Page 19 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
I jerked my head up. The Skoda had been in the same place as we’d seen him park yesterday when we arrived, as neatly centred in the space as before, so we’d assumed Eddie was busily doing whatever it was he did in there. Now, here he was, jauntily coming out of the reception area, waving his cheery farewell to the young man with the lanyard and carrying his holdall.
Flynn and I both ducked, which caused considerable sandwich dispersal. ‘He must have been early today! Annie said he was always regular as clockwork,’ I hissed in a whisper, although I didn’t know why, as Eddie was half a car park away and couldn’t have heard us. Our sub-par detecting was as cheesy as the sandwiches and if he’d looked up, he’d have seen us, hunched low in the car, but he didn’t. We watched Eddie fussily arranging his bag in the boot of the Skoda, carefully folding a rug to fit it in. ‘Which seems to fit his profile,’ I continued.
‘Oh, he has a profile now, does he?’ Flynn straightened back up and began to reassemble his sandwich.
‘I’ve got a computer. I read,’ I said shortly, shrugging sliced bread off my shoulder and hesitating over the ignition key. ‘Should we follow him?’
‘We’d better. It’s what we’re here for, after all. Fraser’s got his bus fare, he’ll be fine.’ A pause. ‘Annoyed, but fine.’
But as Eddie got into his car and started the engine, Fraser came flying out of the building, towel flapping, wearing the tightest shorts I’d ever seen and theStar WarsT-shirt. Minnie was sprinting alongside him, clearly offering advice as he came.
‘He’s going!’ He puffed, hitting the back seat. ‘Drive!’
I drove, my back door waving to Minnie until Fraser could slam it shut, like a getaway vehicle after a bank raid.
‘What did you tell Minnie?’ I asked, as we trailed Eddie’s car at a suitable distance through the quiet streets of Malton, hoping he hadn’t seen ourfrenzied leaving.
‘Said I’d got the runs.’ Fraser leaned forward between our seats. ‘These shorts really chafe.’
‘You need bigger ones.’ Flynn looked behind him for a second. ‘Honestly.’
‘Yeah, I know that now. Minnie says…’ Fraser stopped. ‘Can I have that sandwich?’
‘Help yourself.’ The packet went into the back and there was some noisy chomping, while the world’s slowest and most sensibly driven vehicle pursuit went on. ‘Where’s he going?’
Eddie had turned out onto the main road to York. Away from the gym, away from Drayton’s.
‘Minnie said he sometimes does a short session and then gets away by seven,’ Fraser said indistinctly, around cheese. ‘About once a month, she says.’
I met Fraser’s eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Wow. You didn’t let her know we were following him, did you?’
‘Nah.’ Luke Skywalker gained a lettuce hat. ‘We were just chatting. About making progress and all that. Minnie says I’ve got the legs of a footballer,’ he added proudly, then, in a slightly more downtrodden tone, ‘It’s all the rest of me that lets me down.’
Other cars were making their way along the dual carriageway and I had to concentrate to keep the Skoda in sight. ‘What else did she say? I don’t suppose he sometimes turns up with a gorgeous model-type on his arm?’
Fraser shook his head and more lettuce rained down upon the blameless Luke. ‘Not much. Just that Eddie’s really put his back into training; he’s lost loads of weight and he goes to the gym five mornings a week like he’s some kind of addict. She does his assessments.’ Chew chew. ‘He’s fitter than most blokes half his age, she says. She’s all right, is Minnie. For a masochist. She’s going to put me on the cable machine tomorrow, if the runs are under control.’ Chew chew. ‘What the fuck is a cable machine?’
‘He’s turning in here.’ Flynn pointed ahead. We’d reached the outskirts of York, where large, expensive houses had begun to pepper the fields, surrounded by grazing horses and wildlife ponds.
‘Should I follow him?’ I hesitated over flicking on my indicator.
‘Looks like a private house. Better not.’
We drove past as slowly as possible while in a stream of traffic. Eddie’s destination was where house building had become more serious, on a street of similar but widely spaced large, detached houses with driveways. This one, my rapid sideways glance told me, led to an Edwardian construction of the type that I always imagined would be lived in by a pre-war doctor. Nice gravel sweep, overhanging trees, what looked to be an extensive garden at the back. Little wooden summerhouse to one side, all very affluent andHomes and Gardens. The sort of place that Demi aspired to, I tried not to think bitterly.
I turned the car around in a nearby side street and we drove back, Fraser and Flynn hanging over their seats to try to get a good look as we passed the house, heading in the opposite direction.
‘There’s a porch light on, and some lights at the back,’ Flynn said. ‘Someone’s expecting him.’
‘Looks like a woman,’ Fraser had wound his window down and stuck his head out as far as it would go. ‘Standing there waiting in the porch.’ He pulled his head back in. ‘He’s bloody got a woman! In a posh house.’ Fraser stared for a moment as we drove away, getting a last glimpse of the place. ‘Wonder how he did it?’ he asked, thoughtfully.
We all looked at one another. ‘Should we take photographs?’ I asked hesitantly. What had previously seemed a fun little conceit, something to keep us busy, had suddenly allbecome very real. Eddie was clearly lying about going to the gym every day and I wondered what Annie would say, whether this would blow her marriage up completely when she realised her worst fears were true. Forty years they’d been together, and he was throwing it all away like this. Maybe I wasn’t missing anything by staying single; falling in love looked as though it might be a shortcut to a nervous breakdown, and I certainly wasn’t going there over Dexter.
‘Once a month in’t much of a shag,’ said Fraser, the Hugh Hefner of the bench press.
‘They might meet elsewhere the rest of the time. There was that day he didn’t go to work, after all.’ I carried on driving, heading back home. It suddenly dawned on me that there was no rush – that I had no job to go to. The day stretched as a painful space of time to fill.
Suddenly Fraser piped up. ‘Can you take me back to the gym? I’ll tell Minnie I’m full of Imodium.’
