Page 56 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Gas explosion? How veryHarry Potter,’ I said, weakly. I’d never eventhoughtabout it being reported. It never crossed my mind that there would be any kind of scrutiny as to why a random wine bar in a tiny Yorkshire town might be blown up, but of course there would. Not much else happened around here on a wet night in April. The next item down on the news agenda would be the local car boot sale timings.
Flynn shrugged. ‘It was the first thing that came to mind. Anyway. Now you know. He’s still out there. Shame the police didn’t put this place under surveillance but – well, they’re doing their best. Two people that they currently can’t find blew up my bar. The bastards,’ he ended, the words mild.
‘I think I might need another cup of tea,’ Isaid. My body had tried to go to Full Alert status, but with wonky legs and an arm that wouldn’t obey me, this had only served to make me feel even more vulnerable. Dexter. Waiting outside my door.
‘On it, boss!’ Flynn swung over towards the kitchen area, and then came back, his face creasing into lines of worry. ‘And I’m saying that purely for comic effect, you understand. There is no way in the world that you are bossy or controlling.’
Now I found I could smile properly. ‘Flynn, I know what you meant. You’re the most open and honest person I know. Dex was the master of negging and my brother didn’t even bother to sugar-coat his contempt. I can spot an insult when it comes wrapped in chocolate, trust me.’
‘Phew. I wouldn’t want you to think I was anything like those two.’
He went back to tea-making, humming slightly. It was an irritating noise, yet oddly reassuring.
I sat back as the adrenaline from seeing Dex, albeit on a screen, abated. Dexter. He’d comehere. But I’d been in hospital, and he must have known that. Besides, he hadn’t been banging and yelling like he had that last night he’d come and tried to attack me. He’d come silently, trying to work out how to get into the flat.
Before the – well, I couldn’t call it an accident, could I? Before the explosion that had given me this notable scar and off-centre walk, I had been reading everything I could about becoming a Private Investigator. The potential of an actual vocation had tingled through my veins in the same way as alcohol used to, giving mesomething. Hope, a future that I couldn’t see yet.Anticipation. All right, all the alcohol had anticipated was a disturbed night’s sleep and a headache in the morning, but the feeling was similar. None of that would come to fruition now, of course; I couldn’t run an investigation if I couldn’t drive andstood out in a crowd like a bluebottle in a saucer of milk, but the reading had still inspired me. Right now, it felt as though there was an idea knocking at the back of my brain, trying to get my attention.
‘Flynn, can I look at that footage again, please?’
‘Before or after the tea?’
I looked down at my unresponsive arm, sitting on my lap like a sleeping cat. ‘Before, I think, so I don’t spill.’
‘Here, then.’ He dodged across the room and put the phone in front of me. ‘Just press – that.’ Then he whirled back to attend to the kettle and teabags, like the perfect butler.
I watched the film again. Then again. Simultaneously, that other night replayed on a loop in my mind.Why had he come? He said to see me, but he’d come back when I wasn’t here, desperate to get in. He came in that night, but he’d chased me out and the guys had taken him down and had him arrested. Then Flynn had had the flat secured…
I watched Dexter kick the door, to the detriment of his footwear and, hopefully, his actual foot.Think, Fee, think…
That last time I’d seen him, when he’d kicked his way in, what had he said? It had been something that had made my internal ‘that’s odd’ meter start ticking. Something incongruous, something that hadn’t fitted with the Dexter I knew. And all this time my brain had held on to those words, preserved them, because itknewthey were strange. Those Investigator books had encouraged that sort of thing. ‘Anything unusual can be a giveaway.’ ‘Never underestimate your ability to read a “tell”.’ ‘People betray themselves all the time…’
What had he said?
‘Go easy on the tea consumption.’ Flynn put the mug down in front of me, moving his phone slightly to one side. ‘You’ll be in the loo all afternoonat this rate.’
I jerked and almost got myself to standing, managing full upright posture by grabbing the side table. ‘That was it!’
Flynn stared at me and then at the tea. ‘Was it? I used the teabags in the cupboard.’
‘No. The bathroom. That was what Dexter said that struck me as odd! When he broke in here that night? The night when the club came to my rescue?’ I gave Flynn a grin that was, no doubt, wild-eyed and slightly mad.
‘There’s no need to ask me, I’ve got that night engraved behind my eyes like the worst kind of horror film,’ Flynn said levelly. ‘You leaving a trail of blood, running down the street in your pyjamas with that…’ He was groping for a word and I helped him out.
‘Violent abuser.’ Two words. But they summed Dexter up. ‘On a drugs binge.’ I added, for clarity.
‘Yes. Him. With him chasing you. It was terrifying.Iwas terrified.’ He moved in and gave me a sudden hug. ‘It could all have gone so wrong.’
‘But it didn’t. You, the guys – you all saved me.’
Flynn looked wryly at my limp arm. ‘Not quite fast enough, though.’
‘You weren’t to know he’d send his goons in to pay you back. But I thought at the time that it was overkill. All that, blowing up the bar, overme?’ I copied his ironic expression. ‘I mean, I’m great, but I’m not worth all that.’
The embrace deepened until I could feel Flynn’s breath against my cheek. ‘You are,’ he whispered. ‘You so are.’
For a few moments I gave in to the hug and allowed myself to feel protected. Important. Worth something. I might not believe it yet, deep down, but Flynn did, and that was what mattered.
‘Anyway.’ I stepped back, but only a little way because having Flynn hold me was worth any amount of explosive injury. ‘Iremembered what it was that Dex said that night. He said that he needed to use the bathroom.’
