Heartbreak Club. Formerly the Disappointed Valentines’ Club. Which, I think, says it all, really.’
‘Vengeance Squad.’ Fraser, sounding a little pathetic, was sticking to his guns. We ignored him.
‘Dis…?’ Eddie looked down at his knees. ‘I bought her flowers,’ he said sullenly.
‘The dayafter,’ I chimed in. ‘You forgot for the first time in forty years.’
‘And you’ve lost weight.’
‘And bought new clothes.’
‘And then there’s the gym,’ Flynn finished. ‘Plus taking days off and not telling her. An affair was a logical conclusion to draw.’
‘Bloody right,’ put in Fraser, still avoiding coming back into the room.
‘And you went to that place in York,’ I said.
‘You mean you’ve beenfollowing…?Oh.’ Eddie glanced over at Fraser. ‘The gym. You’ve been watching me.’
Eddie looked as though his world had vibrated underneath him and shaken him to a different location, one where he was lost. He put his head in his hands and groaned faintly.
‘So, what’s it all about?’ I asked. ‘And Iwarn you, we’re on Annie’s side here, so we won’t be keeping any dirty little secrets you might have.’
‘Oh.’ Eddie slumped even further. Not as dramatically as Fraser had evidently done, but he leaned forward until he was staring at his knees. ‘Oh.’
‘And why are you at a medical convention?’ Flynn asked. ‘Being shown dreadful pictures of limbs?’
