Page 22 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
The weeks rolled around and Flynn gave me the evenings off to attend the club meetings. I had to admit that he showed every sign of being a bar manager – there had been paperwork and forms, and he’d walked me round the equipment and showed me what I needed to know, just as though it was a real job. And, I reassured myself, even if his ‘dad’ did turn out to be an absent owner who turned up angry at this casual hiring procedure and threw me out, at least for now I could pay my rent, and Flynn let me eat any out-of-date crisps, and he’d call me into the back room for an omelette or some chips to take home when we closed, so I wasn’t starving.
Not drinking wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it might be, either. With the stress of having no money somewhat alleviated, no sign of Dexter revisiting the flat and Flynn’s ultimatum of no job if I drank, I gradually stopped bothering. I found that keeping busy helped and I was less and less inclined to pour myself a drink when I got in after my shift.
After some frantic messaging between us, the group had decided not to mention to Annie what we’d been doing, andbesides, Eddie had blamelessly been attending the gym every morning, as advertised. Apart from that one visit to the posh house on the outskirts of York, he’d not put a foot wrong. Flynn and I had been sitting in my car, drinking coffee and chatting aimlessly, while Fraser had bought himself some new shorts and was apparently learning how to use the treadmill without sailing backwards off the end, while keeping an eye on Eddie. We’d kept Margot and Wren updated on the lack of action, but how we were going to avoid mentioning anything to Annie, I wasn’t sure.
Wren arrived first on this Monday, giving Flynn and me a complicit smile as she came in and looking around carefully to check that Annie hadn’t arrived. ‘Nothing to report this morning?’ she asked in the kind of whisper that would alert anyone in a five-mile radius to the fact that we were up to something.
‘Nope. Gym at seven on the dot and then off to work. Anything on the evening shift?’ Wren and Margot had been checking up on Eddie’s after-work doings, which sounded even more boring than the morning stint, but at least it lacked the necessity of seeing Fraser in shorts.
‘Nope. Straight home every night. Oh, he went to the pub one evening to meet some people, but they were all men. Margot and I had a fish supper and a gin and tonic – all very good, by the way, I thoroughly recommend the place – and then came back. He was watching the football. Oh, there’s Margot now, and Fraser.’
Fraser had cadged another lift with Margot and was obviously telling her all about his gym exploits because she wore the kind of expression usually only seen by someone who is having the offside rule explained to them in painful detail. ‘Ah, good, you’re here.’
‘And then there’s this really big machine, right? You has to pull on this handle…’ Fraser continued. ‘Minnie says I’m a natural.’
Minnie, I thought, wanted shooting. But I did have to admit that Fraser’sSimpsonsT-shirt looked a little bit less tight around the stomach regions, and Homer’s face didn’t look quite as prominent as it had.
Annie wasn’t far behind, and I felt the atmosphere change as soon as she came in. We were all biting our tongues as hard as we could not to let anything untoward escape.
‘Maybe tonight we could talk a little bit about what went wrong in our relationships?’ Wren suggested when we’d all sat down and Flynn had come to lurk at our end of the bar. ‘I’ve been doing some thinking and it would be good to get some opinions.’ Plus it would give us a topic of conversation that wouldn’t veer quite so heavily towards the ‘Eddie’ end of the spectrum, I thought. I gave Wren a small smile, which she returned.
‘Well, Eddie…’ Annie began, and we all instantly began to talk over her.
‘Bruce and I were more like housemates…’
‘I know that I pushed Jordan, but she was so helpful to everyone else!’
‘Dex came round to the flat the other week and I wouldn’t let him in.’
‘Minnie says another couple of sessions and I’ll be ready to try the rowing machine.’ We all stopped and looked at Fraser. ‘What?’
‘You said Jordan was helpful to other people?’ As Wren had had the idea, I thought she should be the first to pick up on the topic. Anything to prevent Fraser from giving us chapter and verse on the workings of every machine in the gym was welcome. He’d started giving demonstrations that were beginning to attract the attention of people passing in the street outside. He looked like Torquemada miming the effects of his latest torture instruments.
Wren seemed to realise that her idea meant she’d become the centre of things. For a moment she looked hesitant and glanced towards the door as though trying to work out whether she could bolt or not. Then she sighed.
‘Yes, I felt that Jordan seemed to take me for granted,’ she said, putting her elbows on the table. ‘Ididwant some kind of sign on Valentine’s Day that she was serious about our relationship – that shesawme, if you know what I mean.’
We all murmured assent, even Annie who was still looking a bit cheated of her opportunity to offload more worries about Eddie.
‘She was so certain that she did thank me every day, but it wasn’t what I heard. I felt as though she was just saying thank you so automatically that it didn’t mean anything, she was only paying lip service.’
Fraser made a ‘hur hur’ sound, but someone must have kicked him because he went quiet almost instantly.
‘Jordan worked at a dementia clinic, and she couldn’t do enough for her clients. She’d make cups of tea and chat to them and remember their favourite little treats. She’d remember everything they said about their families and their pasts and she’d talk about those for hours with them, to help them calm down when they got a bit overwrought.’ Wren looked wistfully down at the table. ‘Then she’d come round to mine and she couldn’t so much as make me a coffee or talk to me about what we were going to do at the weekend.’
‘My mum had dementia,’ Annie said softly. ‘It’s a dreadful disease.’
‘Yes, yes it is.’ Margot came in now. ‘Do you think, perhaps, that Jordan just didn’t have anything left to give?’
‘I… How do you mean?’ Wren, to her credit, didn’t sound dismissive or as though she were justifying anything, more as though she really wanted to know.
‘Working with dementia patients has to deplete your emotional reserve, I would have thought,’ Margot went on. She wasn’t looking at Wren; instead, she was picking away at the edge of the table. ‘Perhaps she didn’t have enough left to give you what you wanted.’
Wren stared at her for a moment. ‘I can be a bit of a princess, I have to admit. And I think you’re right, I wanted too much attention. Jordan wanted peace and tranquillity to help her deal with what she went through every day, but I wanted fun and excitement and a girlfriend who put me first. Jordan couldn’t do that. Her clients came first for her.’ She glanced at Margot. ‘I had a better time with you, eating fish and chips in the pub while we…’ The collective expression of panic that I saw dashing across everyone’s face and which I was sure must have broken out on mine, stopped her blurting out why they’d been there just in time. ‘…when we… err… met in town,’ Wren went on, limply, ‘than I’d had with Jordan for ages. I wanted attention and company and she didn’t have anything left to give. We’d stopped laughing,’ she finished and her lip wobbled. ‘And I’ve always thought, when you can’t laugh together any more, it’s over.’
Margot looked across the table at Wren and I was surprised to see the faint glitter of tears in her eyelashes. I hadn’t credited Margot with the ability to cry. I thought she’d had all her emotion taken out and replaced with fifty-pound notes. ‘That,’ Margot said, and even her voice had lost its usual strident tone, ‘is so right. It sounds as though you needed different things from the relationship and neither of you could give the other what you wanted. I’m sorry, Wren.’
Annie leaned across the table and patted Wren’s arm. ‘That’s very honest of you, dear,’ she said.
